Episode Details

A little white hare on the island of Oki longs to cross the sea to Inaba, and wins his way by a trick: he coaxes a crocodile into a contest of numbers and talks the whole company into lying back to back across the water, then hops over them, counting aloud, until he stands safe on the mainland — and jeers at them instead of giving thanks. What follows is the old Kojiki tale of the White Hare of Inaba: the hare bare and weeping on the beach, the fine brothers who pass him by with a remedy worse than the hurt, and the last brother of all, the god Okuni-nushi, who stops, listens, and heals him with pond water and the pollen of the kaba flowers — and wins a princess by his kindness. In keeping with this series' practice, the reading leaves out the crocodiles' revenge itself and continues from the hare as they left him; no completeness is claimed for that scene.

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

KacheliTV — world classics, read aloud.