Otogizoshi: The Fairy Tale Book of Dazai Osamu

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.”