Otogizoshi by Osamu Dazai

Otogizoshi by Osamu Dazai

The rabbit in the story of Click-Clack Mountain is a young female, and the tanuki badger she so thoroughly destroys is an unattractive male who’s madly in love with her. There’s no doubt in my mind that these are the true facts of the case.

The incident is said to have occurred in the province of Koshu, in the hills behind what is now the town of Funazu, on the shore of Lake Kawaguchi (one of the Five Lakes of Mount Fuji). There is a rowdy, rough-and-ready side to human nature in Koshu, and perhaps that’s why this tale is somewhat more hard-boiled than other Japanese children’s stories. It’s steeped in cruelty right from the start. I mean, “grandmother stew”? It’s downright gruesome. There’s no way to make an outrage like that seem comical or witty. Let’s face it: the tanuki pulled a monstrous trick. Once we find out that the old woman’s bones have been scattered beneath the floorboards, we know we’ve entered a realm of grisliest darkness.

As so-called children’s literature, therefore, I’m afraid the original tale must accept its current ignominious fate of being banned from sale. Contemporary picture books of Click-Clack Mountain seem, wisely, to leave it at the tanuki merely injuring Obaa-san and fleeing. That prevents the books being banned, which is all well and good, but now the revenge the rabbit exacts upon the tanuki seems excessive; and, in any case, the rabbit’s methods have nothing in common with the noble tradition of cutting down one’s enemy in a gallant and straightforward manner. No, it’s burn him half to death, torment and tease him, and finally send him gurgling to the lake bottom in a dissolving boat of mud. It’s all about deception, from start to finish. This is hardly a technique sanctioned by Bushido, our nation’s Way of the Warrior. If the tanuki has actually tricked Ojii-san into eating a stew containing the flesh of his own murdered wife, then he is guilty of a loathsome crime and we are less outraged at the torture to which he is subsequently subjected. But to have the tanuki merely injure the old woman albeit out of consideration for the effect on impressionable young minds, not to mention the fear of being banned from sale is to make the pain and humiliation meted out to him, culminating in that inglorious death by drowning, seem more than a bit unjust.

This tanuki badger had been living a leisurely life in the mountains, a mischievous but fundamentally harmless moocher and ne’er-do-well, when he was captured by the old man. Facing a hopeless situation and on the verge of being made into tanuki stew, he writhed in agony as he racked his brains for a way out and at last resorted to tricking the old woman in order to save his own skin. Let us be clear: there can be no excuse for the heinous grandmother stew scheme, and no punishment could be too severe for its perpetrator. But if the tanuki merely scratched the old woman, injuring her, as in the picture books nowadays, the sin seems far less unforgivable. The tanuki, after all, was fighting for his life and so focused on what might be called justifiable self-defense that perhaps he injured the old woman without even intending to do so. I was in the bomb shelter reading Click-Clack Mountain, the picture book, to our five-year-old daughter, who has the misfortune of resembling her father not only physically but intellectually, when, to my surprise, she said, “The poor tanuki!”

Granted, this use of the adjective “poor” is something she’s learned just recently and uses quite indiscriminately. Poor this, poor little that. On this particular occasion, she was using it as a transparent ploy to affirm an emotional bond with her sentimental pushover of a mother. Furthermore, it’s possible that, on accompanying her father to the nearby Inokashira Zoo recently and seeing the band of tanuki badgers bustling tirelessly about in their cage there, the child had become convinced that these creatures are worthy objects of our affection. It may be that her sympathy for the tanuki in Click-Clack Mountain was based on nothing more complicated than that, but in any event, the judgment of a pint-sized partisan in my household is nothing we need take too seriously. Her reasoning lacks solid foundation. The impetus behind her sympathy is unclear and her opinion therefore scarcely deserving of our attention. Irresponsible though her remark may have been, however, I couldn’t help but think she had a point. The rabbit’s revenge was too extreme. One can always somehow explain it away to a child this small, but wouldn’t an older child, already educated in the ethics of Bushido and the square fight, consider the rabbit’s methods “dirty,” to say the least? Hmm, the fool of a father says to himself and furrows his brow. This is a serious problem.

Any child in national primary school would surely sense something wrong with a plotline in which the tanuki is subjected to such a tragic and horrible undoing for the minor crime of scratching an old woman (as the picture books nowadays have it). The rabbit toys with him sadistically, sets fire to his hide, slathers red hot pepper paste on the burns, and finally fools him into boarding a boat made of mud and sailing to a watery grave. But even if the tanuki was guilty of the heinous grandmother stew plot—let alone a mere clawing incident—why not confront him openly? Why not declare your name and grievance and cut him down with a righteous sword?

The fact that rabbits are physically unimposing is no excuse. All vendettas must be carried out openly, whatever the odds. God is on the side of justice. Even if you have no chance of winning, you must attack head on, calling out for divine assistance! If you’re weaker than the enemy, then you must toughen up: expose yourself to hardship and privation by going somewhere remote like Mount Kurama and training assiduously in swordsmanship and all that sort of thing. Most of the great Japanese heroes of the past did something along those lines. There seem to be, on the other hand, no other revenge tales in our nation in which, whatever the provocation, deceptive wiles are employed to worry the enemy to death. In short, there’s something unsavory about the vendetta portrayed in Click-Clack Mountain. It’s not the least bit manly in nature, and any child, or any adult anyone who aspires to justice must surely experience a certain discomfort when hearing the tale.

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