Three tales from old Japan open the shelf's second book — William Elliot Griffis's Japanese Fairy World. First, the Meeting of the Star-Lovers: the Weaving Princess of the Silver River of Heaven, who so loved her herdsman husband that she forsook her loom, and the Sun-King's decree that parted them — to meet once a year, on the seventh night of the seventh month, across a bridge of magpies; this is the Tanabata festival, and Griffis tells how all Japan keeps it. Then, the Travels of Two Frogs: the frog in a Kyoto well and the young frog in an Osaka lotus-pond, each setting out to see the other's city, who meet on the hill halfway between them and rear up to look — with a frog's eyes set the way a frog's eyes are set. Last, the Child of the Thunder: Bimbo, the poor farmer of Echizen, whose little terraces are dying in a drought, who finds a rosy child lying in the field where the thunder fell, and raises Rai-taro, the first-born darling of the thunder, whose gift is rain.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
A note on the shelf's order: this part follows Part 15 in the reading. Ozaki's closing tale, The Stones of Five Colors and the Empress Jokwa, which stands between them in her book as Part 16, is held in this series and is not read here; the readings that stand held are named in the series register, and no completeness is claimed around them.
Chapters:
00:05 The Meeting of the Star-Lovers
06:00 The Travels of Two Frogs
16:55 The Child of the Thunder
From Japanese Fairy World by William Elliot Griffis (1880), public domain; told in fresh in-house renderings.
KacheliTV — world classics, read aloud.
