Editing Tanabata (section)

====Human male and Heavenly female====
Japanese scholars pointed out that some tales of the ''Tanabata'' cross over with the character of the ''[[Swan maiden#The celestial maiden or heavenly bride|Celestial Maiden]]'' (otherwise known in Japan as ''Tennin Nyoobo'' or ''Hagoromo'').<ref>Takagi Masafumi. "[http://id.nii.ac.jp/1109/00003021/ &#91;シリーズ/比較民話&#93;(二)天人女房/白鳥処女]" [Series: Comparative Studies of the Folktale (2) Tennin Nyoobo/The Swan Maiden]. In: ''The Seijo Bungei: the Seijo University arts and literature quarterly'' 223 (2013-06). pp. 35–55. (In Japanese)</ref><ref>Yanagita, Kunio; Translated by Fanny Hagin Meyer (1986). ''Yanagita Kunio Guide to the Japanese Folk Tale''. Indiana University Press. pp. 25–27. {{ISBN|0-253-36812-X}}.</ref>

Comparative scholarship on the Japanese variants points that at the beginning of the story, the human male goes near a lake for a variety of reasons (a prayer to the gods for a wife; a vision sent in a dream; a grateful animal points him the way). Over the course of the story, the human partner reaches the celestial realm where his wife and her family live. Once there, he is forced to perform tasks before they reunite. At the end of the narrative, the husband breaks a taboo (he should not eat a certain melon/gourd, but he does and is washed away) and he and his celestial wife are separated, only to reunite again during the night of 7 July.<ref>노영근. "설화의 유형 분류와 비교 연구 試論 -<선녀와 나무꾼> 유형을 중심으로-" [A Trial Research for Classification and Comparative Study of Folktales -Focused on Swan-Maiden Type-]. In: 온지논총 no.24(2010): 83–85. UCI: G704-001782.2010..24.010</ref>

[[James Danandjaja]] relates the Japanese tale of ''Amafuri Otome'' ("The Woman who came from the Sky"), as a similar tale of the unmarried mortal man, named Mikeran, who withholds the [[kimono]] from a bathing lady so she cannot fly home to the sky. Years after they marry, she finds her kimono and flies home with their children. Mikeran fashions a thousand straw sandals to reach the sky world and find his wife. When he meets his parents-in-law, the father-in-law forces him to perform some tasks, and tricks the human with cutting a thousand [[watermelon]]s in one day. The human's sky wife knows it is a trap, but he does it anyway and is washed away by a flood created from the watermelons. Thus, they can only meet on the night of the ''Tanabata'' festival.<ref>Danandjaja, James. "[https://repository.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/2433/56561/1/KJ00000131880.pdf A Comparative Study of Japanese and Indonesian Folklores]". In: ''Southeast Asian Studies'', Vol. 33, No.3, December 1995. pp. 210–211.</ref>