Episode 28 – Wascally Wabbit – Myths Your Teacher Hated

Episode 28 Show Notes

Source: Japanese Folklore

This week on MYTH, it’s part two of our three part, lighthearted series on trickster animals. You’ll discover rabbits are gullible, but not as gullible as crocodiles, that bathing can be painful, and that you should always be nice to forest creatures. Then, in Gods and Monsters, we’ll meet the invisible rodents who will cut you to pieces, but mostly heal you up after. This is the Myths Your Teacher Hated podcast, where I tell the stories of cultures from around the world in all of their original, bloody, uncensored glory. Modern tellings of these stories have become dry and dusty, but I’ll be trying to breathe new life into them. This is Episode 28, “Wascally Wabbit”. As always, this episode is not safe for work.
We’re headed back to Japan for a story known as the Hare of Inaba. Oddly, this is actually one of two stories with that name, and they are completely unrelated. We won’t be covering the Ise ga Naru version, which tells of a goddess being led to a place to sleep by a white rabbit. Instead, we’re going to get into the (in my opinion) more interesting version, which comes from the Kojiki, the oldest surviving history of Japan, which dates from the early 8th century.
Long ago, back when the all of the animals could still talk, a small white hare lived near the province of Inaba, Japan. His home was on the island of Oki, just across the sea from the mainland of Inaba. He’d spent his entire life on the small island and wanted more than anything to go and see the mainland. Day after day, he would go down to the seashore and stare out over the waves to the land he could see on the other side. Every day, he would rack his bunny brain to try and figure out how in the hell he could cross over, but with no luck. It seemed impossible.
One day, the little rabbit was sitting on the seashore as usual, looking out towards Inaba, when he saw a great crocodile swimming near the island. (Some versions say it was a shark instead of a crocodile, but frankly, either works just fine). The hare, being kind of naive, thought “This is my lucky day! I’m sure that if I ask the friendly crocodile there to carry me across the sea, he’ll do me a solid and not eat me. How could this go wrong?”
Then, he sat and actually thought about what could go wrong for more than half a second, most of which ended with blood, guts, and lots of very sharp teeth. “On second thought, the crocodile may not be willing to help out of the goodness of his cold-blooded heart. Maybe I should trick him into helping instead.” I think this was probably the smart decision.
Rabbit called out to the crocodile in a loud voice. “Hullo, Mr. Crocodile! Lovely day, isn’t it?” The crocodile, who was floating on the surface to bask in the sun, had actually begun to feel a little lonely. He’d come out here all alone to enjoy the morning sun, but now he was wishing he’d brought a friend. Hearing the little rabbit’s voice cheered him up a little, and he happily swam over near the shore to speak to the little rabbit. “Hullo little rabbit. Was it you that just spoke to me? Are you feeling lonely too?”
“Um…no. No, I’m not really all that lonely. It’s such a nice day that I thought it would be pleasant to hang out here by myself. Are…are you lonely, Mr. Crocodile? Do you want to play with me for a while?” Crocodile thought for a moment. It seemed like a fine idea, so he crawled up on to the sandy beach. The two played together for some time (the story doesn’t say how, exactly, so just imagine them playing your favorite childhood game). After a while, the little rabbit said “Mr. Crocodile, you live in the ocean and I live on the land. We don’t meet each other very often, so I don’t know very much about you. I’m curious: do you think there are more crocodiles than rabbits?”
Crocodile snorted in derision. “Are you fucking kidding me? Of course there are more crocodiles than rabbits! You live on this tiny ass island while I live in the boundless ocean, which spreads throughout all parts of the world! If I were to call together all of the crocodiles who dwell in the sea, we’d overwhelm you puny bunnies.” The crocodile was kind of an asshole. The rabbit had asked an innocent question, and the croc had turned it into a weird dick-measuring contest. To be fair, though, this is more or less what the little rabbit had been hoping for.
“Could you, though? Do you really think you could call together enough crocodiles to form a complete line, for instance, just off the top of my head, from this island here to the main shore of Inaba?” Crocodile scoffed. “Of COURSE it’s possible. I just told you how many of us there are, didn’t I? Do you doubt me, asshole? I’ll fucking prove it!” “No need to get hostile, Mr. Crocodile. Call them together, and I’ll count them from here.”
