Kachi-Kachi Mountain
This brief, lyrical prose piece by Ryunosuke Akutagawa reimagines the folktale world of “Kachi-Kachi Mountain” in a dreamlike, symbolic register. Rather than retelling the story plainly, it places the old man, the rabbit, and the tanuki in a hushed dawn landscape where fairy tales, grief, memory, and moral conflict blur together. Familiar figures from Japanese children’s tales appear as archetypes moving across a mythic seascape, while the language turns their struggle into an allegory of good and evil, animality, and human spectatorship. The tone is elegiac and strangely serene, yet beneath it runs a hard, unsettling insight: even acts of justice may contain violence, and human beings may take pleasure in watching brutality destroy itself.
In the dim light of the fairy-tale age, an old man and a rabbit, listening to the faint flutter of the Tongue-Cut Sparrow, quietly mourn the death of the old man’s wife. Far away, making a languid sound, must be the sea of dreams that leads to Ogre Island, its waves never collapsing for all eternity.
On the earth beneath which the old man’s wife’s corpse has been buried, a cherry tree without blossoms stretches its slender bronze branches finely into the sky. Above that tree, the sky is filled with the translucent light of dawn, and there is not even a breath of wind.
Before long, the rabbit, showing concern for the old man, lifted a forepaw and pointed toward the two boats moored by the shore. One boat was white; the other was black, black as though painted with ink.
The old man raised his tear-soaked face and nodded.
In the dim light of the fairy-tale age, the old man and the rabbit, beneath the blossomless cherry tree, comforted one another and weakly said their farewell. The old man remains crouched down, weeping. The rabbit walks toward the boats, turning back again and again. In the sky above, the faint flutter of the Tongue-Cut Sparrow can still be heard, and the translucent light of dawn has gradually spread.
On the black boat, a tanuki has been sitting still, listening to the sound of the waves. Is he perhaps planning to steal the oil from the lamps of the Dragon Palace? Or perhaps he is jealous of the love of the red fish that live in the water.
The rabbit approached the tanuki’s side. Then the two of them slowly began to speak of long-ago days. They spoke of the “once upon a time” when they had stood between a mountain of fire and a river of flowing sand, solemnly guarding the lives of beasts.
In the dim light of the fairy-tale age, the rabbit and the tanuki boarded the white boat and the black boat respectively, and quietly rowed out onto the sea of dreams. The waves that never collapse for all eternity sing a languid lullaby around the boats of good and evil.
The old man beneath the blossomless cherry tree now at last raised his head and turned his eyes toward the sea.
Out upon the sea, clouded yet white with light, the two beasts are continuing their final struggle. On the black boat, slowly sinking, is it not the tanuki who rides? And floating nearby on the white boat, is it not the rabbit?
The old man, his tear-wet eyes shining, raised both hands high, as though to help the rabbit upon the sea.
Behold. At that very moment, shell-like blossoms bloomed upon the cherry tree without flowers. And in the sky, flooded with the translucent light of dawn, a pale golden sun rose.
At daybreak in the age of fairy tales, the sun and, beneath it, the cherry blossoms blooming like inlay seem to symbolize humanity rejoicing in a struggle in which beastliness destroys beastliness.