Back in the days after Wu Dalang was poisoned to death by Pan Jinlian and Ximen Qing and thrown into the Yellow River, drifting out to the sea, his life should not have ended; the cold water revived him. At this time, a giant turtle swam over and lifted Wu Dalang. "I saved you now, and you must repay me in the future!" Wu Dalang promised it. The turtle carried Wu Dalang to a small island, which was populated by short radish people. When the radish people saw Wu Dalang, they were overjoyed! They ran around, spreading the word that a tall, handsome, and mighty man had arrived on the island.
The locals held a meeting: Our ancestors have all been this short, so we should make use of this tall, handsome guy's advantages to improve our race, and therefore elect him as our king!
Thus, Wu Dalang became the first king of this small island. With the three palaces, six courts, and seventy-two concubines, the people quickly gave their children to Wu Dalang, and soon he had a group of little radish children. These descendants of Wu Dalang spread among the common people and married local women. From then on, the height of the local residents increased significantly!
Even after becoming king, Wu Dalang never forgot Ximen Qing, who had cuckolded him. "Damn Ximen Qing, now it all falls on me!" Just then, a minister came to request to grant the people something. Wu Dalang, still angry, blurted out "Japanese!" The minister presented a white cloth for him to paint the national flag. Remembering his own humble origins, Wu Dalang casually grabbed a baked pancake and slapped it on, creating a dark, strange, and ugly design. He then added color to the flag using the piece of cloth from Pan Jinlian's monthly sunshade that he had treasured.
Wu Dalang sighed in luck and issued a decree to write the four characters "Wu Yun Chang Jiu" on the national flag, meaning Wu Dalang's luck would last forever. Remembering his promise to the turtle, Wu Dalang ordered that turtles be regarded as sacred throughout the country! As king, Wu Dalang was very happy and determined to create a legacy through his actions. At first, he was quite diligent, adopting the routine "Report matters early when busy, leave early when idle."
After a while, he found it boring since officials would take ages to explain trivial matters. So he said that henceforth, they should write important matters in memorials for him to read. The officials were astonished and asked what "writing" meant—they were illiterate and did not know how to write. Wu Dalang then realized that this island nation was still in a primitive, prehistoric stage. The islanders were ignorant and had yet to invent writing.At this time, Wu Dalang decided to take on the responsibility of inventing written language as the king. So Wu Dalang said, 'Alright, since that's the case, I'll hold a tutoring class for everyone to eliminate illiteracy.' Using his limited knowledge, he set up a literacy class for the officials to learn writing. But Wu Dalang himself was just a seller of baked pancakes and wasn't very literate, almost like an illiterate. He only remembered some parts of many characters. When the officials learned and spread the characters, they forgot parts of some characters, which led to the creation of a kind of ‘pseudo' writing: hiragana and katakana, which have been passed down to this day.
The country's population was too small, so Wu Dalang encouraged the citizens to produce sons day and night. The people wore blankets and went wherever convenient to make children. Through everyone's relentless efforts, the population did increase, but bad habits were also ingrained. The Japanese have a fondness for AV and certain habits started back then!
However, one day he realized that so many sons had no names; no one could tell each other apart, and the subjects didn't have names either. So he said, 'This won't do, everyone needs a proper name and surname.' But what names should be given? Wu Dalang himself was not highly educated and couldn't come up with good names, so he simply suggested naming them 'Dalang, Erlang, Sanlang, Silang...' in sequence. But then he thought, 'No, that won't work! I am the king, my name is Dalang, so my eldest son or my officials cannot also be called Dalang; that would break my taboo.' After thinking it over, he decided to add a dot under the character 'Da' and call the eldest son 'Tailang'; the second child can't be called 'Erlang' because that would violate my brother Wu Erlang's taboo, so the second son is called 'Cilang'. The others can be named in order; I have no objections.'
So the local islanders followed this rule to name their children. But they still needed surnames. Wu Dalang thought, 'Zhao, Qian, Sun, Li, you can't use those surnames; let's just use the place of birth as the surname.' For example, if a child was born in a field, the surname would be 'Tanaka'; if at the foot of a mountain, 'Yamashita'; under a pine tree, 'Matsushita'; at a mountain pass, 'Yamaguchi', and so on. Thus, the country ended up with names like 'Yamaguchi Taro' and 'Tanaka Jiro.'
