No. 63 — This morning's freeze
The elder brother next door was asked how to greet one's father-in-law at the New Year. He was in the middle of catching fish under the ice at the time, and mistook the question for one about the number of small fish he had caught, so he held up his empty fish basket high and shook it, saying, "This morning's freeze, only this much." The foolish son-in-law took this to heart, and repeated the same gesture before his father-in-law and mother-in-law. The exasperated father-in-law had him divorce the daughter and sent her back.
- 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.