The Straw Cape

Once, in a little village in the far North of Japan, there lived a boy who delighted in playing tricks. Sometimes they made people angry, but as he grew older, the middle-aged people found his practical jokes and stories entertaining after a hard day’s work in the rice fields, and the old people liked to hear the sound of his gay laughter. At times, the other children would join happily in some prank he had thought up and, after a time, he became quite conceited with all the attention he received.

His widowed mother tried to bring him up to be kind and courteous to his elders, as all good Japanese children should be, but sometimes he forgot, and at times his pranks were rather unkind.

One thing his mother always told him, “If you meet a tengu,” she said, “be sure you are polite and courteous to him. Never be rude to him and never try to play tricks on him, for he will always have his revenge.”

A tengu is a goblin with a very long nose. He wears a straw cape tied around his neck, a black hat tied under his chin, and he is known to be a great mischief-maker. Tengus are very inquisitive and they hate being teased.

One day, as the boy was sitting under a tree, he saw a tengu come along the road towards him. In his hand, the boy had a piece of bamboo, and he had been trying to decide how he could make it into a flute. As the tengu approached, he had an idea. He thought he would play a trick on the tengu and he put the piece of bamboo up to his eye and gazed up at the sky.

The tengu stopped in front of him, full of curiosity, and asked why he was gazing at the sky through a piece of bamboo. The boy jumped to his feet and bowed to the tengu.

“Tell me, what can you see through your stick?” asked the tengu. “Can you see behind the fluffy white clouds?”

The boy put the stick to his eye again and answered not a word.

“Can you see the stars in the daylight, or the cranes flying South, or the fairy creatures flying past?” asked the tengu, fairly dancing with curiosity, but the boy only went on making noises of wonder and pleasure.

Finally, the tengu begged the boy to let him look too, but the boy refused. “Aha, tengu,” he said, “with my bamboo I can see such wonders as you have never seen.”

Then the tengu began to bribe the lad. First, he offered him his black hat, but the lad refused. Then he offered his fine clogs, but the boy replied that he had some of his own. Then he offered his fine cape, made of straw.

The boy was tempted by this, for the cape was waterproof, and he thought how useful it would be. “In return for your cape,” he said, “I will give you my bamboo stick.”

The tengu took off his cape and the boy handed over his bamboo stick. He put on the tengu’s cape and ran away, back to the village, but as he looked back, he could see the tengu in the middle of the road, shaking the bamboo stick at him in rage, for it was not even hollow and he had not been able to see a thing through it.

The boy ran all the way along the village street to tell his mother of his adventure and how he had tricked even a tengu. He found his mother sitting in the living room, on a straw mat, mending his best clothes. “Mother,” he called, “see the fine waterproof cape which I won from a tengu with my cunning.”

His mother never looked up, so the boy called out again, but his mother continued to go on with her sewing. Then he looked down at himself and, to his surprise, his hands and feet had vanished. He realized that with the cape on he was quite invisible. No one could see him.

Now the boy had a fine time, playing all sorts of tricks on the villagers. He tweaked the ears of the old men, he upset the baskets of the women who had been shopping, he seized an empty rickshaw, a cart in which passengers rode, and ran from one end of the street to the other with it, and he even overturned a rickshaw with a passenger in it, so that the poor rickshaw man, who pulled it along, had a fine telling-off. People began to think the village was haunted.

At last, he tired and went home. He hung his cape on the porch and became visible again. After he had eaten his evening meal of rice, he went to bed. His mother shut up the house for the night and, as she did so, she found the cape. It looked so old and dirty that she threw it in the yard and set fire to it.

Next morning, the boy could not find his straw cape anywhere, and his mother told him she had burnt it. The boy went outside and gathered the burnt ashes into a bucket and, to his delight, he found that if he smeared the ashes over himself, he became invisible again. That day, the pranks started again.

By lunchtime, the boy was hungry, so he went to the village inn and began to take food from the men’s plates. Then he was thirsty and all he could see was a cup of strong wine. He picked it up and began to drink.

The wine was so strong that it made his eyes water and the tears trickled down his cheeks. The puzzled men, who were trying to find out where their food was going, saw two cheeks appear in front of them. Then the boy wiped his hand across his mouth and more of his face appeared, for he had brushed away the ash. All the men crowded around and the boy began to feel frightened. He began to cry and more and more of his face appeared as his tears washed away the ash, until everyone knew who it was.

The boy fled away from the inn, but all the men chased him down the village street, with sticks in their hands, determined to punish him for the tricks he had played on them. They could see only his hands and face, until he came to the river and he was so frightened that he plunged straight in. The water washed all the magic ash from his body and the villagers could see him swimming to the other side. They ran over the bridge and caught him, but he was so wet and cold that they took pity on him and sent him home instead of punishing him for his unkind tricks.

“Remember what I told you,” said his mother, as she dried his wet clothes. “Never play tricks on a tengu. You always regret it in the end.” The boy was feeling so ashamed that he decided in the future he would never play any unkind jokes on anyone at all.