No. 41 — The farting old man of the mountains

Record

An old man who had been cutting trees without permission in the forest of the choja, a very rich man, called himself the farting old man of the mountains, and in the garden performed a fart with a fine rhythm, earning sake and money as a reward. A greedy old woman next door heard of this and had her own husband try to imitate him, but no fart came, and he soiled himself; the young men of the choja scratched him all over with thorns and drove him out. The old woman mistook him for someone who had received a reward and come home rejoicing, and burned his torn clothes.

Source

Ogasawara Kenkichi (ed.), Shiwa-gun Mukashibanashi-shu (1938) — National Diet Library Digital Collections (Japanese text)

Land

Shiwa District

Type

Strange Fates

This is an English rendering of our short Japanese summary of the source tale — a summary translated from the Japanese, not a translation of the original text. The summary was drafted and translated with AI assistance, and names and numbers were checked against our records. Tale numbers for this book follow the order in which the tales appear; they are ours, not the book's.