No. 68 — The three sons-in-law

Record

While three sons-in-law made small talk in front of their father-in-law, two of them, asked about a sound heard in the house, answered plausibly that it was "a tiger in the bamboo" and "a karajishi among the peonies," and were praised for it. Only the taciturn third son-in-law, asked about what was disturbing the paulownia tree, answered honestly that it was "a thief wearing geta," in contrast to the other two's exaggerations.

Source

Ogasawara Kenkichi (ed.), Shiwa-gun Mukashibanashi-shu (1938) — National Diet Library Digital Collections (Japanese text)

Land

Shiwa District

Type

Strange Fates

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.