(A) Monkey

On a rainy evening, an elderly couple said, "Nothing in the world is more frightening than Furuya-mori (a leak in an old house)." A tiger or wolf outside the wall of the house that wanted to eat them heard their talk and thought, "I thought there was no one stronger than me in the world, but when I heard their talk, Furuyamori may appear on rainy evenings, like tonight. It will be terrible if I procrastinate and get it out. I need to get away quickly." The tiger ran away. Just then, a horse thief beside the stable jumped on the tiger, thinking it was a horse. The tiger, thinking that Furuyamori must have jumped on his back, ran hard into the mountains, and finally dropped the thief into a deep cave and fled. When the monkey ran into the tiger and heard about the tiger, he went to look at the hole, saying that such a ridiculous thing could have happened. There was so deep and dark that he could not see the bottom. He put his long tail inside and probed. The thief, who had fallen into a hole and was in trouble, clung to his tail, thinking it was help from heaven. He turned red in surprise and tugged at the tail, and the long tail snapped at the base. From that time the monkey's face became red and its tail shortened. (Jiro Oyano in Aso, Aso Province)

procrastinate（動）ぐずぐず先延ばしにする

probe（動）調べる、探査する

tug（動）強く引く

(B) Monkey Tail

Once upon a time, the tail of a monkey measured thirty-three fathoms, but when the monkey was deceived by a bear, he went fishing on a winter's day, put his long tail into the river, and held it in the middle of the night, the water froze. The monkey could not stand the cold, and when he tried to pull up the tail, it was cut from the base and shortened. (Hyozo Shimizu in Matsue, Izumo Province)

fathom（名）尋

Long ago, owls were dyers.

Many birds asked the owl to dye themselves in their favorite colors, but the crow had not yet been dyed. Nevertheless, the crow liked to be so flamboyant that he had himself dyed in all sorts of beautiful colors, and, wishing to amaze others, he ordered the owl to dye him in a most beautiful and unheard-of color. After much thought, the owl caught the crow and put him in a jar of dark indigo dye. When the owl pulled him up, his body glowed black. He looked at himself in the mirror, confident and conceited, and saw that he was dyed like charcoal. It was so bad that he got angry and blamed the owl, who said nonchalantly, "There is no other color in the world but this one." Then he was mortified and said, "I will not forget this vengeance in the generation of your descendants," and since then the owl and the crow have become enemies. Owls are afraid of crows and never show up during the day. They always hide in the dark and make the night the world in which they operate. For if they are found by crows, they are sure to suffer a terrible blow. (X in Hiradate, Iwate County)

dyer（名）dyer

flamboyant（形）きらびやかな、派手な

in all sorts of......あらゆる種類の

unheard-of（形）未知の

confident（形）自信に満ちた

conceited（形）うぬぼれた

charcoal（名）炭

nonchalantly（副）平然と

mortify（動）恥をかかせる

vengeance（名）復讐、仕打ち

blow（名）攻撃、襲撃

(D) Sparrow

The sparrow had just dyed her teeth black* when she heard the news of her parent's death, but she stopped it and rushed to her parent. So, the Emperor of Heaven praised her for being dutiful and allowed her to eat the very first ear of rice.

dutiful（形）従順な、義務を果たす

If you look at the sparrow's beak, the lower beak is black and the upper one is white, because she stopped coloring her teeth. (Hyozo Shimizu in Matsue, Izumo Province)

beak（名）嘴

(E) Sparrow Dance

It was sparrows who made sake for the first time. Once upon a time, a sparrow held in its mouth some rice that had been offered to graves returned to the bamboo bush and dropped it into a green bamboo stump where water had accumulated. Then, without realizing it, it became sake. Then the sparrows gathered together, held a feast, and began to dance. The proverb that sparrows don't stop dancing until they are a hundred-year-old* means this. (Hyozo Shimizu in Matsue, Izumo Province)

feast（名）宴会

(F) Lesser Cuckoo 1

There seem to be various calls of lesser cuckoo such as Teppen-kaketaka, Bukkai-kaketaka, and Honzo-kaketaka, but in my hometown around Hiradate, Iwate County, Iwate Prefecture, there are three kinds of its calls called Gangu, Otto-koeshi, and Atta-tondetaka.

lesser cuckoo......ホトトギス

In the past, there were two brothers. He was very kind to his elder brother, and whenever he went to the mountains to get yams, he always fed his brother the most delicious part, and he always ate the bad part at the end. But the vicious brother was not pleased. The thought of "My brother must be eating the delicious part of the yams only by him and feeding the bad part to myself. He is a hateful fellow. I want to kill him and see his belly" increased, and he finally killed his brother brutally. And when the elder brother examined his belly, he was surprised. There was nothing in his belly but the bad end of the yams. Seeing this, the stubborn brother was very sorry and cried tears of blood, but it was too late, and he would not come back to this world. After much disappointment and despondency, the elder brother cried while holding the corpse of his younger brother, and before he knew it, his body grew feathers and transformed into a bird.

