T9 — Origins of Plants and Animals

How certain plants and animals came to be.

• Strange Fates
• Shape-Shifting Animals
• Yokai and the Uncanny
• Gods and Belief
• Death, Ghosts and Omens
• Taboos and Customs
• How Places Got Their Names
• Mountain Folk and Strangers
• Spirited Away, Other Worlds
• Origins of Plants and Animals

Tono4 tales

• Tale 50The kakko flowers of Mount ShisukeOn Mount Shisuke there bloomed kakko flowers, rare even for Tono. Around the fifth month, when the cuckoo called, women and children went up the…
• Tale 51The sad love of the otto-doriThe bird that cried with the loneliest voice in the mountains was the otto-dori, a bird said to call for a lost husband. The daughter of a choja, a…
• Tale 52The umaoidori and the omen of famineThe umaoidori, the bird said to call the horses home, resembled a cuckoo. A servant in the household of a choja, a very rich man, let one horse out…
• Tale 53The tale of the cuckoo and the lesser cuckoo sistersThe 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…

Shiwa District2 tales

• No. 1UrikohimeAn old woman picked up a melon that had drifted down a river, and raised the girl born from inside it with great care as Urikohime. But while she was…
• No. 50The wife who ate nothingA single man was working in the mountains, and when he told his companions that he wanted a wife who ate nothing, such a woman appeared and became…