Tale 53 — The tale of the cuckoo and the lesser cuckoo sisters

The cuckoo and the lesser cuckoo were once sisters. The elder sister ate the hard part of a potato herself and gave the soft part to the younger one, but the younger sister mistakenly thought the elder was eating the better food, and killed her. The elder sister became a bird and flew off crying "ganko, ganko." The younger sister, filled with regret, also became a bird, crying "hocho kaketa."

Source: Yanagita Kunio, Tono Monogatari (1910) — Aozora Bunko (Japanese text)
Land: Tono
Setting: Tono, Iwate
Type: Shape-Shifting Animals, Origins of Plants and Animals

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.