Japanese Folktales is Yei Theodora Ozaki’s classic collection of twenty-two traditional Japanese stories. The book introduces the reader to the rich world of the Japanese imagination, a world of ghouls, goblins and ogres; sea serpents and sea kings; kindly animals and magic birds; demons and dragons, princes and princesses.
In “My Lord Bag of Rice” goldfish dancers and carp musicians delight the brave warrior Hidesato; in “The Mirror of Matsuyama” a lonely daughter endures her fate with the help of a “shining disc” given by her departed mother; “The Jelly Fish and the Monkey” explains how that sea creature lost its bones; and the hero of “Momotaro,” a tale familiar to every child in Japan, is born from a peach that washes up on the riverbank. Settings and characters vary from tale to tale but
the effect of each story in this volume is the same — to transport the reader, young or old, to mysterious shores, magical kingdoms, and mythical lands.
Japanese Folk Tales is a wondrous introduction to Japan’s rich fantasy tradition.
