Otogizoshi: The Fairy Tale Book of Dazai Osamu

Click-Clack Mountain

The rabbit in the story of Click-Clack Mountain is a young female, and the tanuki badger she so thoroughly destroys is an unattractive male who’s madly in love with her. There’s no doubt in my mind that these are the true facts of the case.

The incident is said to have occurred in the province of Koshu, in the hills behind what is now the town of Funazu, on the shore of Lake Kawaguchi (one of the Five Lakes of Mount Fuji). There is a rowdy, rough-and-ready side to human nature in Koshu, and perhaps that’s why this tale is somewhat more hard-boiled than other Japanese children’s stories. It’s steeped in cruelty right from the start. I mean, “grandmother stew”? It’s downright gruesome. There’s no way to make an outrage like that seem comical or witty. Let’s face it: the tanuki pulled a monstrous trick. Once we find out that the old woman’s bones have been scattered beneath the floorboards, we know we’ve entered a realm of grisliest darkness.

As so-called children’s literature, therefore, I’m afraid the original tale must accept its current ignominious fate of being banned from sale. Contemporary picture books of Click-Clack Mountain seem, wisely, to leave it at the tanuki merely injuring Obaa-san and fleeing. That prevents the books being banned, which is all well and good, but now the revenge the rabbit exacts upon the tanuki seems excessive; and, in any case, the rabbit’s methods have nothing in common with the noble tradition of cutting down one’s enemy in a gallant and straightforward manner. No, it’s burn him half to death, torment and tease him, and finally send him gurgling to the lake bottom in a dissolving boat of mud. It’s all about deception, from start to finish. This is hardly a technique sanctioned by Bushido, our nation’s Way of the Warrior. If the tanuki has actually tricked Ojii-san into eating a stew containing the flesh of his own murdered wife, then he is guilty of a loathsome crime and we are less outraged at the torture to which he is subsequently subjected. But to have the tanuki merely injure the old woman-albeit out of consideration for the effect on impressionable young minds, not to mention the fear of being banned from sale-is to make the pain and humiliation meted out to him, culminating in that inglorious death by drowning, seem more than a bit unjust.

This tanuki badger had been living a leisurely life in the mountains, a mischievous but fundamentally harmless moocher and ne’er-do-well, when he was captured by the old man. Facing a hopeless situation and on the verge of being made into tanuki stew, he writhed in agony as he racked his brains for a way out and at last resorted to tricking the old woman in order to save his own skin. Let us be clear: there can be no excuse for the heinous grandmother stew scheme, and no punishment could be too severe for its perpetrator. But if the tanuki merely scratched the old woman, injuring her, as in the picture books nowadays, the sin seems far less unforgivable. The tanuki, after all, was fighting for his life and so focused on what might be called justifiable self-defense that perhaps he injured the old woman without even intending to do so. I was in the bomb shelter reading Click-Clack Mountain, the picture book, to our five-year-old daughter, who has the misfortune of resembling her father not only physically but intellectually, when, to my surprise, she said, “The poor tanuki!”

Granted, this use of the adjective “poor” is something she’s learned just recently and uses quite indiscriminately. Poor this, poor little that. On this particular occasion, she was using it as a transparent ploy to affirm an emotional bond with her sentimental pushover of a mother. Furthermore, it’s possible that, on accompanying her father to the nearby Inokashira Zoo recently and seeing the band of tanuki badgers bustling tirelessly about in their cage there, the child had become convinced that these creatures are worthy objects of our affection. It may be that her sympathy for the tanuki in Click-Clack Mountain was based on nothing more complicated than that, but in any event, the judgment of a pint-sized partisan in my household is nothing we need take too seriously. Her reasoning lacks solid foundation. The impetus behind her sympathy is unclear and her opinion therefore scarcely deserving of our attention. Irresponsible though her remark may have been, however, I couldn’t help but think she had a point. The rabbit’s revenge was too extreme. One can always somehow explain it away to a child this small, but wouldn’t an older child, already educated in the ethics of Bushido and the square fight, consider the rabbit’s methods “dirty,” to say the least? Hmm, the fool of a father says to himself and furrows his brow. This is a serious problem.

Any child in national primary school would surely sense something wrong with a plotline in which the tanuki is subjected to such a tragic and horrible undoing for the minor crime of scratching an old woman (as the picture books nowadays have it). The rabbit toys with him sadistically, sets fire to his hide, slathers red hot pepper paste on the burns, and finally fools him into boarding a boat made of mud and sailing to a watery grave. But even if the tanuki was guilty of the heinous grandmother stew plot-let alone a mere clawing incident-why not confront him openly? Why not declare your name and grievance and cut him down with a righteous sword?

The fact that rabbits are physically unimposing is no excuse. All vendettas must be carried out openly, whatever the odds. God is on the side of justice. Even if you have no chance of winning, you must attack head on, calling out for divine assistance! If you’re weaker than the enemy, then you must toughen up: expose yourself to hardship and privation by going somewhere remote like Mount Kurama and training assiduously in swordsmanship and all that sort of thing. Most of the great Japanese heroes of the past did something along those lines. There seem to be, on the other hand, no other revenge tales in our nation in which, whatever the provocation, deceptive wiles are employed to worry the enemy to death. In short, there’s something unsavory about the vendetta portrayed in Click-Clack Mountain. It’s not the least bit manly in nature, and any child, or any adult-anyone who aspires to justice-must surely experience a certain discomfort when hearing the tale.

