COLLECTION
Stories connected by a shared idea.
A bamboo cutter finds a tiny girl in a glowing stalk, five noblemen fail at impossible quests, and the people of the moon take her home, leaving the emperor an elixir he has burned on Mount Fuji. It is Japan's oldest tale in prose, and it was not a folk tale: a learned man wrote it, and his name is lost.
Read story 11 min readA fisherman catches a turtle that becomes a woman, lives three years in her land beyond the sea, and comes home to find three hundred years gone. Japan has told the story since the 8th century, but the children on the beach, the ride on the turtle's back and even the name Tarō came much later.
Read story 10 min readAn old woman pulls a giant peach from the river, and the boy named after it sails to the island of the oni with a dog, a monkey and a pheasant. In the oldest picture books, though, he does not come out of the peach: the old couple eat it, grow young again and have a son.
Read story 10 min read
