No. 10 — The broom of the young tree
A father gave his three sons a hundred ryo in gold and a storehouse, and declared that within three years, whichever son put the most valuable thing into the storehouse would become his heir. The eldest son did not seek wealth; instead he repaired, together with the villagers, the damaged halls of Kannon, the bodhisattva of compassion, and the mountain gods, gods of the mountains, and spent his own money to build a bridge over the Kitakami River. Then, through a dream message from Kannon and the mountain gods, he was given a fishing rod, a broom that restored youth, and a tin vessel of wine that never ran dry. From a bag of gold he caught while fishing on the bridge, gold poured out without end and filled the storehouse, and he inherited the family headship. The tale ends with the mother using the broom to grow so young that she turned back into a baby.
- Land
- Shiwa District
- Beings
- mountain gods
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.