yam（名）山芋

vicious（形）悪意のある、意地悪な

fellow（名）奴

brutally（副）残忍に

despondency（名）落胆

This is the bird that sings 'ototto-koeshi' when the deutzias bloom. It cries, saying that it misses its brother, that it misses its brother. (X in Hiradate, Iwate)

deutzia（名）ウツギ

(G) Lesser Cuckoo 2

Once upon a time, a child with no parents or siblings was hired as a lad at a millionaire's house. One day in the spring, as usual, he took the horse to a mountain to let it roam and graze, and he lay on the grass nearby, looking at the blue sky and thinking of sad, pleasant, or dreaming things as the sun was setting. He was so startled that he jumped up and thought of taking the horse home, but it went away. He searched the forest over there, the stream over here, and many other places, but he couldn't find it. Eventually, the sun fell, so he got tired and apologized to his husband. But his master, not trusting him in the least, gave him strict orders to find it and bring it to him. He went out crying and looked for the horse until his strength continued, but for the life of him, he could not find the whereabouts of the horse. He threw his completely exhausted and cottonlike body on the grass and shouted, "Ah!" He thought, "If I can't find it after all this searching, maybe that horse has flown into the sky. Oh, if I were a bird, I would search every inch of the sky to find it," and then, strangely enough, at that moment his body sprouted wings and became a bird.

sibling（名）兄弟

lad（名）厩務員

roam（動）歩き回る

graze（動）草を食う

whereabouts（名）行方

every inch of......～の至るところ

Even after becoming a bird, he still walks looking for a horse. "Accha tondettaka, koccha tondettaka (Did it fly that way or that way?)" he says, squeezing his bowels, and spitting blood as he searches for the horse. As long as the horse's whereabouts are unknown, he will forever fly with a chirp. (X in Hiradate, Iwate)

squeeze（動）絞り出す

bowel（名）はらわた

spit（動）唾を吐く

(H) Lesser Cuckoo 3

This is the same as the above story. There were two brothers in a place. The younger brother was very kind to the elder brother, and even though he dug the yam himself, he fed the middle part to the elder brother, and he ate nothing but unsavory ganko. Ganko is the end of a yam. But the vicious brother thought he must have eaten a good part, and fed his brother only ganko, and always accused him of bullying so that he cried all the time because he didn't know what to do, and before he knew it he was a bird.

unsavory（形）まずい

Even though he is a bird, he chirps "Ganku, Ganku." every day to let his brother know his innocence. It means eating the end of a yam. But he has to ring forty-thousand-eight times a day to exonerate himself. If someone imitates him even once, his previous squeals will be invalid, so he has to squeal again from the beginning. His bitterness was so great that he began to spit blood at last. It is therefore sinful to imitate the call of the lesser cuckoo. The cuckoo sometimes purrs, "Gah, Gah!" in the sense that he only eats unsavory food and never eats good, so if anyone doubts him, he spits out everything he eats and shows it. (X in Hiradate, Iwate)

exonerate（動）潔白を晴らす、容疑を証明する

squeal（名）悲鳴、高い音

sinful（形）罪深い

purr（動）喉を鳴らす

(I) Woodpecker

The woodpecker went out dressed in rouge and teeth black solution after hearing the news of her parent's death. The Emperor was angry with her and ordered her to eat only bugs on the bark of trees for the rest of her life, so she always flew from tree to tree looking for bugs. (Hyozo Shimizu in Matsue, Izumo Province)

woodpecker（名）キツツキ

solution（名）溶液

bark（名）樹皮

(J) Jellyfish

Hearing that the medicine for Otohime's disease in the Dragon Palace was monkey liver, the turtle tricked the monkey and took him to the Dragon Palace. However, the jellyfish informed the monkey of the turtle's plot, so the monkey tricked the turtle and successfully escaped home. Later, it was discovered that the jellyfish had told the monkey, and the jellyfish had been skinned and deboned into the fluffy stuff it is today. (Hyozo Shimizu in Matsue, Izumo Province)

jellyfish（名）クラゲ

skin（動）皮を剝ぐ

debone（動）骨を取り除く

fluffy（形）フワフワした

(K) Flounder

Flounder's eyes are on its back.

flounder（名）ヒラメ

Once upon a time, a daughter who was bullied by her stepmother looked at her with resentment. The punishment caused her eyes to move toward her back and turn her into a fish. (Hyozo Shimizu in Matsue, Izumo Province)

stepmother（名）継母

resentment（名）恨み

(L) Viper

A princess became a viper after she died after being abandoned in the mountains because of her lascivious behavior. That is said to be the origin of vipers.

