Japanese Children's Favorite Stories Book Two. Florence Sakade
When he reached the shore, he found a small rowboat. He took it and rowed very hard out to sea. He soon was far out and right in the middle of the big waves.
Then he stopped rowing and began to think what he wanted to ask the mortar for. "I have it! I would like a lot of nice, sweet little cakes." And he began to grind at the mortar with the stick. "Give me cake! Give me cake!" And lots of fine white cakes came rolling out of the mortar.
"My! How good they are! And what a lot of cakes I got!" And he ate every one. He had eaten so many and they were so sweet that he began to feel like he wanted to eat something salty to take the too-sweet taste out of his mouth.
So he ground at the mortar again and said: "Give me salt this time. I want salt. I want salt." And now salt came pouring out of the mortar, all white and shining. And it kept coming and coming.
"Enough," he cried, "I've had enough. Stop!" But the salt kept coming and coming, and the boat began to fill up and get heavy. And still the salt kept coming, and now the boat was so full it started to sink. And as the brother sank with the boat, he was still crying: "Enough! Enough!"
But the mortar kept on giving out salt and more salt, even down at the bottom of the ocean, and it is still doing it. And that is why the sea is salty.
How to Fool a Cat
Once upon a time there was a rich lord who liked to collect carvings of animals. He had many kinds, but he had no carved mouse. So he called two skilled carvers to him and said:
"I want each of you to carve a mouse for me. I want them to be so lifelike that my cat will think they're real mice and pounce on them. We'll put them down together and see which mouse the cat pounces on first. To the carver of that mouse I'll give this bag of gold."
So the two carvers went back to their homes and set to work. After a time they came back. One had carved a wonderful mouse out of wood. It was so well done that it looked exactly like a mouse. The other, however, had done very badly. He had used some material that flaked and looked funny; it didn't look like a mouse at all.
"What's this?" asked the lord. "This wooden mouse is a marvelous piece of carving, but this other mouse—if it is indeed supposed to be a mouse—wouldn't fool anyone, let alone a cat."
"Let the cat be brought in," said the second carver. "The cat can decide which is the better mouse."
The lord thought this was rather silly, but he ordered the cat to be brought in. No sooner had it come into the room than it pounced upon the badly carved mouse and paid no attention at all to the one that was carved so well.
There was nothing for the lord to do but give the gold to the unskilful carver, but as he did so he said: "Well, now that you have the gold, tell me how you did it."
"It was easy, my lord," said the man. "I didn't carve my mouse from wood. I carved it from dried fish. That's why the cat pounced upon it so swiftly."
When the lord heard how the cat and everyone else had been fooled, he could not help laughing, and soon everyone in the entire court was holding his sides with laughter.
"Well," said the lord finally, "then I'll have to give you two bags of gold. One to the workman who carved so well, and one to you who carved so cleverly. I'll keep the wooden mouse, and we'll let the cat have the other one."
The Dragon's Tears
Far away in a strange country there lived a dragon. And the dragon's home was in a deep mountain cave, from which his eyes shone like headlights. Very often, when some of the people living nearby were gathered in the evening by the fire, one would say: "What a dreadful dragon is living near us!" And another would agree, saying: "Someone should kill him!"
Whenever children were told about the dragon, they were frightened. But there was one little boy who was never frightened. All the neighbors said: "Isn't he a funny little boy!" When it was almost time for this funny little boy's birthday, his mother asked him: "Whom would you like to invite for your birthday party?" Then that little boy said: "Mother, I would like to ask the dragon!" His mother was very much surprised and asked: "Are you joking?" "No," said the little boy very seriously, "I mean what I say: I want to invite the dragon."
And, sure enough, on the day before his birthday the little boy stole quietly out of his house. He walked and he walked and he walked till he reached the mountain where the dragon lived.
"Hello! Hello! Mr. Dragon!" the little boy called down the valley in his loudest voice.
"What's the matter? Who's calling me?" rumbled the dragon, coming out of his cave. Then the little boy said: "Tomorrow is my birthday and there will be lots of good things to eat, so please come to my party. I came all the way to invite you."
At first the dragon couldn't believe his ears and kept roaring at the boy. But the boy wasn't frightened at all and kept saying: "Please, Mr. Dragon, please come to my party."
Finally the dragon understood that the boy meant what he said and was actually asking him, a dragon, to his birthday party. Then the dragon stopped roaring and began to weep. "What a happy thing to happen to me!" the dragon sobbed. "I never had a kind invitation from anyone before."
The dragon's tears flowed and flowed until at last they became a river. Then the dragon said: "Come, climb on my back and I'll give you a ride home!"
The boy climbed bravely onto the back of the ferocious dragon and away the dragon went, swimming down the river of his own tears. But as he went, by some magic his body changed its size and shape. And suddenly—what do you know!—the little boy was sailing bravely down the river toward home as captain of a dragon-steamboat!
—by Hirosuke Hamada
The Rolling Rice Cakes
Once upon a time there was an old man and his old wife. One day the old man said: "I'm going to cut some firewood today. Please make me some rice cakes for my lunch." So the old woman made rice cakes and put them in the old man's lunch box. Then the old man left the house.
He went far into the forest and cut firewood all morning. When it was noon, he sat down to eat and opened his lunch box, saying: "Now, for some of the old lady's delicious rice cakes."
Then he suddenly cried: "Oh, my!" because one of the rice cakes had fallen out of the box, and he saw it go rolling away. Away it rolled, and suddenly down it plopped into a hole in the ground.
The old man ran over to the hole and—what do you know!—he could hear tiny voices singing inside the hole. "What's going on down there?" he asked himself. "I'll drop one more rice cake down and see."
After he had dropped the second rice cake into the hole, he put his ear close to the ground, and now he could hear the words of the song. And this is the song the tiny voices were singing:
Rice cakes, rice cakes,
Nice, fat rice cakes,
Rolling,