But never fear. I gave this a lot of thought, and the answer is clear to me now. It’s only natural that there was nothing manly about the rabbit’s way of doing things, because the rabbit wasn’t a man. This is definitive; there can be no question about it. The rabbit was a sixteen-year-old maiden. Nothing sexual about her yet, but a real beauty. And it is precisely this sort of woman that is the cruelest of human types. In Greek myths we find a number of beautiful goddesses, but apparently the virgin goddess Artemis was considered, aside from Aphrodite, the most attractive. As you probably know, Artemis was a lunar goddess, and a shiny, silver-white crescent moon adorned her forehead. She was agile and headstrong-a sort of female version of Apollo-and all the fearsome wild beasts of the earth were her vassals. But by no means was she one of those big, tough, rawboned females. She was, rather, a vixenish little thing, petite and slender, with lithe, graceful limbs. Though she was small-breasted and lacked the voluptuous “womanliness” of Aphrodite, her face was so bewitchingly pretty it could give you the chills. But Artemis thought nothing of doing the cruelest things to anyone who displeased her. She once angrily splashed water on a man who surprised her while bathing, thereby turning him into an antlered stag. That was for catching a glimpse of her in the nude-imagine if you tried holding her hand! Any man who fell in love with a woman like this would be sure to suffer unendurable humiliation. And yet men, particularly men of negligible intelligence, are often drawn to such dangerous types. The result is always fairly predictable.

Anyone who doubts this need only observe our poor tanuki. He’s been secretly in love with his “Bunny” for some time. Knowing as we do that the rabbit is a young female of the Artemis type, we can only nod deeply and sigh. Typical of men who fall in love with Artemisians, the tanuki cuts a sorry figure even among his peers. He’s a dimwitted, gluttonous boor, and the forthcoming tragedy is, sadly, all too predictable.

The tanuki, trapped by Ojii-san and about to be made into tanuki stew, struggles for his life, desperate to see his beloved Bunny once again, and escapes to the mountain, where he walks about muttering to himself as he searches for her. Finally their paths cross.

“Be glad for me!” he barks proudly. “I just came this close to dying! While the old man was away, I gave the old woman what for and ran like hell. I’m a lucky fellow, I tell you,” he says, and describes in detail his brush with disaster, punctuating the story with flying spit. The rabbit hops back a step to dodge the precipitation and shoots him a disdainful look.

“Say it, don’t spray it! Disgusting. And why should I be glad? Ojii-san and Obaa-san are my friends. Didn’t you know that?”

“Really?” The tanuki droops. “I didn’t realize. Forgive me. If I’d known they were your friends, I’d have gone ahead and let them make me into tanuki stew, or whatever they wanted!”

“It’s a little late for that now. What a terrible liar you are, though, saying you didn’t know! I know you know that I play in their yard sometimes, and that sometimes they give me those soft, yummy beans to eat. Well, from this moment on consider me your mortal enemy.” Cold words, but the seeds of vengeance are already germinating in the rabbit’s heart. A maiden’s fury is bitter to the root. She knows no mercy, particularly for the ugly and stupid.

“Forgive me! I really didn’t know! I’m not a liar! Please believe me!” The tanuki pleads and whines, his neck extending as his head hangs low. He spots a nut lying at his feet, plucks it from the ground and pops it into his mouth. His eyes dart about in search of others as he continues: “I mean, when you get mad at me like this, I swear, I just want to die.”

“Listen to you. All you ever think about is eating!” The rabbit lifts her nose and turns away with a great display of scorn. “You’re not only a filthy pig, you’re a voracious pig!”

“Please don’t judge me for my hunger!” He takes a step forward, still searching the ground for fallen nuts. “I wish I could make you understand how I’m suffering inside.”

“I told you not to get so close to me. You smell bad. Step back. They say you ate a lizard. That’s right, I heard all about it. And then-what a scream!-someone said you ate a piece of poop!”

“That’s ridiculous!” The tanuki grins sheepishly. For whatever reason, however, he seems unable to deny the accusation with any vehemence, merely twisting his lips and feebly repeating, “Ridiculous.”

“You’re not fooling anyone. The stink of you tells the story.”

No sooner has she delivered this stunning blow than the rabbit suddenly lights up as if a wonderful thought has occurred to her. She turns to the tanuki with shining eyes and what looks like a suppressed smile.

“Well, all right. I’ll forgive you, just this once. Whoa-I told you to stand back! Can’t take my eye off you for two seconds. How about wiping that drool? Your jowls are soaked with it. Now calm down and listen. I’ll forgive you this one time, but there’s a condition. Ojii-san must be terribly dispirited right now. He probably doesn’t even have the energy to go to the mountains to gather firewood. So let’s gather some for him.”

“You and me? Together?” Glimmerings of hope flicker in the tanuki’s small, cloudy eyes.