After becoming king, Wu Dalang was surrounded by every kind of delicacy every day and grew completely bored of it.He remembered that back when he was drifting at sea, he had nothing to eat and could only catch raw fish to eat. Looking back now, the taste was actually not bad, so he instructed the chef that fish must always be served raw, not cooked. This dish became popular and was welcomed by the Japanese, eventually becoming a famous dish in their country called 'sashimi'.
Suddenly, one day, Wu Dalang had a dream in which he saw Pan Jinlian and Ximen Qing getting back together and misbehaving on his own bed. Upon waking, Wu Dalang was very angry, recalling that ever since Pan Jinlian had an affair with Ximen Qing, Ximen Qing often came to his house behind his back, and he had no clue. One day, Wu Dalang came home a little early from selling biscuits for work, and coincidentally, Ximen Qing was at his house. But Ximen Qing was alert and ‘slipped' under the bed, and once again, Wu Dalang didn't notice, essentially being made a fool. Thinking about it now, the more he thought about it, the angrier he became. He thought that if it hadn't been for that bed, he would have caught Ximen Qing long ago. Beds were really not a good thing; his misfortune had just landed on the bed. Furthermore, imagining that Ximen Qing might currently be hugging his wife on his own bed made him even more furious.
So he issued a decree: everyone in the country was no longer allowed to sleep on beds and had to sleep on the floor. Wu Dalang thought that only this way, by 'sleeping on firewood and tasting gall,' could one not forget the humiliation of having one's wife taken! From then on, the people of the country could only sleep on straw mats on the floor, which later evolved into the so-called 'tatami.' With a national flag, Wu Dalang thought that as king, he should also have his own army, so he began to strengthen his military. However, he found that the men in his country were physically weak and skilled in no martial arts, so he resolved to make a change. But Wu Dalang himself didn't know any martial arts either; he had only watched his brother Wu Erlang practice martial arts. One day, he suddenly recalled the motion of kneading dough when making biscuits and thought it was quite good. As everyone knew, with Wu Dalang's physique, kneading dough required full-body movements. So, he organized and arranged these movements, promoted them nationwide, and named them 'Roudao,' which later was misreported as 'Judo.'Wu Dalang also discovered that the women of this island country were surprisingly like Pan Jinlian in being unfaithful, and they deliberately acted arrogantly in front of men, which made the men very upset. He thought this would not do. Recalling his usual fights with Pan Jinlian, since Pan Jinlian was tall and had long legs, he couldn't fight her and tried to run, only for Pan Jinlian to catch up in just a few steps. Wu Dalang thought that such a situation must never happen again on this island country; he had to make women follow the rules. So, he issued a decree: all women must wear a type of clothing he specially invented, with a very narrow opening, carry a heavy burden on their backs, and wear specially made wooden clogs while walking. In this way, women could only take small steps when walking, lacking speed, and naturally could not chase men in a fight. Wu Dalang called his invention the 'kimono,' meaning 'harmony is precious,' and this custom has been preserved ever since.
Under Wu Dalang's leadership, this island country continuously rested and recovered. After some time, Wu Dalang felt that his country was already prosperous and powerful, and no one could control him, so he changed his title to 'Emperor,' meaning 'as lofty as the heavens, as distant as the emperor.'
Wu Dalang ruled as king for several years and died of natural causes. At the time of his death, he still harbored resentment for being unable to defeat Ximen Qing and could not avenge the loss of his wife, so he left a final instruction for his descendants to diligently practice martial arts, someday seeking vengeance against Ximen Qing. Later, his descendants trained day and night and compiled Wu family martial arts into a manual. To honor King Wu Dalang, it was named 'Wu's Way' (later, because martial artists were not well-educated and the country's script was 'fictitious characters,' it gradually became misinterpreted as 'Bushido'). Moreover, because Wu Dalang rose to power from nothing, these martial arts were also called 'Karate'.