Full of injured pride, the crocodile swam off to gather his friends and family to the little island. He was gone a long time, but the little rabbit waited patiently on the shore, occasionally scratching his ear in that adorable way bunnies have. He was sure that the crocodile was too proud to not come back, and sure enough, late in the day, he resurfaced with hundreds of crocodiles.
“See, Mr. Rabbit? I told you there were more than enough of us to stretch from your little island to Inaba. Hell, there’s enough of us to stretch all the way to China or India if we wanted to! Have you ever seen so many crocodiles?” As he spoke, the entire group shaped up into a thick, solid line from the beach where the little rabbit sat on Oki Island to the shore of Inaba across the sea. “Indeed, I have not, Mr. Crocodile. It’s very impressive. I honestly didn’t think it was really possible! Now, I’m going to count you all, as we agreed. Would you mind if I walked on your backs? It’s the only way to get an accurate count! I’ll walk across the line and back, to double check my number, so please don’t move or I’ll fall in!”
The crocs mumbled their consent, and so the rabbit hopped onto the first crocodile, and hopped across, counting as he went. “One, two, three, please don’t move or I’ll lose my place and have to start over! Where was I? Oh yes, four, five…” Thus, the cunning little bunny was able to walk across the sea from his little island on a bridge of crocodiles without even getting his feet wet. Now, if he’d been a little humbler, he probably could have hopped off the beach and disappeared before they even realized he wasn’t coming back, but the little rabbit was also kind of a conceited asshole, and he felt a need to rub his trick in their scaly faces.
“Ha ha! I tricked you, you dumbass crocodiles! I didn’t care how many of you there are, I just needed a way across the sea. Now that I’m across, fuck all of you! Peace out!” He ran off as quickly as he could. Naturally, the crocodiles didn’t take being taunted by prey very well. They especially didn’t like being laughed at. They were justifiably furious and decided to seek revenge. The little rabbit hadn’t realized just how fucking fast a crocodile can actually run on land, and a group of crocs quickly gave chase and surrounded the little rabbit. The batted him back and forth around the circle, pulling off all of his fur in painful clumps. They could have just eaten him, but they wanted him to suffer the same kind of humiliation they had felt (plus they couldn’t agree on who would actually get to eat him). Once all of his fur was ripped out, they threw him down to the beach, sobbing and shaking in pain and terror. “Serves you right, you cocky little piece of shit!” Laughing, the crocodiles crawled into the water and swam away.
The poor little rabbit was now in a pretty bad place. All of his luxurious white fur had been pulled out. It was winter (it had to be, since Japanese hares only get white fur in the winter), and without his fur, he was freezing. Blood seeped from his skin where his fur had been pulled out and froze painfully. He was utterly miserable and sure that he was about to die a slow, agonizing death. He could hardly move through the pain, so he lay helplessly on the beach and wept over his misfortune and poor choices.
It was totally his fault for being a little shit to the creatures that had just helped him (albeit unknowingly), but it’s still hard to not feel bad for the little guy, especially since the crocodiles had been especially cruel and cold-blooded in their revenge (I don’t feel at all bad about that pun).
As the little rabbit was shaking and crying on the beach, eighty young princes wandered passed him. They saw the miserable looking rabbit bleeding on the beach and two stopped to speak to him. The first young man asked “Are you okay, little rabbit? What happened to you?” The hare lifted up his head from between his paws for the first time. “I…I had a fight with some nasty crocodiles. Those bastards ganged up on me and beat my ass, then ripped all of my fur out just to be cruel. They left me here to suffer and die. That’s why I’m crying.”
The second young man, who was a nasty piece of shit but liked to pretend to be a good person in public, faked kindness. “I feel very sorry for you. If you’re willing, I know of a remedy that will heal your bruised and battered body. Go and bathe in the sea, then come and sit in the wind. This will make your fur grow back just the way it was.” His brother gave him a look, but said nothing, and the two walked off, leaving the little rabbit alone. He was thrilled to actually have a cure for his wretched condition, and so he went and did exactly as he was instructed.
