Note: The original title of this work is Kachi-Kachi Yama.1
Long ago in the Age of Fable, there lived an old man and a rabbit. They mourned the death of the old man’s wife in silence, listening to the faintly rustling wings of the tongue-cut sparrow.2 The melancholia of grief passed over the old man in an endless wave, like a dream of passing over the sea to the Isle of Demons,3 never to return.
The old man’s wife was buried in bare earth. No flowers grew where she lay, but a slender cherry tree with bark burnished to a bronze sheen flourished there, its slender branches extending to embrace the sky. At dawn, the tree was visible in a corona of clean, clear illumination. Wind sighed through the tree’s branches.
The rabbit remained near the old man in sympathy for a long while until he noticed two boats on the seashore in the distance behind them. The rabbit lifted his front paw and pointed at the two boats. One boat was white, while the other was black as ink.
The old man lifted his tear-stained face, looked where the rabbit was looking, and then nodded.
Long ago in the Age of Fable, an old man and a rabbit sat under a cherry tree, giving solace to one another as they mourned the passing of the old man’s wife. No flowers grew on the grave. The old man looked down again and kept crying. The rabbit kept looking behind him over and over again, moving step by slow step in the direction of the two boats. The tongue-cut sparrow fluttered its wings again, and the sound was a whisper on the wind. It was just past dawn, and the clear light of the sun lit the cherry tree’s branches so that they shone.
There was a raccoon dog on the deck of the black ship. It was staring intently out at the sea, listening to the waves. Perhaps he was planning some mischief, like stealing the lamp oil from the Palace of the Dragon King at the bottom of the sea.4
The rabbit approached the raccoon dog. They spoke together quietly, telling one another stories of the ancient past, like the tale of the Mountain of Fire and the tale of the River of Sand. These tales were mostly unknown to people, but well-known to animal kind. They contained dire warnings of dangers in the wilderness that every young animal knew well to heed.
Long ago in the Age of Fable, a rabbit and a raccoon dog met on the shore of the sea. One sat on a black boat and one sat on a white boat as they exchanged tales of the distant past, the ocean extending dreamlike all around them. The waves lapped against the two boats, fleeting yet eternal, creating a mournful lullaby as they rolled in from the horizon. The two boats were white and black, and on them sat representatives of good and evil.
The old man sitting under the cherry tree that marked his wife’s barren grave looked up. The sky was slightly cloudy, but he was close enough to see the rabbit sitting on the white boat and the raccoon dog sitting on the black boat. They were no longer talking, but fighting. The old man wiped his tears away quickly, alarmed. He wanted to save the rabbit. He raised his hands to the sky and prayed.
Look. The moment the old man started praying, a flower with a shell-shaped blossom burst forth from the barren earth of his wife’s grave. The sky brightened suddenly with clear light as clouds melted away. The sun hung low in the sky like a gold coin, but it was rising.
Long ago in the Age of Fable, an old man rejoiced at the blooming of a flower on his wife’s grave.
The sun is a symbol of hope that the brutality of animal nature can be overcome, and the flower beneath the cherry tree is the proof of his prayer. As for the struggle of the animals on the two boats, it is as eternal as the waves lapping mournfully against the shore.
THE END
Translator's Notes
1 The literal title of this story is かちかち山, Kachi-Kachi Yama, which has no set meaning in English; it refers to an imaginary mountain (Tick-Tock Mountain?). The title of this story refers to a much older folk tale from Muromachi Period Japan (roughly the 1400s) that has the same title. As is readily apparent, this story treats the idea of stories themselves through a thematic lens, incorporating several pieces of Japanese folklore into a meditation on grief, the nature of good and evil, and what it means to be a (human) animal. The particular version of Kachi-Kachi Yama treated here is the third and likely latest variation of the tale, where two animals fight one another. While Akutagawa leaves the conflict unresolved, the rabbit wins in the original tale.↩
2 舌きり雀： The tongue-cut sparrow is a fable about an elderly man that befriends a sparrow. The old man’s wife becomes jealous of the bird and cuts out its tongue. She comes to a bad end, while the sparrow is usually healed. What is interesting here is that the old woman who has died seems to be the villain of the tongue-cut sparrow story, but her husband and the rabbit grieve her all the same. It speaks to the ending of this tale, where neither good nor evil wins. The old man's wife is seen to be neither wholly good nor wholly evil, but a mix of both. ↩
3 鬼が島：The Isle of Demons is a reference to the children's story Momotarō, The Peach Boy. In it, the title character goes to the island and kills all the demons. The metaphor here implies that the old man thought he knew where he was going and why, but now, with his wife dead, he feels stranded and lost.↩
4 This is an allusion to the story of Urashima Tarō, a man who saved a turtle and was invited to the Palace of the Dragon King as a reward. The Palace is said to be at the bottom of the sea. Note that raccoon dogs, like kitsune (foxes), are known for being mischievous or even wicked in Japanese stories.↩
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