viper（名）マムシ

lascivious（形）好色な

(M) Earthworm

When the earthworm asked the God of Heaven what to eat when it had eaten up all the soil, the God said that it should be burned to death by the sun. That's why earthworms burn to death on summer days when the ground rolls around. (Yasumoto in Kikuchi, Kumamoto)

earthworm（名）ミミズ

(N) Honeybee

All the other bees have stingers on their butts, so the honeybee asked God for a stinger. God said, "You don't need a stinger because you are kept by humans. If you want one, I will put it on you, but if you stab a human, you will lose your life. ". So, when a honeybee stings a person, it loses its life. (Chofu Uchida in Higo Kumamoto)

stinger（名）針

(O) Cicada (Yo-ki)

Some cicadas sing, "Yo-ki, yo-ki." It was a woodcutter who had lost his axe but could not bear it so much that he searched for as long as he lived, and when he could not find it at last, he flew away as a cicada. So, he is still looking for the missing axe that chirped "Yo-ki." (Tsuneo Nasu in Yatsushiro County, Higo Province)

cicada（名）セミ

woodcutter（名）木こり

(P) Cicada (Tsukutsukushi)

Tsukushi became a flying bug with feathers growing on his body while a person from Tsukushi died on a journey and cried 'Tsukushikoishi, Tsukushikoishi' because he couldn't stand his love for his hometown. It sounds like Tsukutsukushi, but in reality, it is saying that it misses Tsukushi.

(Q) Mosquito

When Shuten Doji's* head in Mt. Oe was thrown into a bamboo bush, the flesh of his head rotted into a mosquito due to his tenacity. It is his curse that mosquitoes bite humans.

rot（動）腐る

tenacity（名）執着心

(R) Sanemori-mushi

When the rice plants are infested with insects, villagers set up torches all over the village, put three straw dolls on a horse doll, put them on a stake for drying the rice plants, and carry a drum on a stick so that they face each other, and yell at the same time, chanting 'Yoiyoi Sanemori Gosaikyo,' and walk around on the ridges of the fields.

This event is called 'Sanemori Kuri.' In the past, when Saito Sanemori* ran away, he stumbled over a rice plant and was overtaken by the enemy and beheaded. It is said that he became Sanemori-mushi (Sanemori bug) to relieve his mortification.

infest（動）はびこる、群がる

stumble（動）つまずく

overtake（動）追いつく

behead（動）斬首する

relieve（動）和らげる、軽減する

mortification（名）悔しさ

(S) Locusts and Iramushi Insects

In the past, jito tormented the people. They appealed to the lord with representatives from the villages. Then the jito tricked the chiefs of the villages into pushing them seals and submitted a document stating that what the representatives said was unfounded, and the representatives lost the case and were finally executed. They resented the lord so much that someone said, 'If I die, I will turn into a locust and eat up the rice in the lord's field.'. One said, "No, he is innocent. It's the jito's crime. If you turn into a locust, I will turn into an iramushi insect and bully the locust. ". After that, although locusts were certainly born and razed the fields, irasushi insects were also born and began to bully the locusts.

torment（動）ひどく苦しめる

representative（名）代表

seal（名）印影

unfounded（形）事実に基づかない、事実無根の

locust（名）イナゴ

raze（動）荒らす

Even now, when the damage caused by locusts gets worse, the Kagoso (direct appeal) Festival is held. (Shomu Nishiki in Hida Takayama)

(T) Shiroben and Kuroben

Mt. Honoka is a high mountain in the mountain range that borders Takaoka County and Hata County in the west of Tosa Province. A strange bird lives in this mountain. They always chirp in the treetops of big trees, but their chirping is very sad. If you listen carefully, it sounds like "Siroben, Kroben." This mountain used to be covered with old trees and was dark even by day. Of course, wild boars, deer, and monkeys would be abundant. On the south side of the mountain, there are many streams of Tanigawa. Two valleys, the Souroku Valley and the Chiyo Valley, run east and west across a single peak.

treetop（名）梢

A long time ago, a famous hunter named Souroku lived at the foot of this mountain. One day he went into the mountains with his two hounds, Shiroben and Kuroben, ready as usual. His wife, Chiyo, was away, praying to the gods for her husband's safety. But he, who always comes back in the evening, didn't come back today for some reason. She waited for him all night, but he never came back. She had been waiting all morning, thinking that he would surely return the next day, but she had no message. She, who had waited three days and three nights, thought that he must have been involved in some affair because Shiroben and Kuroben, who had gone with him, also had not returned and went to the mountains alone in the early morning of the fourth day to find his whereabouts, but she had not returned. Three months later, it is said that a hunter in the village found the bodies of the couple in the mountain, in the valley to the west and one to the east, and buried them separately in the mountainside for the mercy of his companions. They are said to be the origin of the names Souroku Valley and Chiyo Valley.

