In one of Aesop's Fables, a workman dropped his axe into the river. The god Mercury found out what was wrong, and offered his aid. First Mercury pulled out a silver axe, and asked whether it was the one the workman lost. He told the god that no, it wasn't. Then Mercury pulled out a golden axe, and asked whether it was his. Again, the workman said no. Finally, Mercury pulled out the original axe, and asked if it was his. The workman said that yes it was his. As a reward for his honesty, Mercury gave him all three axes.
Another workman, hearing of this, purposefully drops his axe into the river. He claims it was the golden axe, and ends up not getting any of them, not even his original axe.
This story appears to have become a common part of Japanese culture, with Mercury replaced by "a water sprite" or some such. Parodies thereof abound.
There's really no such thing as originality in works of fiction. Pretty much any story you can think of with any sort of ending has been done in some form or another. Even works we would normally call "old" ripped off older works. Lord of the Rings? Dungeons and Dragons? All of their creatures, characters, weapons, magic, etc. are based on previous stories from eons past.
I'd be willing to bet that Aesop's Fables are not even original themselves, but playful re-imaginings of stories previously only known via oral dictation.
That's all we can really hope to do with modern stories, regardless of countries of origin. Give an old story a new twist. Or as the old saying goes, "A good artist borrows. A great artist steals."
BakaHoushi said: There's really no such thing as originality in works of fiction. Pretty much any story you can think of with any sort of ending has been done in some form or another. Even works we would normally call "old" ripped off older works. Lord of the Rings? Dungeons and Dragons? All of their creatures, characters, weapons, magic, etc. are based on previous stories from eons past.
tl;dr!
This will sound rough, but I don't mean it nastily:
Whatever, dude, you're missing the point. The point was that this (the fable and similar tales) is accepted common cultural knowledge; the assertion from Dr Fine Rolo (and later) being that the early comments demonstrate massive ignorance. Whether you think this is fair is surely a matter of contention, but not open to debate here.
"You take the green negi, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the yellow negi, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes."
Then there's another adaptation to that, where a lady drops a hairbrush into a pool. The sprit in the pool gives the old speil with the gold or silver one, and the lady says neither. The spirit is pleased with her answer and all, so she gets both the gold and silver hairbrushes along with her original. She sells them for a lot of money, and she and her husband live a long comfy life. Yadda yadda. Then a long time later, when she's old and all. Her husband falls into that pool. The spirit comes out with two young healthy men and she immediately picks out one of them. The spirit, confused, asks why didn't she do what she did before in the past and tell the truth? She replied that if she said wanted her husband back instead of those two, she'd get the two young men anyway, and she can't afford to feed all 3.
