Three tales from old Japan continue the shelf's second book — William Elliot Griffis's Japanese Fairy World. First, the Fire-Fly's Lovers: Hotaru-hime, the fire-fly princess in her lotus palace on the Fukui castle moat, whose light shone like a lamp within a globe of coral, and who would wed only the suitor who brought her fire — what befell the crowd of gallants who flew out into the night to fetch it, and the fire-fly prince whose own light answered hers. Then, the Wonderful Tea-Kettle: the old priest of Morinji temple, whose kettle sprouted a badger's head, whiskers, tail and legs, was sold to a tinker for a few iron cash, and as Bunbuku Chagama — the tea-kettle accomplished in literature and the military art — danced the tight-rope, made its master's fortune, and came home to the temple a treasured relic at last. And last, the Fox and the Badger: an old grey badger and a vixen with one cub, the last of their kind in a hunted district of Shikoku, who keep themselves alive by a trick — each in turn feigning dead, and sold in the town by the other in human shape. The trick holds once. Run a second time with the fox as the goods, the badger's greed betrays it — and what follows, the cub's long wait and the revenge he contrives at the Big Bridge, is carried here exactly as Griffis wrote it.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
A note on the third tale: The Fox and the Badger was first held in this series — its betrayal and its revenge are the tale entire, and this series does not soften what it reads. On October 15, 2026 it was ruled in by name for this shelf, and it is read here whole, exactly as Griffis wrote it; nothing has been cut, and nothing added.
Chapters:
00:05 The Fire-Fly's Lovers
11:29 The Wonderful Tea-Kettle
17:44 The Fox and the Badger
From Japanese Fairy World by William Elliot Griffis (1880), public domain; told in fresh in-house renderings.
KacheliTV — world classics, read aloud.
