Many old Japanese folktales end in sorrow.
It is not unique to Japan—around the world, old stories often share this shadow. The Grimms’ fairy tales are filled with tragedy, and Mother Goose rhymes can be downright cruel.
The darkness of those stories reflects the harsh realities of the time—famine, disease, war, and the loss of infants. People told such tales to their children not to comfort them, but to prepare them for a merciless world.
There is a Japanese proverb that says, “雉も鳴かずば撃たれまい (If the pheasant hadn’t cried, it wouldn’t have been shot)” It warns that careless words invite misfortune.
Let me tell you one of my favorite—yet saddest—stories related to that saying.
Long ago, by the banks of the River Saigawa, there was a small village. Every autumn, the river swelled with heavy rains and flooded the fields. In that village lived a poor farmer named Yahei and his daughter, Ochiyo. Her mother had already been swept away by one such flood.
One autumn, Ochiyo fell gravely ill. Yahei had no money to call a doctor. As her strength faded, she whispered that she longed for azuki-manma—rice cooked with red beans—a dish she had once shared with her late mother.
But Yahei was penniless. Desperate, he stole a handful of rice and beans from the landlord’s storehouse and cooked the meal for his daughter.
Miraculously, Ochiyo recovered.
One day, as her father was working in the fields, she played with her handball and sang,
“Azuki-manma, I ate some—Azuki-manma, it was so sweet.”
That innocent song was overheard.
That night, the rain began to pour again, heavier than before.
In the dim light of their homes, the villagers gathered in fear and whispered among themselves that a wrongdoer must be offered to the river as a sacrifice.
When someone mentioned the song and the stolen rice, Yahei was seized by the officials and buried alive at the riverbank as a hitobashira—a human pillar to calm the waters.
Ochiyo wept for days on end.
Then, one day, she stopped crying and never spoke another word.
Years passed.
A hunter once heard the cry of a pheasant and shot it down.
When he went to retrieve his prey, he found Ochiyo cradling the dying bird in her arms.
She whispered,
“Poor pheasant… if only you had kept silent, you would not have been shot.”
She saw in the bird her own guilt—the innocent voice that had doomed her father.
After that day, no one ever saw Ochiyo again.
