No. 78 — Taro, child of the peach

Record

A childless old man and old woman picked up a peach that came floating down the river, and a boy was born from inside it; they named him Taro, child of the peach, and raised him. When Taro grew up, he set out with millet dumplings to conquer Onigashima, and along the way he made retainers of a dog, a pheasant, and a monkey, old mountain monkeys said to turn uncanny, whom he met there, and together they defeated the oni, a horned ogre, and brought back treasure, delighting the old man and woman.

Source

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

Land

Shiwa District

Type

Yokai and the Uncanny, Strange Fates

Beings

oni

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.