Tale 44 — The flute-playing man and the futtachi
At a mine in Hashino village, on the ridge continuing from Rokkoshi, a man skilled at the flute who burned charcoal lay on his back in his hut one daytime, playing his flute, when someone lifted the straw mat at the hut's entrance. Startled, he looked and saw it was a monkey, an old mountain monkey said to turn uncanny; when the man sat up, the futtachi eventually walked off into the distance.
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.