“You don’t want to?”

“‘Don’t want to’? Are you kidding me? We can go today-right now!” His voice is hoarse with ecstasy.

“Let’s make it tomorrow, all right? Early morning. You’ve been through a lot today, and I suppose you could use a meal and some rest.” Her tone is eerily compassionate.

“Oh, I appreciate that! Tomorrow I’ll make a big box lunch to take, and we’ll go, and I’ll work with total and complete single-minded devotion, and I’ll cut a whole bushel of firewood and deliver it to Ojii-san’s house! If I do that, you’ll forgive me, right? You’ll be friends with me, right?”

“Suddenly you’re laying down conditions? Well, it all depends on your results, of course. Maybe we could become friends.”

“Eh, heh, heh!” The tanuki leers, suddenly displaying his lecherous side. “That’s a coy way to put it. She’s sly, this one. I’m just-” he starts to say but pauses to snag a passing spider with his tongue and slurp it down. “I’m just so happy. I almost feel like crying.”

He rubs his nose and pretends to wipe a tear.

It’s a brisk, invigorating summer morning. The surface of Lake Kawaguchi is shrouded in smoky white mist. Up on the mountainside, the tanuki and the rabbit are drenched in that mist as they toil away cutting and bundling sticks.

The tanuki displays not the single-minded devotion he promised, so much as a mindless frenzy, and it makes for a disturbing sight. Groaning exaggeratedly-Unngh! Unngh!-he swings his sickle with reckless abandon, letting out occasional howls of pain. He dashes left and right and back and forth in his fanatical quest for dead sticks, clearly wanting only to show his beloved Bunny what a hard worker he is. It isn’t long, of course, before he runs out of steam. Wearing a look of utter exhaustion, he tosses the sickle aside.

“Look at this. Look at all the blisters on my hands. Ooh… They hurt. And I’m so thirsty! Hungry too. I mean, that was some serious manual labor I just did. Let’s take a little break, what? Open up the old box lunch, and… oof, foo, foo!” Laughing this odd-sounding, embarrassed laugh, he reaches for the lunch box, which is about the size of a large oilcan, opens it, sticks his nose inside, and begins slurping up the contents. This he does with genuine single-minded devotion, not to mention sound effects: mush-mush, gatz-gatz, pep-pech. The rabbit looks up from her work and gapes at him, aghast. She sidles over to look inside the container but immediately draws back, giving a little cry of horror and covering her face with both hands. It seems there are some rather extraordinary ingredients in that lunch.

But today, for reasons of her own, the rabbit isn’t heaping the usual abuse on the tanuki. She has remained silent all morning, wearing a manufactured half-smile on her lips, efficiently gathering firewood, and ignoring the overly excited tanuki’s manic behavior. Even after viewing the contents of the lunch and receiving a serious shock, she neither complains nor gags but goes right back to cutting wood. She’s downright tolerant today, and the tanuki is very pleased with himself: Is she finally falling for me, after seeing the way I cut firewood? Well, what woman wouldn’t be impressed by a muscular performance like that? Some lunch, though-I’m stuffed! Kinda sleepy too. Maybe a little nap… Convinced he’s earned a bit of self-indulgence, he stretches out and is soon snoring loudly. Whatever fool dreams he’s dreaming, he holds forth at some length in his sleep- “Love potions don’t work, I tell ya!”-and doesn’t awake until nearly noon.

“You slept a long time,” the rabbit says gently. “I’ve tied my firewood into one big bundle. You do the same, and we’ll carry it all down to Ojii-san’s house.”

“Let’s do that, yeah.” The tanuki yawns extravagantly, scratching his arm. “I’m starving. It’s not good for me to be sleeping the day away on an empty stomach,” he says, and gravely adds, “I’m sensitive, you know. All right, then, I’ll hurry up and bundle all that wood I cut. The lunch box is empty, after all. Time to wrap this up and find some food.”

They head back down the mountain, both bearing large bundles of sticks strapped to their backs.

“You go first,” says the rabbit. “I’m afraid there might be snakes around here.”

“Snakes? I’m not afraid of no snakes. If I see any, I’ll just catch ’em and-” He’s about to say eat ’em but swallows the words. “I’ll catch ’em and kill ’em. Just follow me.”

“It’s so nice to have a big, strong man around at times like this.”

“You flatter me,” the tanuki says, puffing out his chest. “But, really, you’re being awfully sweet today. Too sweet, almost. You’re not going to take me back to Ojii-san’s and have him make me into tanuki stew, are you? Ah, ha, ha, ha! Anything but that!”

“Well, if you’re so suspicious, you needn’t bother coming. I’ll go alone.”

“No! I didn’t mean it like that. I’ll go with you. It’s just… I’m not afraid of snakes, or anything else in this world, but that Ojii-san is a tough customer. I mean, he was going to eat me for dinner! Pretty barbaric, if you ask me. At least, it’s not exactly what you’d call genteel. Tell you what-I’ll carry this wood as far as the big hackberry tree just short of his yard, and you take it from there, all right? That’s as far as I go. I mean, if I came face to face with old Ojii-san right now, I wouldn’t know what to say. It’d just be awkward. Hey, what’s that? I hear something. What do you think it is? Hear it? It’s like a click, clack sound.”

