Japanese Children's Favorite Stories Book 2 Page 2

Then the king poured more and more star water into the Milky Way. Until now it had been a shallow stream that you could wade across, but the king poured in so much star water that it became a deep, deep river. The princess and the herdboy lived on opposite sides of the river, so now there was no way they could get across to each other.

  So the princess went into her little house in the sky and sat in front of her loom. But she was so lonely and longed so much for her Herdboy that she couldn't weave at all. Instead she just sat there weeping all the time. And the sky became emptier and emptier, with no clouds, and no mist, and no fog.

  Finally the king said, "Please, my little princess, you mustn't cry all the time. I really need clouds and fog and mist for my sky. I tell you what I'll do. If you'll weave again and work hard, I'll let you go and play with the herdboy one day each year."

  The princess was so happy when she heard this that she went right to work, and she's been working very hard ever since.

  But once each year, on the seventh night of the seventh month, the King of the Sky keeps his promise to Weaving Princess. He sends a flock of magpies to the Milky Way, and with their wings they make a bridge across the deep river. Then the princess goes running across the bridge of magpies to where the herdboy is waiting for her. And they have wonderful fun playing together for one whole night and one whole day.

  And that's the reason why Japanese children celebrate a holiday called Tanabata-sama, "The Seventh Night of the Seventh Month." Children everywhere love to play and it makes them happy to know that the Princess and Herdboy stars are having such fun together there up in the sky. So the children on earth decorate bamboo branches with bright pieces of paper and wave them in the sky, to remind the King of the Sky that it's time for him to keep his promise again.

  Urashima Taro

  A long, long time ago in Japan there was a young fisherman who lived by the seashore. His name was Urashima Taro. One day while he was walking along the beach, he saw that some boys had caught a big turtle from the sea and were teasing it and hitting it with sticks.

  Now, Taro was very kindhearted and hated to see people being cruel to animals. So he said: "Boys, please let the turtle go. It's a nice animal and you shouldn't be mean to it. Put it back in the sea."

  Then the boys were ashamed of themselves. They put the turtle back in the water and watched it swim happily away.

  Several days later, Taro was again walking along the beach when he heard a voice saying: "Taro! Taro!"

  He looked around, but couldn't see anyone. "Who is calling me?" he called out.

  "Here I am," said a voice from the sea. It was a turtle, who came crawling up on the sand. "I'm the turtle you saved the other day. When I returned to the palace under the sea, I told the Sea Princess what you had done. This made her very happy, and she asked me to bring you to see her."

  Taro said: "I've always wanted to visit the bottom of the sea." So he climbed on the turtle's back and was carried off very far and very fast to the great palace on the floor of the deepest sea.

  He was taken inside the beautiful palace, which was made of coral and crystal, and there he met the beautiful Sea Princess. "Taro, you were very kind to my good subject, the turtle," she said to him. "I wanted to thank you, so I had him bring you here. Please be my friend and stay in the palace forever. We will be very happy, and you shall have everything you want."

  So Taro stayed in the palace with the Sea Princess. He ate wonderful food, saw wonderful things and was very happy at first. But after a while —after only a few days, he thought—he began to be lonely for his home and his friends back on the shore. He wondered how his father and mother were.

  Finally, one day he said to the princess: "I've been very happy here, but I want to go back to the land and see my home and my friends. Please send me back."

  "All right, Taro," the princess said, "if you are determined to go, then I'll send you back. But I'll be sorry to see you go. We've been so happy together. In memory of your stay here I'll give you this beautiful box. As long as you have this, you may come back to see me anytime you wish. But, Taro, don't open this, ever. If you open it, you'll never be able to come back. Be sure! Do not open it!"

  So Taro took the box, thanked the princess for the wonderful time, climbed on the back of the turtle, and went back to his home.

  When he got to the beach, the village had changed. He could no longer find his own house. He asked some people on the beach, "Where is Urashima Taro's house, and where are his parents?"

  "Why, young man," they answered, "you're asking about things that were here many, many years ago. Urashima Taro was drowned before most of us remember. What strange person are you that you do not know this?"

  Taro was very puzzled. How could this be? He was the same—or so he thought—and only the people and the place were different. Could it be that the secret of this strange thing was in the box that the Sea Princess had given him? He thought about this for some time, and then at last he decided to open the box, even though the Sea Princess had warned him not to do so.

  He took off the lid, and a strange white smoke came out and curled about him. He touched his face and discovered that his face was all wrinkled and that he had a long white beard. Without realizing it, he had spent many, many years at the bottom of the sea, not just a few days. The magic box had kept him always young, but now the smoke from the box had turned him into the old, old man that he really was. All his friends were gone, and now that he had opened the box he could never return to the palace of the Sea Princess. He stood weeping on the shore,

  The Fairy Crane

  Once upon a time there was an old man who lived in the country all alone with his old wife. They had no children. One day the old man was walking along the road beside a rice field when he suddenly heard a strange sound: "Flutter, flutter, flap, flap." Following the sound, he discovered a beautiful white crane caught in a snare.