Then a strange bird, which had never been seen before, began to sing in the mountains. Shiroben and Kuroben are singing as birds to comfort the spirits of the couple. (Hanzan Yamazaki in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture)

(U) Buckwheat

After the mother had her three children stay at home and went to the temple, Yamanba* disguised herself as her mother and went to bed holding the youngest child. She had eaten their mother on the way and wrapped taro stalks around her hands to trick them, so they thought she was a real mother, so she opened the door and let her in. Hearing the sound of her eating the younger child, the two children who were sleeping in the next room asked what she was eating. She answered that she was eating salted daikon radishes and threw one of her youngest son's fingers, so they looked at the finger and realized that her mother was Yamanba and talked about running away. The second young child wanted to take a piss, and she said, "Open the door quickly." So, they went out, and while they were climbing with a machete on a peach tree by the well, she came out and looked at the shadow in the well and found them, and asked them how they had climbed. The oldest deceived her that they had climbed with hair oil on the trunk. When she put the hair oil on the peach tree, it slid so smoothly that she couldn't climb even a little. The second youngest looked at her and laughed, saying, "There's no way you can climb with hair oil. We climbed with a machete." She immediately came with a machete and climbed up with a scratch on the trunk. They were troubled and looked up at the sky and said, "Sun, give us a metal rope." There was a rattle, and the iron chains came down from the heavens. Clinging to it, they ascended to heaven. She called them as they did, and the rotten rope came down. Clinging to the rope, she climbed up and it broke. She fell from a high point into the buckwheat field. There was a stone right there, so she hit her head and died. The stem of the buckwheat turned red as it is now, stained with blood from her head. (Seizan Sato in Amakusa, Higo Province)

buckwheat（名）ソバ

taro（名）里芋

machete（名）なた

rattle（名）ガタガタという音

cling（動）しがみつく

ascend（動）上る

rotten（形）腐った

(V) Millet

An old man went to the mountain to pick up firewood. An old woman went to the river to do laundry. A gourd came from the upper river. The old woman picked it up, broke it, and a beautiful princess* came out of it. She started weaving machines every day when she grew up. One day, an old man and an old woman went to town to buy a palanquin to make her visit the village shrine. Amanjaku came to see her while she was away and said in a gentle voice, "Princess, open this place a little." She opened the screen a little, and Amanjaku forced it open and said, "Princess, let's pick up the persimmon in the back of the house and put it up." He led her to the field in the back, stripped her of her clothes, tied her to a persimmon tree, put on her clothes, and weaved the machine. The old man and the old woman bought a palanquin and came back, saying, "Princess, come on the palanquin." and tried to go to the village shrine with Amanjaku in the palanquin. At that time, the princess tied to the persimmon tree cried while calling "Yo-yo, only Amanjaku is riding in the palanquin, yo-yo. ". The old man and the old woman turned back in astonishment, and he cut off the Amanjaku's head with his sickle and threw it into the millet field behind. The color of the millet in its blood turned red. (Hyozo Shimizu in Matsue, Izumo Province)

gourd（名）瓜

palanquin（名）駕籠

persimmon（名）柿

astonishment（名）驚き

(A)

(B)

(C)

(D)

*dyed her teeth black: In premodern Japan, it was a custom for married women to dye their teeth black with dye.

(E)

*sparrows don't stop dancing until they are a hundred-year-old: It means that the customs of childhood and adolescence do not change with age.

(F)

(G)

(H)

(I)

(J)

(K)

(L)

(M)

(N)

(O)

(P)

(Q)

*Shuten Doji: He was a leader of ogres said to have lived in Mt. Oe in Kyoto Prefecture during the Heian period. He kidnapped women and went on a rampage in the capital, but was beheaded after being forced to drink poisoned liquor by samurai Minamoto no Yorimitsu.

(R)

*Saito Sanemori: (1111 - 1183) He was a military commander in the late Heian period. He was from Echizen but later moved to Musashi. He served the Taira clan, and when Taira no Koremori attacked Minamoto no Yoshinaka in 1183, he joined the Taira army and died in the battle.

(S)

(T)

(U)

*Yamanba: A kind of Japanese yokai, meaning an old woman in the mountains. She eats travelers who are lost in the mountains. It is also said that he gave treasures to women and raised a famous samurai in the Heian period, Sakata no Kintoki. In the Shikoku, she is enshrined as a god in some regions.

(V)

*princess: Urikohime. Japanese folk tales. Amanjaku takes away a princess born from a gourd. Amanjaku disguises himself as the princess but is found out and killed. Buckwheat or millet roots turn red with the blood of the Amanjaku. In the tales handed down in eastern Japan, there are many patterns in which princesses are killed.