“Well, what do you expect? This is Click-Clack Mountain.”

“Click-Clack Mountain? This one we’re on?”

“Yes. Didn’t you know that?”

“Nope. I never knew this mountain had a name. Pretty weird name too. You’re kidding me, right?”

“Heavens, no! All mountains have names, you know-Mount Fuji, Mount Nagao, Omuro Mountain. This one’s named after the sound it makes. There it goes again, hear it? Click, clack.”

“I hear it all right. Funny, though. I never heard it before, not even once. I was born on this mountain and in thirty-some-odd years here, I-”

“My! Is that how old you are? The other day you told me you were seventeen! You beast. I thought your face was too wrinkled and your back too bent for seventeen, but I didn’t think you’d try to shave off twenty whole years! You must be almost forty, right? That’s old.”

“No, no! Seventeen. I am seventeen. Seventeen. Hey, sometimes my back might look a little bent when I walk, but it’s not because of age. It’s just a natural reaction to hunger. When I said ‘thirty-odd-years,’ I was talking about my brother. My brother is always using that expression, see, and I just sort of picked it up. Expressions can be contagious, right? You know how it is, kid.”

He’s so flustered that he’s gone and called her “kid.”

“I see.” The rabbit remains cool. “But I never knew you had an older brother. In fact, I remember you saying, ‘Oh, I’m so lonely, I’m so alone, I have no parents or brothers or sisters.’ Those were your exact words. You told me I had no idea what it felt like to be all on your own. So?”

“Right. That’s right.” Not even the tanuki knows what he’s trying to say now. “That’s why everything is so complicated in this world. Nothing is black or white. Sometimes you might have a brother and sometimes you might not.”

“That doesn’t even make any sense,” the rabbit says disparagingly. “It’s just crazy talk.”

“Yeah, no, the truth is, I do have one brother. I hate even to say it, but he’s a drunkard and a layabout and just a complete embarrassment, and I’m really ashamed of him, but for thirty-some-odd years-I’m talking about my brother now-he’s been a burden to me. Ever since he was born.”

“That doesn’t make sense either. How can a seventeen-year-old carry a burden for thirty-some-odd years?”

The tanuki pretends not to hear this.

“There are a lot of things in this world that can’t be explained easily. At any rate, I disowned him long ago. He’s dead to me. Hey, what’s that? I smell something burning. Do you smell it?”

“No.”

“No?” Since the tanuki is always eating noisome things, he has little confidence in own nose. He tilts his head, a puzzled look on his face. “Is it just me? Hey, now it sounds like wood burning. Crackle-crackle, burn-burn. You hear that?”

“What do you expect? This is Crackle-Burn Mountain.”

“Don’t give me that. You just said it was called Click-Clack Mountain.”

“That’s right. The same mountain can have different names, depending on the location. On the slope of Mount Fuji is a big bump called Little Fuji, and Omuro Mountain and Mount Nagao are almost like parts of Fuji too. Didn’t you know that?”

“No, I did not. I’ve been here on this mountain for thirty-some-odd- I mean, according to my brother, they’ve always just called this the Mountain in Back. Phew! It’s getting awfully warm. This is a weird day. What’s next? An earthquake? Wow, it’s hot. Whoa! Hey! Ow, ow, ow! Damn! Help! The firewood’s burning! Owwwww!”

The next day, the tanuki is in his hole moaning and groaning.

“Oh, the pain! Is this the end? I must be the unluckiest man who ever lived. Just because I was born a bit better-looking than most, the women are afraid to approach me. A dapper and sophisticated man is at a real disadvantage, I tell you. They probably take me for a woman-hater. Hell, I’m no saint. I like women. But they all seem to think I’m some sort of high-minded idealist and never try to seduce me. It’s enough to make me run in circles, tearing my hair out and screaming. I love women! Ouch! These burns are no joke. Sting like hell. Just when I thought I’d escaped the tanuki stew fate, my luck runs out on Burncrackle Mountain or whatever it was. Stupid mountain. The firewood bursts into flames while it’s still on your back. Horrible place. Thirty-some-odd-” he starts to say, then looks around, as if to make sure no one is listening. “Hell, what’ve I got to hide? I’m thirty-seven this year. Ahem. What of it? In three more years I’ll be forty. I know that. It’s only natural, the natural course of nature, any-ouch!-body can see that. From the time I was born thirty-seven years ago I’ve lived and played on the Mountain in Back, but I’ve never had a weird experience like that before. Click-Clack Mountain, Crackle-Burn Mountain-even the names are strange. Something mysterious about it all.”

He racks his brain for answers, beating his own head with his fists, and only stops pummeling himself when he hears the voice of a medicine peddler outside.

“Wizard’s Gold Ointment! Get your Wizard’s Gold Ointment! Is anyone suffering from burns, cuts, or a swarthy complexion?”

More than burns, it’s the last-named affliction that catches the tanuki’s attention.

“Hey, Wizard’s Gold!”

“Who calls, and how may I help you?”

“Over here. In the hole. It really works on the complexion?”

