Myths and Legends · Jason Weiser, Carissa Weiser, Nextpod

Japanese folklore: Misconceptions

·55 min·3 clips

Foxes burst from under Yoshifuji's storehouse after 13 years of illusion.

1. Myths and Legends episode 402, "Misconceptions," opens with three stories of love from Japan and a warning about "poison, deception, or murder." 2. The unnamed narrator hosts the episode and explains the Edo period, 1603 to 1868, under the Tokugawa shogunate as the backdrop for the three stories. 3. The first story follows Yoshifuji, a merchant who calls himself a "temporary widower" after his wife leaves for Kyoto with their children. 4. He leaves the house to "walk off his lust" and follows a beautiful woman to a mansion in the woods behind his own property. 5. That woman turns out to belong to a household that welcomes him to dinner and keeps him there for 13 years, at least from his point of view. 6. Back home, Yoshifuji's wife and son Tadasada think he vanished after ten days and begin looking for remains. 7. Tadasada eventually finds a filthy figure crawling in the storehouse and realizes it is his father. 8. The trail leads through a gap in the boards under the storehouse, where a dozen foxes, or kitsune, burst out into the forest. 9. The story explains that these foxes tricked Yoshifuji into believing he lived in a grand mansion while he was actually trapped under his own storehouse. 10. Yoshifuji survives the purification, thanks his family, and is told to meditate on canon, the Buddhist deity the narrator compares to Guanyin. 11. The narrator then explains that kitsune can be messengers of Inari or trickster foxes, and the first story uses the second kind. 12. The second story shifts to a frog from Kyoto who feels stuck in Kyoto and wants to see Osaka before he runs out of time. 13. A frog in Osaka has the same problem in reverse and finally leaves the city after years of watching other frogs depart. 14. The two frogs meet on the road, climb a rock, and compare the cities they have left behind. 15. Each frog sees that the other city looks like his own, with shrines, temples, canals, warehouses, docks, and nearby water. 16. The joke lands because Osaka and Kyoto are close but distinct, and the frogs return home with a new appreciation for both places. 17. The final story centers on Sakurako, a geisha in Edo's Pleasure District who pays off her father's debts at age sixteen through dance, shamisen, tea ceremony, and conversation. 18. An older merchant first tries to pressure Sakurako at her door, then later invites her to a lantern-lit dinner and promises silk, a house, servants, and gold hairpins. 19. Sakurako notices that he is nervous, his sake is poisoned, and she keeps him talking until he collapses after declaring that she will be his bride for "many existences." 20. The episode stays in a story-plus-commentary format, and listeners who like Japanese folklore and moral parables will get the most from it, while listeners wanting a single plotline or minimal folklore digressions may skip it.

As heard by us

Two frogs mistake their own cities for each other's and come home more content.

Japanese folklore gets a wry reality check in "Misconceptions," a Myths and Legends episode shaped around three love stories from Edo-period Japan and a three-headed creature with a taste for setting people on fire.

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Want Japanese folklore, frog logic, love stories, and three angry heads trying to make fire your problem?

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