A Study on the Bricoleur Conversion in the Culture of Agriculture and the meaning of Cooperation in the tale of 〈A Red bean Soup Granny and a Tiger〉

This article is focused on the culture of agriculture and the characters’ cooperation in the tale of 〈A Red Bean Porridge Granny and A Tiger〉. These characters’ conflicts in the whole story can be sorted out into two types which are the conflict of a granny and a tiger, and one of a tiger and several non-human characters who lived in the granny’s home. This second conflict involves the cooperation of the granny and non-human characters. The potter, here, is triggered by the laboriousness of farming that the granny feels, and the latter is induced by sharing the red bean porridge that the granny made. These conflicts have significant meaning because both of them are universal experiences humans have gone through in history and the laboriousness of farming is eventually connected to the joy of redbean crops. This study is, especially interested in the behavior of cooperation because it can occur only with those whom you want and choose, and cooperation relationship also always visualize their relation and its effects unlike conflict relationship is not always visualized in their relations that can be with anyone. That is, cooperation has a reasonable background and purpose. With these perspectives, the story can be analyzed as revolving around the aspect of characters’ cooperation in the second chapter, and showed that their cooperation set can be considered ‘bricoleur conversion’. In the third chapter, this article suggested that the granny’s laboriousness seemed to recall non-agriculture which symbolizes a tiger, however, it paradoxically verifies the power of agriculture that involves cyclical living culture, diversity, specialization, and cooperation of communities. The tale of 〈a red bean porridge granny and a tiger〉, therefore, is a metaphor featuring characters’ conflicts and cooperation and solar term, that about humans’ culture of agriculture that they have gone through with nature, labor, threat of enemies and their communities’ driving force to prevent themselves against any threats.