“Within a single day, sir.”

“Woo-hoo!” He crawls out of the hole, clambers to his feet, and freezes. “Hey! You’re the rabbit!”

“I am indeed a rabbit, sir, but I’m a male rabbit and a medicine peddler. Yes, for thirty-some-odd years I’ve traveled this region, peddling medicine.”

“Phew,” the tanuki sighs and tilts his head. “You sure look like that other rabbit, though. Thirty-some-odd years, eh? Well, let’s not talk about the passage of time. So boring! I mean, enough is enough. And there you have it.” Having wrapped up this incoherent digression, he jumps to the point. “Say, how about giving me a taste of that medicine? Truth is, I’ve got a little condition, you see, and-”

“My! Those are terrible burns you’ve got there, sir. They must be treated. If not, you’ll surely die.”

“Well, I’m just about ready to die, I’ll tell you. And I don’t care about the damn burns. The truth is, well, right now, I was thinking more about, you know, my skin color, because-”

“I beg your pardon, sir? This a matter of life and death! The most severe burns are on your back, I see. How in the world did this happen?”

“Well, I’ll tell you,” the tanuki says with a grimace. “Just because I walked down some hill with the fancy name of Crackle-Burn Mountain, all these crazy things started happening. I was as surprised as anybody.”

The rabbit snickers in spite of herself. The tanuki can’t see the joke but laughs along anyway.

“Ah, ha, ha, ha! Crazy, crazy things, I tell you. Let me give you some advice, pal. Don’t go near that mountain. First you’re on Click-Clack Mountain, and then it becomes Crackle-Burn Mountain, and that’s where it goes bad. Terrible things happen. You’re best off just stopping at Click-Clack. Stray on to Crackle-Burn, and-well, you see what can happen. Ow! You listening? Let this be a warning to you. You’re still a young fellow, I see, but that’s no reason to laugh at your seniors-I mean, not that I’m old, but-let’s just say you need to respect what your more experienced pals tell you. Ow.”

“Thank you, sir, I’ll be careful. And to express my gratitude for your kind advice, I won’t charge you for the medicine. Please allow me to put some on those burns on your back. It’s a good thing I happened along. You might well have died from these burns. Maybe it’s a sort of divine guidance that brought me here. We must have some kind of connection, you and I.”

“Maybe so,” the tanuki says huskily. “Well, as long as it’s free, slap it on. I’m flat broke these days. I’ll tell you, fall in love with a woman and you end up spending a lot of cash. Put a drop of that medicine on my hand too, would you?”

“To what end, sir?”

“What? No, no reason. I just want to, you know, look at it-see what color it is and everything.”

“It looks like any other medicine. See?” The rabbit allows a pea-size drop to drip on the tanuki’s outthrust palm and is startled to see him immediately attempt to smear it on his face. She knows that if he does that, the true nature of the medicine will be revealed to him before it’s done its job, so she grabs hold of his wrist. “Don’t put it on your face! This medicine is too strong for that. It’s dangerous!”

“Let go of me!” the tanuki squeals. “Please let go, I beg you! You don’t understand. You don’t know how it feels, you don’t know the heartbreaking experiences this skin color has caused me in my thirty-odd years. Let go. Let go of my wrist! Please!”

The tanuki finally gives the rabbit a swift kick, breaking loose, then smears the ointment on his face with such speed that his hand is a mere blur.

“The thing about my face is, my features-my eyes and nose and everything-aren’t bad. I mean, not bad at all, if I do say so myself, but even so I always felt inferior, see, just because I’m a little darker than most. So if this could fix that… Wait. Wow! That’s too much. It stings! That’s some strong medicine, all right. Then again, I have a feeling it’s got to be strong to whiten my skin. Whoa. Too much. I can take it, though. Hell, next time she sees me she’ll gaze at my face, all dreamy-eyed, and-woo, hoo, hoo!-I’ll tell you what, don’t blame me if she ends up lovesick. Ah! It’s sizzling! Well, the stuff works, all right. Might as well go ahead with this. Put it on my back, will you? Put it everywhere, in fact-all over my body. I don’t care if it kills me, as long as I die with whiter skin. Go ahead, slap it on. Put it on nice and thick. Don’t spare the stuff!”

A truly tragic scene. But there is no limit to a proud and beautiful maiden’s capacity for cruelty. It’s almost demonic. The rabbit calmly stands there and slathers the famous red hot pepper paste on the tanuki’s burns, transporting him instantly to a world of excruciating pain.

“Nnngh! Nah! No big deal. I can really feel it working, though. Whoa, that’s too much! Water. Give me water. Where am I? Is this… Hell? Forgive me. What did I ever do to end up here? They were going to make me into tanuki stew, I tell you! It’s not my fault. For thirty-odd years, just because I’m somewhat on the swarthy side, the women have always ignored me, and just because I have a healthy appetite… Oh, the humiliation I’ve suffered! I’m so alone. Look at me. I’m a good person. My features aren’t bad, I’d say.”

The pain is such that this pathetic, delirious rant ends with him losing consciousness completely.

