Reading Notes: Japanese Fairy Tales (Part B)

Bibliography: Japanese Fairy Tales retold by Andrew Lang (Part A)

Photo by Logan Hansen on Unsplash

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- Schippeitaro - 

A young man searched about for a quest that he could return home with pride, and he journeyed far from home. He sheltered in a chapel one night, and at midnight a bunch of cats danced for an hour, whispering not to let Schippeitaro know. The young man then approached a village, hungry for food, and heard a woman wailing. He asked people why she was so sad, and they explained that every year the mountain spirit will devour a woman, and this year it would be her, and that night she would be brought to the chapel for the spirit. The young man then asked about Schippeitaro and learned that was the prince's dog, so the young man asked the prince to borrow his dog, and the prince reluctantly agreed. The young man told the girl to stay in her hut, and he put the dog inside the casket instead and brought the casket to the chapel. The cats returned again at midnight, but an enormous black cat (the mountain spirit) entered and opened the casket, expecting a girl. Instead, Schippeitaro bit into the cat's neck and the young man cut off the cat's head. From then on, no more girls were taken by the mountain spirit.

- The Crab and the Monkey -

A crab and monkey exchanged food and struck deals with each other fairly often, until one day the monkey asked for some fruit on her tree, and she agreed as long as he gave her half. He ate through a bunch of the fruit and pocketed all the good ones, and only threw down to her the rotten or unripe fruit. She was so mad and convinced him to do somersaults, so that fruit would fall out of his pockets. She quickly stocked some of the fruit in her hole, but the monkey was angry and beat her almost to death and left. Her friends cared for her and planned revenge for when he inevitably would come back for more fruit. He came back, looked for the crab but saw an egg. He took the egg and put it over a fire, but it burst into sharp pieces and scratched his face. He ran to a bucket of water to wash his face, but a wasp stung his nose. He then fell down stairs and died.

- The Magic Kettle -

One day an old man living peacefully alone came across an old, unused kettle. He excitedly put it on the stove to heat some tea, when it popped out a head, tail, and four legs and showed itself as a tanuki, and the tanuki ran around the house wrecking the place. With the help of a neighbor, the old man captured the tanuki and sold it to a trader. The same thing happened to the trader, and he consulted a friend about it. The friend had heard stories of such a creature, and advise him to perform magic tricks with the tanuki's consent. The tanuki gave permission, and the pair brought in a great deal of money. The trader, though, felt like he owned the original old man, so he brought the tanuki-kettle along with 100 gold pieces to the old man and thanked him for the opportunity, and both of them prospered.

- How the Wicked Tanuki was Punished -

A tanuki, his wife a fox, and their son hid from hunters in the forest, who had killed off all the other animals that no food was to be seen. They had magic powers, and the tanuki had an idea to pretend to be dead while the wife turned into a man and sold him, bought food with the money, and he would escape on his own. They did this, and the family enjoyed their food until it ran out. Then, the fox suggested they do it again but she would pretend to be dead this time. The tanuki, thinking that if she were dead he'd have more food for himself and his son, informed the buyer that the fox wasn't dead. After receiving payment, the buyer hit the fox on her head and she died, and the tanuki bought food and returned home. However, he didn't give any of the food to his son, and his son almost starved except for nuts and berries he found. He soon realized the father's betrayal and set out to get revenge. He bet his father that he had as good of magical powers, and the father said he could turn himself into anything while the father overlooked from the bridge, and the father would still be able to tell it was him. So they did this, but instead of transforming himself, the son hid in a corner, and the king rode past on the bridge with his guards. The tanuki thought the king was his son, so he ran up to him loudly professing he was the winner, but the guards thought the tanuki was attacking the king, so they threw him over the bridge into the water.

- The Slaying of the Tanuki -

 A man lived with his wife in a cottage in the forest, and the man was friends with a hare and frequently put out food for it. A nearby tanuki kept stealing the food, and one day the man captured the tanuki. He left the house for a short while with the tanuki bound in the corner, while his wife cooked dinner. The tanuki begged the wife to let him go, but she wouldn't, knowing he'd escape. So he begged for her to just untie him and he'd stay there. She couldn't resist his sweet little face, but as soon as she untied him, the tanuki beat her to death and crushed her, and cooked her in a pot above the fire. The tanuki transformed himself into looking like her, served the man his 'dinner,' and afterwards told him he'd eaten his wife and then ran off. The man wailed in despair, and the hare came up asking what was the matter. Seeking to avenge his friend, the hare played a trick on the tanuki when he had sticks bound to his back: he set the sticks on fire until it burned the fur of the tanuki, and then put an ointment full of pepper onto the wound. The man, hearing what the hare had done, lamented that it wouldn't put a permanent end to the tanuki's cruelty. So the man and hare made two boats, a large one out of clay and a small one out of wood, and decorated them to look exactly the same except for size. The hare invited the tanuki to go fishing, and the tanuki naturally chose the bigger boat that could hold more fish. Once far into the water, the hare smashed the clay boat and the tanuki fell into the water, where the hare held his head under until the tanuki was dead.

- Uraschimataro and the Turtle -

A young man named Uraschimataro was a great sailor and fisherman, and one day a storm came that wrecked his boat and almost drowned him. A turtle he'd spared many years before rescued him and took him to an underwater palace to meet the princess. He spent lots of time there with her, but eventually he missed his poor parents who he knew would be worried for him. She tried to convince him not to go, but he mind was made up to go. She gave him a small golden box that would allow him to return as long as he didn't open it. The turtle took him back to the surface to the village, but everything looked different. Nobody knew of his parents, and someone else lived in what once was his house. He then saw, in the graveyard, the tombstones of his parents who had died the same day he vanished. He was so upset and saw that 300 years had passed in his time underwater. Thinking it was a spell and the golden box was a counter spell, he opened the box, and it sucked away all of his retained youth. He became extremely old, and cried out for the turtle to return him to the sea, but the turtle never came, and Urashimataro died there on the shore.