As you probably expected, the little shithead wasn’t offering a cure but just pointless cruelty. The icy saltwater burned in his open wounds, adding to the agony of his battered body. Once he had soaked a bit, gritting his teeth against the fire in his skin, he walked up to an exposed ledge and sat in the wind. The relief at being out of the salt quickly faded and was replaced with a bone-deep ache from the biting chill of the winter wind. His skin drew taut and hard, pulling his scabs open farther, and he began to shiver uncontrollably from the freezing wind. He finally realized that he’d been tricked by that sadistic fucker and collapsed into the sand to weep again.
As he lay there, wailing piteously, another prince walked up carrying a huge bag on his back. He saw the poor, tortured rabbit crying in the sand and stopped to ask why the poor bunny was wailing so loudly. The little rabbit, keenly remembering that the last asshole who’d asked him that had made things so much worse, didn’t answer. He just kept weeping and wailing. He knew the cold was going to kill him. This prince, however, was a truly kind man, and he wasn’t willing to give up. He could tell that this poor creature was in desperate need of help.
“You poor thing! It looks like all of your fur has been ripped cruelly out, leaving you completely exposed to the winter’s cold. Who did this to you? What son of a prick put you in this kind of pain?” The man’s kind words penetrated the ice that the rabbit felt had replaced his skin, and he uncurled himself enough to tell him everything that had happened to him today. He was completely honest with him, telling him how he had tricked the crocodiles and then mocked them for being stupid; how the crocodiles had chased and beaten him in revenge for his trick and his mockery; how two young men who had looked very like the man he was talking to now had come by and tricked him into getting in the ocean and sitting in the freezing wind. He ended his tale of woe by begging the kind man to give him something to make his fur grow again so that he could survive the winter.
The man nodded as the story finished. “That’s rough, little bunny. I’m very sorry you had to go through that. You brought some of it on yourself, though, by tricking the innocent crocodiles into being a bridge and then laughing at them for it. You knew how dangerous they were. You played with fire and got burned.” “I know, and I’m sorry. If I live through the day, I won’t ever use trickery to get my way ever again!” “I’m glad to hear it,” said the man. “In that case, I do in fact know of a good remedy. First, you need to go bathe in that pond over there to get all of the salt off your body, and out of your open wounds. Then, you need to pick some of those kaba flowers (which are probably bulrushes or cattails) growing near the edge of the water, spread them on the ground, and roll all over them. The pollen will cause your fur to grow back again, and you will be all healed up in a little while.”
The little bunny was grateful for the man’s help, and for his kindly nature. He thanked the man, then crawled painfully over to the pond to wash off. The water was still bitingly cold, but it rinsed the salt off him and eased his pain a little. Then, he picked the flowers and rolled on them, coating his skin in the pollen. To his amazement, his fur began to grow back as he rolled around, thick and white, and the pain eased and then ceased entirely. In just a few minutes, he was completely healed, and his fur was as thick and warm as it had ever been.
Overjoyed at his miraculous recovery, he hopped over to the young man who had helped him. He knelt down at the man’s feet. “I cannot express how grateful I am for all your help! I owe you one. What can I do to repay you? And also, who are you? I feel like I should know the name of the prince who saved me.” The man laughed kindly. “I am no prince, little bunny, but a kami (a Japanese nature spirit). My name is Okuni-nushi-no-Mikoto, and those eighty other men who passed you earlier are my brothers. We have heard of a beautiful princess named Yakami, who lives in this province of Inaba. They are on their way to find and court her, and intend to have her marry one of them. I am the least of my brothers, and to be honest, they only brought me to carry everyone’s bags. They’re very heavy, which is why I am so far behind everyone else and carrying this huge sack.” As a point of order, at this time, the man was actually known as Onamuji, but he later changes it, and since that’s the name he’s known by in other stories, that’s the one I’m using throughout this tale.