But the tanuki’s misfortunes don’t end there. Even I, the author, find myself sighing as I continue the tale. It’s doubtful whether there’s another example in Japanese history of such a cataclysmic ending to a career. Having dodged the tanuki stew scenario, he scarcely has time to rejoice before he’s inexplicably scorched to within an inch of his life on Crackle-Burn Mountain. And then, after somehow managing to crawl back to his den, where he holes up writhing in agony, he’s treated to a plaster of hot pepper paste on his most severe burns. Look at him lying there now, passed out from the resultant pain. Next he’ll be tricked into boarding a boat of mud with a one-way ticket to the bottom of Lake Kawaguchi. No bright spots in the story whatsoever. One might venture to describe the affair as “woman trouble,” but woman trouble of the meanest and most primitive sort, devoid of any panache or sophistication.

The tanuki proceeds to hole up in his burrow for three days, barely breathing, zigzagging along the border between life and death, but on the fourth day he is seized with a ferocious hunger. No sight could be more pathetic than that of him crawling from his hole with the aid of a stick and mumbling incoherently as he staggers about snatching up anything digestible. But the tanuki is big-boned and sturdily built, and before ten days have passed he’s completely recovered. His appetite is as healthy as ever, his libido too rears its head, and he ill-advisedly sets out for the rabbit’s hut.

“I came to visit,” he says, blushing, and adds a lecherous laugh: “Woo hoo!”

“My!”

The rabbit greets him with a look of blatant loathing. A look that says, What, you again? Or, rather, worse than that. What the hell are you doing here? You’ve got some nerve. No, even worse. Damn it all! It’s the one-man plague! No, that still doesn’t seem to express it. The extreme antipathy so plainly written on the rabbit’s face reads something more along the lines of: You filthy, stinking pig! Die!

It often happens, however, that the uninvited guest is oblivious to his host’s eagerness to be rid of him. This is a true mystery of human psychology. You and I too, dear reader, must take care. When we reluctantly set out for someone’s house, thinking all the while that we don’t want to go, that we’re sure to end up bored to distraction, it’s often the case that the people we’re going to visit are genuinely delighted to have us. But suppose we’re thinking: Ah, that house is my home away from home. In fact, it’s more like home than my own place. It’s my only shelter from the storm! What then? We set out for the visit in high spirits, but in this case, my friends, we’re very likely to be considered a nuisance, an excrescence, and a hound from hell and to find our hosts repeatedly checking their watches. Thinking of someone else’s house as our shelter from the storm is, perhaps, evidence of a certain imbecility, but the fact remains that we often labor under astonishing misconceptions when calling on others. Unless we have a particular mission in mind, it’s probably best to refrain from visiting even our most intimate friends at home.

Anyone who doubts this advice of the author’s need only look at our poor tanuki. Right now he’s committing this very gaffe, in spades. The rabbit says, “My!” and makes a sour face, but the tanuki is utterly oblivious to her displeasure. To him, that “My!” is an innocent cry of joyful surprise at his unexpected visit. He experiences a thrill at the sound of it and interprets the rabbit’s furrowed brow as evidence of empathy and concern for his misfortune on Crackle-Burn Mountain.

“Thanks,” he says, though no kind words have been offered. “No need to worry. I’m fine now. The gods are on my side, y’know. I was born with good luck. That old Crackle-Burn Mountain means no more to me than a river monkey’s fart, which, by the way, they say river monkey meat is delicious-one of these days I’m gonna get me a taste of that. Well, I digress, but that was some shock the other day, wasn’t it? I mean, what a conflagration! Were you all right? You look fine. Thank goodness you escaped unharmed.”

“I wasn’t unharmed,” the rabbit says with a pointed display of petulance. “You’re a fine person-running away and leaving me there trapped in that fire! I inhaled so much smoke I almost died, and I don’t mind saying I thought some awfully hard thoughts about you. It’s in times of great peril that a person’s true character shows itself. Now I know exactly where your heart is.”

“I’m so sorry! Forgive me! The truth is, I got badly burned myself. Maybe I don’t have any gods on my side after all-I mean, I went through a living hell! It’s not that I forgot you were there, but it all happened so fast-my back was on fire, and I didn’t have time to look for you because, I mean, my back was on fire! Please try to understand. I’m not an unfeeling person. Burns are no joke, I’ll tell you. And then that Wizard’s Gold or Winter’s Cold or whatever it was-terrible stuff. That is one nasty medicine. And it doesn’t have any effect at all on a dark complexion.”

“Dark complexion?”

“No. What? Dark, syrupy medicine, really potent stuff. I got it from this strange little fellow who looked a lot like you. He said it was free, so I thought, you know, you never know till you try something. So I had him plaster the stuff on me, but, oh man, I’ll tell you what, you’ve got to be careful with free medicine. Take my advice. I felt like I had a million little whirlwinds shooting out of my head, and then I dropped like a sack of beans.”