  "Oh, you poor thing!" he said. "I will help you out." He set the crane free, and it flew away into the sky.

  After the old man got home and was telling his wife about the crane, a knock came at the door and someone said in a sweet voice: "May I come in?" The old woman opened the door and there she found a pretty, dainty little girl.

  The little girl said: "I have lost my way. Please let me stay in your house tonight."

  The old people were very happy to have such a pretty girl in their house. And when she told them that she had no parents of her own, they asked her to become their daughter and live with them always. So the little girl stayed on with them.

  One day the girl said to her new parents: "If you'll promise not to look at me even once while I work, I'll weave some cloth on the loom in the weaving room." Thereafter they could hear the sound of the loom every day—"Ton-ka- ra-ri, ton-ka-ra-ri"—and every night the little girl gave them a beautiful piece of cloth which she had woven that day. It was the most beautiful cloth in the whole world and all the neighbors came to see it.

  The old woman became more and more curious. She said to herself: "How in the world can this little girl weave such beautiful cloth?" So finally one day she peeked into the weaving room.

  What a strange sight she saw! There, sitting at the loom, was not her little daughter but a beautiful white crane, using its own soft white feathers to weave cloth!

  That night when the old man came home, the little girl came out of the weaving room and said: "I am the crane that you saved. I have been weaving cloth to repay the kindness you did for me that day long ago. But now that you have discovered my secret, I can no longer stay with you."

  The old woman was sorry she had peeked, and the old man was in tears, but since they knew their daughter was actually a crane, they finally understood that she must go back to her home in the sky. "Goodbye, good luck," the girl said. And then suddenly she changed into a white fairy crane and soared gracefully up into the sky on her beautiful white wings.

  The Old Man with a Wen

  In a village in Japan there once lived
a hard-working old man. On his right cheek he had a big lump called a wen. One day he went to the mountain to cut wood. Suddenly it began to rain.

  "Good gracious! What shall I do?" he said to himself.

  Then he was lucky to find a big hollow tree where he could wait till the rain stopped. While he was waiting, his head began to nod and he fell asleep. When he woke up, he was very surprised to find it was night already. In front of his tree a whole party of red and green elves were dancing.

  "Aha!" cried one elf, "there's an old man in the tree." And they dragged him out of his hiding place.

  "Now, old man, you must dance for us." So the old man danced his very best jig for the elves.

  "Very good, very good! That was a lot of fun," said the elves, and they clapped their hands with glee.

  "You must come again tomorrow night to show us your dance. Until then, we will keep your wen. Just to make sure that you do, we're going to take your wen and not give it back to you until you come and dance again." And they took the big lump right off the old man's face, thinking it must be something very precious.

  The old man, of course, was overjoyed to lose his wen and left the forest singing.

  When he got home, he told the story to his wife, who was both surprised and happy. Her old husband looked so handsome without his wen.

  His neighbor next door also had an ugly wen and when he heard the story, he became very excited. "I could lose my wen in the very same way!" he said, and he went to the same mountain and hid in the same tree. At last, the same elves came for their party.

  "Now is the time!" said the second old man, and he jumped out of the tree and began to dance.

  But he could not jig as well as the first old man. The elves were not pleased and shouted: "This dance is not as good as the one we saw last night!" Finally one of them said: "Well, we don't ever want to see him dance again. Let's give him back his wen so he won't come again."

  With that, the elves took out the wen they had taken from the first old man, put it on his neighbor and chased him out of the forest. So the second old man went sadly home with two wens on his face instead of none.

  The Flying Farmer

  A long time ago there was an old farmer named Taro who lived in a village in Japan. Near Taro's house there was a wide, wet swamp where many wild ducks came to rest. Farmer Taro had made a trap out of rope, and he caught a duck almost every day.

  Taro was very greedy and one night he thought to himself: "After all, only one duck a day isn't so much. How clever it would be to catch a whole lot of fine ducks at one time!"

  So he made a great big trap out of a long piece of rope and fixed it so that he could catch many ducks at the same time.

  Early in the morning of the next day Taro put out his new trap in the swamp. He held on to the end of the trap and hid behind a tree to wait for the ducks to come.

  And then, all at once, a big flock of ducks flew down from the sky and landed right in the trap. "Tug! Twitch! Jerk! Pull! Tug! Twitch! Jerk! Pull!" Old Taro could see that he was catching many, many ducks, and he could feel them getting caught in the trap.

  "Look! Look how many I have caught!" he cried, jumping up and down with glee.

  About an hour later, when the sun was high in the sky, the ducks were ready to fly away. Suddenly, "Whoosh!" and they all flew up into the sky at one time.

  "Oh! Oh!" Old Taro was so surprised he hung on tight to the end of his rope trap and got carried right up into the sky with the ducks.

  The whole flock of clucks flew together in one group way up high, and poor farmer Taro was terribly frightened hanging onto the rope and being carried along in the air.

  On and on they flew, over mountains and everything. Finally they passed over a strange village where there was a tall green pagoda with five roofs.

  The old farmer waited until he got a good chance; then he let go the rope and grabbed tight onto the spire of the pagoda as he flew by it. He held on tight to the spire and cried out: "Help! Help! Help me, someone!"

