No. 14 — The white hare of Inaba
A white hare that wished to cross from Oki Island to Inaba tricked the wani, a creature of the sea, into lining up their backs like a bridge while pretending to count their number, and so made it all the way across the sea. But just as it landed, it blurted out that it had tricked them, so the last wani stripped off its fur, and when the eighty gods, the many gods of the old tales, passed by, they gave it the false teaching to wash in salt water and let the wind blow on it, which made it suffer even more, but afterward Okuninushi, a god of the land, who came along later, taught it to wash in fresh water and sleep on the blossoms of the cattail, and it recovered to its former state. The hare foretold that Okuninushi would be the one to marry Princess Yakami, and after that the eighty gods, out of jealousy, twice tried to kill Okuninushi with traps of heated stones and split wood, but he was revived through the care of his mother goddess, and in the end he fled to Susanoo.
- Land
- Inaba and Hoki
- Beings
- white hare, wani, Okuninushi, the eighty gods, Susanoo
This is an English rendering of our short Japanese summary of the source tale — a summary translated from the Japanese, not a translation of the original text. The summary was drafted and translated with AI assistance, and names and numbers were checked against our records. Tale numbers for this book follow the order in which the tales appear; they are ours, not the book's.