“Hmph,” the rabbit snorts scornfully. “You deserve it. That’s what you get for being such a cheapskate. ‘The medicine was free, so I tried it.’ How low can you sink! Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”

“Don’t be mean,” the tanuki murmurs, but his feelings don’t seem particularly hurt. He’s basking in the warm, euphoric sensation of being near the one he loves. He stands at ease, surveying his surroundings with those cloudy, dead-fish eyes, snatching the occasional bug from the ground and inhaling it as he makes his case. “I’m a lucky man, though, I’ll tell you. No matter what happens, I always come out alive. So who knows? Maybe I do have a god or two on my side. I’m glad you were all right, though, and now I’m completely recovered from my burns, and here we are relaxing together and having a nice conversation. It’s like a dream come true!”

The rabbit wants only for the tanuki to leave. His mere presence makes her feel as if she’s suffocating. Eager to get him away from her hut, she quickly devises her next fiendish plot.

“By the way,” she says, “did you know that Lake Kawaguchi is full of tasty, tasty carp?”

“No. Is that true?” The tanuki’s eyes light up. “When I was just three years old, my mother brought home a carp and let me try some, and it was dee-licious! But carp live in the water, and, well, see, it’s not that I’m not good with my hands, because I am, but I can’t catch ’em. They’re just too fast. So even though I know how delicious carp are, I haven’t had a chance to eat any these thirty-odd-I mean, hahahaha-that’s my brother talking again. My brother likes carp too, see, so-”

“Is that so?” the rabbit says, her thoughts elsewhere. “Well, I have no desire to eat carp myself, but if you’re so fond of them, I don’t mind going with you to catch some.”

“Really?” The tanuki beams. “But carp, they’re fast, I tell you. I nearly drowned once trying to catch one,” he says, inadvertently confessing to a past humiliation. “You know a good way to snag ’em?”

“You just scoop them up with a net. It’s easy. These days all the big ones are swarming off the shore of Ugashima Island. Let’s go. Can you row a boat?”

“Hmm.” The tanuki sighs thoughtfully. “It’s not that I can’t row. I mean, if I wanted to, hell, nothing to it, but-”

“Great,” the rabbit says, pretending to believe his tenuous boast. “That’s perfect. I have a little boat of my own, but it’s too small for both of us. Besides, it’s just a flimsy thing made with thin wooden planks, and it leaks. Very dangerous. I don’t care about me, but the last thing I want to do is put your life in danger, so let’s work together to build a boat just for you. You’ll need a sturdy one, made of mud.”

“That’s so kind of you! You know what? I think I’m going to cry. Allow me to weep. I don’t know why I’m like this, so easily moved to tears,” he says and adds, with a theatrical sob in his voice, a brazen request. “But would you mind making that good, sturdy boat for me by yourself? Please? I’d really appreciate it. While you’re doing that, I’ll throw a lunch together. I bet I’d make a first-rate galley cook.”

“No doubt.” The rabbit nods quickly, pretending to see the logic of his self-centered assessment. The tanuki smiles contentedly: life is sweet. And with that smile, his fate is sealed. What the tanuki doesn’t realize is that people who affect to believe all our nonsense often harbor evil and insidious plots in their hearts. But ignorance is bliss, as they say, and right now he’s very pleased with himself indeed.

Together they walk to the lakeshore. Lake Kawaguchi is a pale, glassy expanse today, unmarred by a single ripple. The rabbit begins shaping clay from the shore into boat form, and the tanuki thanks her repeatedly as he scuttles this way and that, focused exclusively on gathering the contents of his lunch. By the time an evening breeze has awakened wavelets over the entire surface of the lake, the small clay boat, gleaming like burnished steel, is ready for launching.

“Not bad, not bad!” The tanuki prances up to the boat and first places his oilcan-size lunch box carefully inside. “You’re a resourceful little thing, aren’t you? I mean, you made this beautiful boat in the blink of an eye! It’s like a miracle!” Even as he spews this transparently self-serving flattery, inwardly his lust is being augmented by a burgeoning greed. He reflects that with a skilled and hard-working wife like this he might be able to live in ease and luxury, and he firmly resolves to stick to this woman for the rest of his life. “Oof!” he says as he boards the craft. “I bet you’re good at rowing too. It’s certainly not that I don’t know how to row-I mean, come on. But today I’d like to admire the skill of my woman.” Insufferably presumptuous. “Back in the day, they used to call me a master oarsman, a genius with the oar and so forth, but today I think I’d rather lie back and watch. Why don’t you just tie the front of my boat to the back of yours? That way the boats too, like us, will be bound as one, to the end. If we die, we’ll die together. Baby, say you’ll never leave me.” He continues to ramble on in this crude and self-deluded manner as he stretches out on the bottom of his mud boat.

Told to tie the boats together, the rabbit freezes for a moment, wondering if the fool is on to her, but a glance at his face assures her that all is well. He’s already on the path to dreamland with a lecherous smirk on his face, still babbling idiotically as he drops off. “Wake me if you catch any carp. Dee-licious… Me, I’m thirty-seven…” The rabbit laughs through her nose, ties the tanuki’s boat to hers, and spears the water with her oar. The two boats glide away from shore.