The little rabbit immediately dropped to his knees and planted his face firmly in the dirt, prostrating himself and bowing for all he was worth. The kami were worshiped almost as gods in this part of the world, and the little rabbit was humbled to be speaking with such a powerful being (and not a little frightened). “Great sir! I had no idea you were the kind and powerful Okuni-nushi-no-Mikoto! You have been very kind to me! I find it very hard to understand how that huge dick that sent me to bathe in the salt is one of your brothers. I am certain that the Princess, whom your brothers seek, will refuse to marry any of their horrible asses. I have every faith that you will win her heart over any of them without even meaning to, and she will ask to be your bride. It’s the only thing that makes sense at all!”
Okuni-nushi-no-Mikoto smiled politely at the little rabbit, who had no idea what the fuck he was talking about, and then bid him farewell. He slogged after his brothers, straining under the heavy sack. He shook his head wistfully. Part of him wished that the rabbit could somehow be right, but he knew his place in this family, and it was at the very bottom of the pecking order, buried in the shit. He knew he would never win the heart of a beautiful princess.
Knowing that he had fallen behind in stopping to help the little bunny, he hurried as fast as he could. He soon reached the castle gate just as his brothers were approaching it. One by one, the 80 brothers entered the castle to meet with the princess. One by one, she rejected them as acceptable suitors. The day wore on, each brother being rejected, until all 80 brothers had entered the castle, been found lacking, and gone out the other side. At last, only Okuni-nushi-no-Mikoto was left, still holding the luggage for all of his brothers. He started the long trudge around the castle to meet his brothers, but the princess insisted he come inside.
The story says that she looked him in the face and immediately proclaimed “You will be my husband,” which sounds a little far-fetched even for a story with talking animals and magical nature spirits. Personally, I like to think that the quick, grateful little bunny sped over the plains to the castle and spoke to the princess himself, telling her what transpired that morning. There’s nothing in the story to support this, so it’s just head cannon, but I think it makes the story work a lot better. Either way, Princess Yakami and Okuni-nushi-no-Mikoto were married soon after and lived a long, happy life. He became incredibly famous and was worshipped as a god in some parts of Japan. This was just the start of his story (his brothers weren’t pleased that he had somehow stolen her affection, after all), but that will be a story for another day. The white hare became famous, known as the Hare of Inaba. As for the crocodiles, no one knows what happened to them.
I don’t know about you, but I found the end of this story pretty anticlimactic. It shows how Okuni-nushi-no-Mikoto was kinder and gentler than his many brothers, and it shows that the Japanese weren’t as fond of tricksters as I am, but the first time I read this, I fully expected some full-on Puss in Boots shit. Instead, for no real reason, the Princess looks our hero in the eyes and declares that he is the man to marry her. No conversation, no magic, no nothing. The entire story with the rabbit could have not happened, and presumably, the story would still have ended with his getting married since the rabbit didn’t do anything to help his benefactor out other than saying some nice things. It’s unsatisfying, but sometimes that’s how these stories go. Anyway, it’s time for Gods and Monsters. This is a segment where I get into a little more detail about the personalities and history of one of the gods or monsters from this week’s pantheon that was not discussed in the main story. This week’s monster is the kamaitachi, or the sickle weasel.
In the mountainous regions of Yamanashi, Nagano, and Niigata, stories are told about a strange little yokai, or supernatural monster, known as the kamaitachi. PIcture this. The sun is starting to set, and you’re headed home after a long, back-breaking day of work. You’re tired, and anxious to get somewhere you can put your feet up in front of the fire and relax. There’s a shortcut up ahead that crosses a large, grassy meadow. The path doesn’t go that way for a reason, but fuck it; you’re dogs are barking and you need to get home sooner rather than later.
Halfway across, you see a swirling dust devil twisting across the meadow. It darts this way and that, seemingly at random, and then, in a burst of shocking movement, it rushes you, tripping you and blowing you down onto you ass. You land hard, knocking the wind out, so you take a minute to catch your breath. As you lay there, trying to breathe, you feel your body ripped apart by thousands of tiny blades, so sharp that there’s hardly any pain. Just as you’re starting to register what is happening though, most of the cuts magically disappear without even spilling a drop of blood. The whirlwind passes on and you get shakily to your feet. You’ve got a few cuts here and there that you can’t explain, but nothing serious, so you dust yourself off and head for home. You have just survived an encounter with the kamaitachi.
