LAUGHING THROUGH HISTORY 14 'Is the Chestnut in My Mouth a Tree Spirit?'
Shamans in the early 1900s / Courtesy of Robert Neff Collection
“Bwahahahaha” is a weekly column that explores the roots of Korean humor through the joke book “Kkalkkal Useum,” originally published in 1916.
Shamanism has a unique place in Korean culture. While Buddhism, Confucianism and Christianity were all imported to Korea at different points in its history, shamanism originated here and has roots in prehistory. However, it has historically faced suppression — especially during the 20th century — when critics dismissed it as more superstitious than centrally organized religions and viewed it as a barrier to modernization and a scientific worldview.
The joke I’m translating today stages a conflict over shamanism — similar to last week’s installment of this column, which featured a joke that portrayed Christianity rhetorically defeating Confucian practice.
This week’s joke shows a shamanist humiliated into giving up her beliefs. As with the previous joke, it’s hard to imagine anyone finding this trick compelling; its depiction likely expresses the perspectives of the creator and readers who were inclined to view shamanism negatively.
An inescapable part of that is gender. Korean shamans are typically women, and shamanism is often seen as a unique power center for women within the patriarchal structure of Joseon-era society. Women also were — and still are — more likely than men to follow or practice shamanism. It’s unsurprising this joke projects the shamanism versus anti-shamanism conflict onto a conflict between husband and wife.
However, most of the jokes in “Kkalkkal Useum” that depict marital conflict show the wife coming out on top — just as the jokes that depict fathers and sons, or grandfathers and grandsons, or aristocrats and social inferiors tend to show the socially weaker member triumphing.
Since here the wife loses the conflict, this joke appears to break that pattern. Rather than challenging the social hierarchy, it frames the husband’s rejection of his wife's shamanism as a satisfying ending.
Is the Chestnut in My Mouth a Tree Spirit?
There once was a woman who liked shamanism, and if a member of her family was even the slightest bit sick she would tell their fortune and pray.
Her husband was at his wits’ end trying to get her to stop. Then he had an idea.
As he was entering the house he discreetly slipped a chestnut into his mouth. He held it in his cheek, wrapped both hands around his face, and as he walked in, he said, "For some reason my cheek swelled up like this all of a sudden. I can't bear it!" and lay on the floor writhing as if in pain.
Without a word his wife pulled her cloak over her head and rushed out the door, and when she came back she set down a red gourd full of rice, mumbled something under her breath and rubbed her hands together in prayer.
The man asked what was the cause of his suffering, and she replied, "When you put up the outhouse you angered a tree spirit."
Right away the man spit out the chestnut and said, "See here! Do you think a tree spirit is to blame for this? Take a good look."
The woman was embarrassed, and she never set foot in the house of a shaman again.
G.S. Hand is a graduate of the Translation Academy at LTI Korea and winner of the Fiction Grand Prize of the 53rd Modern Korean Literature Translation Awards. He has a master’s degree in Modern Korean Literature from Korea University. He lives in Seoul.