{"id":1893,"date":"2014-10-14T04:35:30","date_gmt":"2014-10-13T19:35:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/japanese-fairytales-what-can-you-read-with-your-children\/"},"modified":"2025-08-28T11:35:32","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T02:35:32","slug":"japanese-fairytales-what-can-you-read-with-your-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/japanese-fairytales-what-can-you-read-with-your-children\/","title":{"rendered":"Japanese Fairy Tales You Can Read with Your Children"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Read<\/a>If you have children there is perhaps nothing more rewarding than reading them bedtime stories. But let\u2019s face it, there is only so many times that you can read The Gruffalo or Little Red Riding Hood. As such, why not add an extra layer of interest to your quality\u00a0time, for both you and your little ones, by introducing fairy tales from Japan. As you an probably imagine, folk stories\u00a0from Japan are filled with marvel, invention and magic. Below is just a sample of the many stories that Japanese children have been told throughout the ages,\u00a0and your children too, are sure to love.<\/p>\n

Warning: This article contains spoilers<\/p>\n

Urashima Tarou<\/strong><\/h3>\n

With its origins in the Nara period (8th<\/sup> Century) Urashima Tarou is a tale of a young fisherman who rescues a turtle being tormented by others and releases it to the sea. The following day a giant turtle arrives to tell the fisherman that the turtle he saved was in fact the daughter of Ry\u016bjin<\/a>, the Emperor of The Sea. Given gills Urashimatarou is taken to the sea where he again meets the turtle he saved, now a beautiful princess, and they fall in love. After three days he returns to land to inform his mother that he is to be wed.<\/p>\n

Upon arriving he discovers that he is now 300 years into the future and absentmindedly opens a box given to him by the princess under the proviso that he never does so. Urashima Tarou turns into an old man as the box contained in it his old age.<\/p>\n

Get it here<\/a><\/p>\n

Issun-b\u014dshi (The Inch-High Samurai)<\/strong><\/h3>\n

In this story with comparisons to Tom Thumb, an old, childless couple wishing to have a child \u201cno matter how small\u201d are blessed with Issun-b\u014dshi. Upon realizing that he will grow no taller than one inch, and fancying himself as a samurai, the boy\u00a0sets sail to the city to find his way in the world, his sewing needle sword by his side, sailing in his soup bowl ship. Derided for his size, he is eventually given work as the play pal of the daimyo\u2019s daughter.<\/p>\n

One day the pair are attacked by an Oni demon who swallows the boy. Issun-b\u014dshi escapes by fighting his way out from the inside of the oni who spits him out, dropping the powerful Uchide\u2019s malle<\/a>t in the process. Out of\u00a0gratitude the princess uses the mallet\u2019s power to enlarge the boy, and they eventually wed.<\/p>\n

Get it here<\/a><\/p>\n

Momotar\u014d\u00a0 (Peach boy)<\/strong><\/h3>\n

As the name suggests, the boy Momotaro came to earth in a giant peach, and was found in this Edo period story by another old, childless woman washing clothes in the river. Having been raised by the old woman and her husband Momotar\u014d leaves to fight a group of rampaging Oni demons. En route he befriends a band of talking animals – a monkey, a dog and a pheasant – who help him capture the chief demon and take from him the stolen bounty with which he returns home to his family.<\/p>\n

Momotar\u014d is perhaps the best loved of Japan\u2019s folk tales, and was particularly popular during the Pacific war when Japan\u2019s government was often portrayed as the young boy, the Japanese people as the animals \u00a0and the United States as the Oni.<\/p>\n

Get it here<\/a><\/p>\n

Kaguya hime (Princess Kaguya\/ The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter\u00a0)<\/strong><\/h3>\n

An early example of proto-science fiction, the tale of a bamboo cutter again features an old childless couple finding a child, this time a tiny girl of exceeding beauty, within a silver bamboo stalk. From that day on the bamboo cutter discovers a small nugget of gold within every bamboo shoot he harvests and they become wealthy. As an adult the girl Kaguya\u2019s beauty becomes well known and she is proposed to by five princes, proposals she rebuffs by setting them each an impossible task. Learning of her beauty the Emperor too proposes marriage, but Kaguya also rejects the advances.<\/p>\n

Eventually, as her behavior becomes erratic, it is revealed that the girl is a princess of the moon and she is to return to her home. Before she is taken by her celestial family she leaves notes to her foster family, as well as a drop of the elixir of life for her friend the Emperor. Not wanting to live eternally without his beloved Kaguya, the Emperor has the elixir and the letter sent to the mountain \u201cclosest to heaven\u201d where it was to be destroyed. The mountain now bears the name immortality (\u4e0d\u6b7b), Fushi or, now Fuji.<\/p>\n

Get it here<\/a><\/p>\n

Tsuru no Ongaeshi\u00a0 (The Grateful Crane)<\/strong><\/h3>\n

An old man heading to town to sell firewood, discovers a crane caught in a hunter\u2019s trap. Feeling sorry for the bird he releases it. That night, during a violent snowstorm a young girl arrives at their home seeking shelter. After taking care of the old couple she asks to be taken as their daughter, something the old couple happily agree to do. One day she requests that the couple buy her some yarn with which she can\u00a0weave. Being handed the yarn she takes it to her room requesting that the couple never watch her at her work. Soon she returns with a beautiful blanket which she bids the couple to sell and purchase\u00a0more yarn.<\/p>\n

Again the girl retires to her room and returns with another blanket of outstanding beauty which the couple sell for a great price. This they repeat making the family wealthy, but overcome with curiosity as to how the girl can weave with such elegance they open her door. Instead of finding a girl, they instead discover a crane weaving its now partially-bald wing weathers to make a shimmering cloth. The crane’s identity now\u00a0discovered she is\u00a0forced to leave. She returns to her\u00a0crane form and flies\u00a0away.<\/p>\n

Get it here\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

By Mark Guthrie<\/p>\n

Image:\u00a0flickr.com \u00a0\"2007-1106-dg-SFfun020.jpg<\/a>\"\u00a0 by Groovnick<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0(CC BY-NC-ND 2.0<\/a>)\u00a0- Modified<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If you have children there is perhaps nothing more rewarding than reading them bedtime stories. But let\u2019s face it, there is only so many times that you can read The Gruffalo or Little Red Riding Hood. As such, why not add an extra layer of interest to your quality\u00a0time, for both you and your little […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":1894,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[54,59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-japan","category-life-in-japan"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1893"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1893\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51184,"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1893\/revisions\/51184"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hrcjapan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}