Episode Details

The young Dragon Queen lies ill in the coral palace at the bottom of the sea, and the fish doctor names the one cure: the liver of a live monkey. So the kurage — the jelly fish, who in those ancient days had a hard shell and four legs like a tortoise — is sent ashore to Monkey Island to win a passenger by flattery. The monkey is enchanted, climbs onto the jelly fish's back, and rides out over the waves — until, halfway home, the foolish jelly fish lets his terrible secret slip. What the monkey remembers then, at exactly the right moment, is a very important parcel he left hanging on the pine tree. Ozaki's telling of Japan's great double-trick tale: the trick, the counter-trick, and the laughter from the branches. In keeping with this series' practice, the reading leaves out the tale's closing punishment scene and ends on the jelly fish's confession before the Dragon King; no completeness is claimed for the ending beyond that.

From Japanese Fairy Tales by Yei Theodora Ozaki (1908), public domain; told in a fresh in-house rendering.

KacheliTV — world classics, read aloud.