The pine forest of Ugashima looks as if it’s on fire in the setting sun. And here’s where the author pauses to display his knowledge. Did you know that the design adorning packs of Shikishima cigarettes was based on a sketch of this very skyline, the pine forest of Ugashima Island? I have this on the word of a gentleman who should know and pass it on to the reader as reliable information. Of course, Shikishima cigarettes have disappeared now, which means that this digression isn’t likely to be of any interest to younger readers whatsoever. Pretty useless knowledge I’ve unveiled here, now that I think about it. I guess the best I can hope for is that those readers who are thirty-odd years or older will sigh and think, Ah, yes-those pines, idly recalling the scenic old cigarette packets along with their memories of geisha encounters or whatever.

Well. Be that as it may, the rabbit gazes raptly at the sunset over Ugashima.

“What a beautiful view,” she murmurs.

This, I need scarcely point out, is very disconcerting. One would think that not even the worst sort of villain would have the composure to appreciate scenic beauty just before committing the cruelest of crimes, but our lovely sixteen-year-old maiden is truly enthralled with that spectacular sunset. It’s a thin line between innocence and evil. Men who can drool over a nauseatingly narcissistic maiden who’s never known suffering and gush about the purity of youth and what have you ought to watch their steps. That “purity of youth” often turns out, as in the case of this rabbit, to be a frenzied dance-an indecipherable, sensual mishmash that casually combines murderous hatred with self-intoxication. It’s the foam on a glass of beer, and it’s the greatest danger there is. Valuing physical sensations above moral considerations is evidence of either mental deficiency or demonic evil. Take, for example, those American movies that were so popular all around the world awhile back. They were full of “pure” young males and females who were overly sensitive to tactile sensations and juddered nervously about like spring-wound devices. Is it going too far to say that all this “purity of youth” business can be traced back to America? Movies like Love on Skis, or whatever it was. And in the background someone’s coolly committing some dimwitted crime. It’s either idiocy or the work of Satan. Of course, maybe Satan has been an idiot all along. I’m not certain about that, but I’m fairly sure that with this digression I’ve managed to turn our petite, slender, lithe-limbed sixteen-year-old female rabbit, whom we earlier compared to the heart-quickening moon goddess Artemis, into something unspeakably dreary. Did someone say “idiocy”? Can’t be helped.

“Hyaah!” A queer squawk erupts from below. It’s the cry of our beloved and decidedly impure thirty-seven-year-old male, Tanuki-kun. “It’s water! My boat’s leaking! Yikes!”

“Quiet. It’s a boat made of mud, for heaven’s sake. Naturally it’s going to sink. Didn’t you know that?”

“What do you mean? No! What? I don’t get it. Wait. It doesn’t make sense. You’re not going to… No, that would be too fiendish. You’re my woman! I’m sinking-that’s the reality here, and if this is your idea of a joke, you’ve gone too far, you know. It’s domestic violence! Ah! I’m going down! Help me out here, sweetie. The lunch will be ruined! I brought worm macaroni sprinkled with weasel poop. What a waste! Glub. Argh! Now I’m swallowing water. Hey! Seriously, enough with the nasty prank. Wait! Don’t cut the rope! Together till the end, man and wife, in this life and the next, the unbreakable bond of romantic- Oh no! You cut it! Help! I can’t swim! I mean, I used to be able to swim a little, but when a tanuki gets to be thirty-seven all the sinews start stiffening, and- Yes, I confess. I’m thirty-seven. The truth is, I’m way too old for you. But you need to respect your elders! Remember your duty to be kind to senior citizens! Glub. Argh! You’re a good girl. Be a good girl and reach that oar over to me so I can- Ow! Ouch! What are you doing? That hurts! You’re hitting me on the head! Oh, so that’s how it is. Now I get it. You’re trying to kill me!”

It isn’t until moments before his death that the tanuki sees through the rabbit’s evil scheme, by which time of course it’s too late. The merciless oar comes down on his head with a thwack, and then with another thwack. The surface of the lake glitters in the setting sun, and his head appears there as he comes up for air, disappears as he sinks again, then reappears as he bobs back up. “Owww! How could you? What did I ever do to hurt you? Was loving you a sin?” Those are his last words before he goes down for good.

The rabbit wipes her brow and says, “Phew. I’m perspiring.”

So, is this an admonition against lust? Or is it a satiric tale with a hint of friendly advice against getting involved with sixteen-year-old maidens? Or is it, rather, a sort of textbook of courting etiquette, teaching that it’s best to exercise moderation in wooing your dream girl, no matter how smitten you might be, in order to avoid earning her hatred and possibly even getting yourself murdered?

Or maybe it’s not about right and wrong at all but simply a humorous story suggesting that in our daily lives the people of this world abuse one another, punish one another, praise one another, and serve one another all on the basis of feelings-their likes and dislikes.

No, no, no. There’s no need to scramble for any such literary critical conclusion. We need only take heed of the tanuki’s dying words. To wit: “Was loving you a sin?”

It is hardly an exaggeration to say that all the tragedies of world literature have this question as their subject. Inside every woman is a merciless bunny, and inside every man a virtuous tanuki who’s forever floundering as he tries to keep his head above water. The author, in light of his own thirty-odd years of a remarkably unsuccessful career, can tell you unequivocally that this is true. Perhaps you’ve noticed the same thing. That’s all for now.