Week Seven Reading Notes Part B - Lang

Source Story: "Japanese Fairytales" from The Violet Fairy Book by Andrew Lang, illustrated by H. J. Ford (1901).

• "Schippeitaro"
• A boy goes in search of adventure, and comes upon a forest village where a girl is about to be sacrificed to the Spirit of the Mountain as an annual ritual. The boy overheard some cats the night before in the area where the sacrifice was to take place talking about "Schippeitaro," who turns out to be a dog in the village. So, the boy hides the girl away and puts the dog in her place, so when the Spirit of the Mountain (who is really a giant cat) comes to eat the girl, the dog instead bites him, and the boy cuts off his head. They then kill several of the other cats who are with the Spirit of the Mountain, and everyone lives happily ever after.
• "The Crab and the Monkey"
• A good, hardworking crab finds some rice and agrees to share with a monkey in exchange for a seed for a fruit tree, which grows to bear lots of good fruit. The monkey returns and steals all the good fruit and throws down only the rotten or unripe ones for the crab, so the crab tricks him into dropping some of the good fruit he has stolen, which she takes into her house. The monkey beats the crab in anger and almost kills her, so her friend the wasp nurses her back to health, then enlists a mortar, and an egg to help get back at the monkey. The egg explodes in his face and hits him with shell fragments, the wasp stings his nose, and the mortar falls on his head, killing him. The crab lives happily ever after.
• "The Magic Kettle"
• An old man finds a kettle, which turns into a tanuki. He doesn't know what to do with it, so he sells it to a tradesman. The tradesman, upon learning the kettle's trick, gets the tanuki to agree to travel with him and put on shows for people, which earns the man a lot of money. Eventually, he feels bad for earning so much money and not doing anything for the first man, so he returns the kettle to him with 100 pieces of gold. They both live happily ever after.
• "How the Wicked Tanuki was Punished"
• In a forest where hunters had killed everything else lived a family - a tanuki, his wife the fox, and their son. The tanuki pretends to be dead and his wife magically transforms into a man to sell him for his hide, then uses the money to buy food while he escapes. This works, so the next time they trade roles, but the tanuki whispers to the buyer that the fox is not really dead, so the buyer kills her and the tanuki keeps all the food to himself, not even sharing with his son. Eventually, the son realizes what happened, so he makes a bet with his father that he is his father's equal in magic. The bet is that the son will transform into anything, and the father should be able to figure out what it is. But instead, the son hides, and a king passes by. Thinking the son has transformed into a king, the father jumps on the king, whose soldiers catch him and kill him. The son (probably) lives happily ever after.
• "The Slaying of the Tanuki"
• An evil tanuki mistreats an old man, so the man catches him and intends to cook him for dinner. But while the man is out getting firewood, the tanuki tricks his wife into releasing him, then kills her and cooks her instead, magically making himself look like her afterwards. He tricks the man into eating his own wife, then reveals himself and runs away. The man is, of course, very upset, and his friend the hare agrees to help him avenge his wife's death. First the hare plays a trick on the tanuki, where he eventually ends up setting the tanuki's back on fire and then spreading pepper into the wound to make it hurt more, but the man says the tanuki's evil can only be stopped by killing him. So, they make two boats - one wooden, one clay - and invite the tanuki fishing. He takes the bigger boat, which is the clay one, and the hare takes the wooden one. The hare breaks the tanuki's boat open and drowns him, then the hare and the man live happily ever after.
• "Uraschimataro and the Turtle"
• An old couple has one son named Uraschimataro, who is an excellent sailor and fisherman and often sails further out to sea than anyone else, despite their warnings. One day he catches a turtle, but he lets it go when it begs for its life. Years later, a storm sinks his ship and nearly kills him, but the turtle shows up and offers to save his life. Rather than going home, the turtle takes him to the palace of the sea god, where the princess of the sea asks Uraschimataro to stay with her and become immortal. He agrees and they live happily for a long time, but one day he remembers his parents and misses them dearly. The princess does not want him to go, because she knows he will never return to her. Still, she gives him a small box and says that, if he can avoid opening the box, he may visit his home and the turtle will bring him back to her palace when he calls for it. But when he gets home, he discovers that it has been three hundred years, and his parents are long dead. He opens the box, hoping it is the counter-charm to a curse that is making him live this bad dream, but instead it undoes his immortality, and he ages three hundred years in moments. He calls for the turtle, but it does not come, and he dies.

Image of a turtle from Pixabay