The Crab And The Monkey
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The Crab and the Monkey, also known as or The Quarrel of the Monkey and the Crab, is a Japanese folktale. In the story, a sly monkey kills a crab, and is later killed in revenge by the crab's offspring.
Retributive justice Retributive justice is a theory of punishment that when an offender breaks the law, justice requires that they suffer in return, and that the response to a crime is proportional to the offence. As opposed to revenge, retribution—and thus retr ...
is the main theme of the story. Rev. David Thomson's translation, ''The Battle of the Monkey and the Crab'', was published as the third volume of
Hasegawa Takejirō was an innovative Japanese publisher specializing in books in European languages on Japanese subjects. Hasegawa employed leading foreign residents as translators and noted Japanese artists as illustrators, and became a leading purveyor of export ...
's Japanese Fairy Tale Series in 1885.
Andrew Lang Andrew Lang (31 March 1844 – 20 July 1912) was a Scottish poet, novelist, literary critic, and contributor to the field of anthropology. He is best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales. The Andrew Lang lectures at the University ...
included a somewhat
bowdlerize Expurgation, also known as bowdlerization, is a form of censorship that involves purging anything deemed noxious or offensive from an artistic work or other type of writing or media. The term ''bowdlerization'' is a pejorative term for the practi ...
d version in ''
The Crimson Fairy Book ''The Langs' Fairy Books'' are a series of 25 collections of true and fictional stories for children published between 1889 and 1913 by Andrew Lang and his wife, Leonora Blanche Alleyne. The best known books of the series are the 12 collections ...
'' (1903) and
Yei Theodora Ozaki O'Yei or ''Theodora'' was an early 20th-century translator of Japanese short stories and fairy tales. Her translations were fairly liberal but have been popular, and were reprinted several times after her death. Biography Ozaki was born in Lon ...
included it in her ''Japanese Fairy Tales'' (1908).


Synopsis

While out walking, a
crab Crabs are decapod crustaceans of the infraorder Brachyura, which typically have a very short projecting "tail" (abdomen) ( el, βραχύς , translit=brachys = short, / = tail), usually hidden entirely under the thorax. They live in all the ...
finds a
rice ball A rice ball may be any kind of food item made from rice that has been shaped, condensed, or otherwise combined into a ball shape. Rice balls exist in many different cultures in which rice is eaten, and are particularly prevalent in Asia. Rice ba ...
. A sly
monkey Monkey is a common name that may refer to most mammals of the infraorder Simiiformes, also known as the simians. Traditionally, all animals in the group now known as simians are counted as monkeys except the apes, which constitutes an incomple ...
persuades the crab to trade the rice ball for a
persimmon The persimmon is the edible fruit of a number of species of trees in the genus ''Diospyros''. The most widely cultivated of these is the Oriental persimmon, ''Diospyros kaki'' ''Diospyros'' is in the family Ebenaceae, and a number of non-pers ...
seed. The crab is at first upset, but when she plants and tends the seed a tree grows that supplies abundant fruit. The monkey agrees to climb the tree to pick the fruit for the crab, but gorges himself on the fruit rather than sharing it with the crab. When the crab protests, the monkey hurls hard, unripe fruit at her. The shock of being attacked causes the crab to end up giving birth just before she dies. The crab's offspring seek revenge on the monkey. With the help of several allies — a
chestnut The chestnuts are the deciduous trees and shrubs in the genus ''Castanea'', in the beech family Fagaceae. They are native to temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere. The name also refers to the edible nuts they produce. The unrelat ...
, a
cow dung Cow dung, also known as cow pats, cow pies or cow manure, is the waste product (faeces) of bovine animal species. These species include domestic cattle ("cows"), bison ("buffalo"), yak, and water buffalo. Cow dung is the undigested residue ...
, a bee, and an usu (large heavy mortar) — they go to the monkey's house. The chestnut hides himself on the monkey's
hearth A hearth () is the place in a home where a fire is or was traditionally kept for home heating and for cooking, usually constituted by at least a horizontal hearthstone and often enclosed to varying degrees by any combination of reredos (a lo ...
, the bee in the water pail, the cow dung on the floor, and the usu on the roof. When the monkey returns home, he tries to warm himself on the hearth, but the chestnut strikes the monkey so that he burns himself. When the monkey tries to cool himself from the burn at the water bucket, the bee stings him. He tries to run out of the house, but the cow dung makes him slip and the usu falls down from the roof, killing the monkey by crushing his
heart The heart is a muscular organ in most animals. This organ pumps blood through the blood vessels of the circulatory system. The pumped blood carries oxygen and nutrients to the body, while carrying metabolic waste such as carbon dioxide t ...
, causing him to bleed out and die.


Variants

The name of the story, the list of allies, and the details of the attacks vary in different parts of Japan. For example, in
Kansai The or the , lies in the southern-central region of Japan's main island Honshu, Honshū. The region includes the Prefectures of Japan, prefectures of Nara Prefecture, Nara, Wakayama Prefecture, Wakayama, Kyoto Prefecture, Kyoto, Osaka Prefectur ...
one of the allies is a quantity of oil. In a version of the story published in a Japanese textbook in 1887, an egg appears in place of the chestnut and a piece of kelp replaces the cow dung. The egg attacks the monkey by exploding and the kelp slips from under his foot. In the version of the story published by Andrew Lang, the crab gathers the unripe fruit and is not killed, but the monkey leaves her for dead. Modern versions of the story often tone down the violence such as changing characters' deaths to injuries. The title "The Crab and the Monkey" or "The Story of the Monkey and the Crab" similarly reduce the violence apparent in the older "Monkey-Crab Battle" name. Twentieth-century Japanese novelist Ryunosuke Akutagawa wrote a short story based on the folktale in which, after avenging their mother's death by attacking the monkey, the crab children are arrested and face the death penalty. In a completely different version of the story, when the monkey climbs the tree and takes all the persimmons the crab advises him to hang his basket of fruit from a branch. When the monkey hangs his basket on a thin branch, the branch breaks and the basket of fruit falls. The crab quickly carries the fruit off and crawls down a hole. The monkey decides to defecate on the crab, and sticks his buttocks down the hole. The crab quickly shaves the monkey's bottom, which is why to this day monkeys have hairless bottoms and hair grows on crabs' claws. Similar stories involving a crab and a monkey, or a monkey and a toad, or other creatures seeking vengeance are found in China, Korea, and Mongolia, and among the Ainu.


References


External links

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Saru Kani Gassen
(
Aozora Bunko Aozora Bunko (, literally the "Blue Sky Library", also known as the "Open Air Library") is a Japanese digital library. This online collection encompasses several thousands of works of Japanese-language fiction and non-fiction. These include out-o ...
) {{DEFAULTSORT:Crab And The Monkey Japanese fairy tales Japanese folklore Fables