  Soon a great crowd of people gathered around the bottom of the pagoda. They were certainly all surprised, and began talking all at once.

  "How did he ever get up there?"

  "Didn't you see the ducks carrying him?"

  "What can we do to help him get down?"

  After thinking it over, they brought a big, wide piece of cloth, and all held on to it and stretched it tight so that Taro could jump down into it. Then they all shouted up at him: "Jump down! Jump into this cloth! Jump!"

  Taro looked down and was so frightened that his knees shook. But finally, he closed his eyes tight and jumped.

  He was lucky and landed right in the middle of the cloth. But he was so heavy that all the round heads of the people holding the cloth were knocked together, "Bumpity, Bumpity, Bump!"

  Just at that last "Bump!" Taro opened his eyes, and what do you think? He was home safe in his own bed. All this flying with ducks had been a bad dream.

  But the dream seemed so real that it cured Farmer Taro of being so greedy. After that he never trapped any ducks at all and became a nice, kind gentleman.

  Why the Red Elf Cried

  No one knows now where the mountain was, but once there was a red elf who lived on a mountain that overlooked a village. This red elf wanted to make friends with the people who lived in the village, so in front of his house he hung a sign that read: "Everybody is welcome to come to my house and eat the good candy I will give them."

  One day two woodcutters passed the red elf's house and saw the sign. One of them said: "Let's go in and get some candy." But the other said:

  "No, no. That sign is only a trick so the elf can get us into his house and do something bad to us. Don't go inside!"

  The red elf heard what the men said and called out through the window: "No, no. It's not a trick. Please come in and have some candy and be my friends." But the two woodcutters were frightened by his bright red face and ran away as fast as they could.

  When the red elf saw that nobody would believe his sign he was very sad and started to take the sign down. Just then his good friend, the blue elf, came to visit him and asked why he looked so sad.

  After the blue elf had heard the story, he thought for a while and then said: "I have a good plan for you. I'll go down into the village and make lots of trouble. Then you come and catch me while I am doing bad things and give me a beating. Then everyone will know you're a good elf and will want to be your friend."

  So the next day the blue elf went down into the village and burst into a farmhouse. The farmer and his wife were so frightened they ran outside. Then the blue elf started breaking everything in the house. He had just broken the old woman's teapot and was just about to kick the farmer's dog when the red elf came running into the village. He grabbed the blue elf and pretended to give him a good beating. The blue elf cried with all his might.

  The frightened people of the village stood at a distance and watched all this. Finally they said: "That red elf is a good elf after all. And he has lots of sweet candy at his house. So let's go and visit him often."

  So the village people started going to the red elf's house. He was very happy to have so many new friends and he always gave them sweet candy and delicious tea. But then one day he suddenly remembered that in all this time his good friend, the blue elf, had not once been to see him. "Perhaps the blue elf is in some trouble," he said. "I'll go and see him."

  Next day the red elf set out for the blue elf's house. It was far away in the mountains, but the red elf went there very quickly, riding on top of a little cloud. To his surprise, he found the blue elf's house empty and all shut up. He walked around the house several times, wondering what was the matter, and finally saw a note pinned on the front door. This is what the note said:

  To my dear friend, the red elf:

  I am so lonely that I am going away on a long journey. If we should keep on visiting each other the way we used to, the people in the village would know that we played a trick on th
em and that you didn't really beat me. So I will go far away and leave you with your new friends, the village people. Goodbye,

  Your friend,

  Blue Elf

  The red elf read this note in silence two or three times. Then he burst into tears and cried and cried.

  He had his new friends from the village and he knew he would be happy with them, but he also knew that he would always be sad when he remembered his lost friend, the blue elf, because it is good to make new friends, but it is also good to keep old friends. And this is why the red elf cried so hard.

  —by Hirosuke Hamada

  The Biggest in the World

  Once upon a time, on an island in the ocean, there lived a big, big bird. He was big enough and strong enough to pick up a sheep, or even a cow, in one grab and fly up into the sky with it. This bird was very proud and was always boasting: "I'm the biggest in the world. If you looked all over the earth, you couldn't find another being as big and strong as I."

  "Oh, no, Mr. Bird," said a sea gull one day who had just flown up from the south. "In a place in the Southern Sea there is a much larger being than you."

  "What! What are you saying? Something larger than I am? You must be wrong!... All right, then, I'll just fly there right now, and we'll see who's biggest."

  So the big bird flew off to the Southern Sea. But the Southern Sea is very wide, and no matter how far you go there seems to be no end to it. "Oh, but I'm tired!" the big bird said and started looking for a place to rest. Just in time, in the distance he saw two red columns sticking up out of the waves.

  "This is just fine," the bird said, settling down with a sigh on one of the columns.

  Just then the bird heard a terrible voice. "Hey!" cried the voice. "What's this? Who is sitting on the end of my feeler?" Then the column began to move, and suddenly, right from the middle of the waves, a huge lobster rose to the top of the sea, waving the feelers that the bird had thought were columns.