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
“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
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,
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
