Japanese Children's Favorite Stories Book Two. Florence Sakade
"Help! Help!" But it was too late—he had fallen in, and with a thump-thump-thump he too went rolling right down the hole.
There at the bottom of the hole he found hundreds of field mice. They had eaten all his rice cakes and now they were singing again as they pounded rice.
"Thank you very much for the delicious rice cakes, old man," the leader of the mice said. "To show our thanks we'll give you this bag of rice." And the mouse gave the old man a small bag of rice about the size of a fat coin purse.
"Goodbye, old rolling man," all the mice called. And then they sang another song:
Nice man, rice man,
Nice, fat mice man,
Rolling, rolling, rolling—up!
And as they sang the old man felt himself rolling right up and out of the hole.
Once he was on top of the ground, the old man brushed himself off and then went home, carrying the small bag of rice with him.
When his old wife heard his story and saw the rice, she said: "Humpf! That won't make more than two or three rice cakes." But when she started pouring the rice out, they were surprised to discover that the bag always stayed full, no matter how much they poured out of it. It was a magic rice bag, a wonderful present that the mice had given them. After that they always had all the rice they could possibly eat. The old woman made rice cakes for herself and the old man every day—mountains of them—and they lived happily ever afterward.
The Robe or Feathers
Once there was a fisherman who lived all alone on a tiny island in Japan. He was very poor and very lonely. Early one morning he started toward his boat; there had been a bad storm the night before, but now the sun was shining brightly. As he walked along, he saw something hanging on a branch of one of the pine trees along the beach. It was beautiful and shining. He took it down from the branch and found that it was a wonderful robe made of feathers. The feathers were of all different colors, as lovely and soft as the rainbow, and they shined and sparkled in the sunlight like jewels. It was the most beautiful thing the fisherman had ever seen in all his life.
"Oh, what a beautiful robe!" he said. "It's certainly a priceless treasure. There's no one else on my island so it can't belong to anyone. I'll take it home and keep it always. Then my poor home will be beautiful and I can look at the robe whenever I'm lonely." Holding the robe very carefully in his rough hands, he turned and started to carry it home.
Just then a beautiful woman came running after him. "Mr. Fisherman, Mr. Fisherman," she called, "that's my robe of feathers that you're taking away. Please give it back to me." She went on to explain that she was an angel from heaven and that the robe of feathers was actually her wings. While she was flying through the sky, the storm had come and wet her wings so that she could not fly. So she had waited on this island until the sun came out and then had hung her wings out to dry on a pine tree, where the fisherman had found them.
"So you see," she finished, "if you don't give my wings back to me I'll never be able to fly back to my home in heaven again." Then the woman began to weep.
The fisherman felt very sad for her. "Please don't cry," he said. "Of course I'll give you your robe of feathers. If I'd known it belonged to anyone, I would never have touched it." And he knelt down before her and handed her the robe.
The angel began at last to smile and her face was shining with happiness. "Oh, thank you very much, Mr. Fisherman." she said. "You're such a good man that I'm going to dance the angel's dance for you."
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