The kamaitachi is actually a group of three small weasels with rough, spiny fur like a hedgehog, that have been known to bark like dogs. Sometimes, they carry small, wickedly sharp sickles, and sometimes they just have long, razor-sharp claws. These weasels have learned to ride the winds to hunt their prey. The weasels always travel in packs of three, and each has a specific job on the hunt. The first weasel knocks you off your feet when the dust devil surrounds you the first time, leaving you prone for the second weasel, who rips across your flesh in a whirl of flashing blades. Chunks of flesh are cut out to feed the weasels all over the body, never too much in one place. For reasons known only to the weasels, rather than finishing you off, the third weasel comes behind the second with a pot of magical salve to heal up most of your wounds before they even have time to bleed. He makes sure that none of you injuries are fatal and leaves you with only a few relatively minor scratches to show they were ever there. All of this happens faster than the eye can see (in some stories, they are actually invisible), so the victim is left think nothing of the encounter. He (and it’s always a he since they only attack males) merely thinks that he tripped or was buffeted in the wind and got a few scratches on the way down. No big deal.
In some traditions, the wounds left behind are less minor, and can gape and ache for days after. In the Tohoku region, it is said that the wounds can be healed by burning an old calendar and then coating the wound in the ash. In Hida, the attacks are thought to be the work of evil gods: a father, a son, and an uncle. In parts of the Aichi Prefecture, it is though that the weasels are actually blood-suckers, and they make the tiny cuts to drink your blood, which is why none is found after the attack. In parts of Western Japan, the attacks are the work of sickles that have been abandoned and forgotten in the fields, which for reasons unknown, have become possessed by evil spirits and turned into yokai. One story says that a woman had her love stolen by another woman, so the first lady cut off her own hair with a sickle in despair and abandoned the sickle. It turned into a yokai and sought out the second woman, cutting off her head in vengeance.
Perhaps the strangest version of the story has the attacks being perpetuated by ghost bugs. In the town of Katakai, in eastern Japan, it is said that a giant mantis was crushed to death by a heavy snow, and his spirit haunts the place, cutting people with his sickle-like front legs.
One theory on the origin of these strange little creatures has them basically being born from a pun. The phrase “sword stance” translates to “kamae tachi” and from the corruption of that phrase we got “kama”, which is a type of sickle used in traditional Japanese farming and “itachi”, which means weasel. Thus, sickle weasel. I wouldn’t have thought there were enough unexplained cuts and falls to need a monster to justify, but in the windy, mountainous regions of Japan, errant gusts of wind knocking you off your feet can be quite common. Besides, they can make useful scapegoats. People will sometimes curse them when the thong on their sandals break, saying it was cut by the weasel. And apparently, a woman who was having an affair with her neighbor managed to scrape up her legs sneaking about in the night, but managed to avoid getting caught (that time, at least) by blaming the wounds on the kamaitachi. So the next time you’re out walking and see a dust devil dancing your way, you might want to move aside so as to avoid becoming the next victim of the sickle weasels.
That’s it for this episode of Myths Your Teacher Hated. Keep up with new episodes on our Facebook page, on iTunes, on Stitcher, on TuneIn, and on Spotify, or you can follow us on Twitter as @HardcoreMyth and on Instagram as Myths Your Teacher Hated Pod. You can also find news and episodes on our website at myths your teacher hated dot com. If you like what you’ve heard, I’d appreciate a review on iTunes. These reviews really help increase the show’s standing and let more people know it exists. If you have any questions, any gods or monsters you’d want to learn about, or any ideas for future stories that you’d like to hear, feel free to drop me a line. I’m trying to pull as much material from as many different cultures as possible, but there are all sorts of stories I’ve never heard, so suggestions are appreciated. The theme music is by Tiny Cheese Puff, whom you can find on fiverr.com.
Next time, we’ll finish off our series on trickster animals with probably the most famous example, Puss in Boots. You’ll see that if you give a cat a pair of boots, he’ll give you the world, that anything is justified if it makes you rich and powerful, and that greed is very, very good. Then, in Gods and Monsters, we’ll meet a veterinarian’s worst nightmare. That’s all for now. Thanks for listening.