Japanese Folktales is Yei Theodora Ozaki’s classic collection of twenty-two traditional Japanese stories.

The book introduces the reader to the rich world of the Japanese imagination, a world of ghouls, goblins and ogres; sea serpents and sea kings; kindly animals and magic birds; demons and dragons, princes and princesses.

In My Lord Bag of Rice goldfish dancers and carp musicians delight the brave warrior Hidesato; in The Mirror of Matsuyama a lonely daughter endures her fate with the help of a shining disc given by her departed mother; The Jelly Fish and the Monkey explains how that sea creature lost its bones; and the hero of Momotaro, a tale familiar to every child in Japan, is born from a peach that washes up on the riverbank.

Settings and characters vary from tale to tale but the effect of each story in this volume is the same - to transport the reader, young or old, to mysterious shores, magical kingdoms, and mythical lands.

Japanese Folktales is a wondrous introduction to Japan’s rich fantasy tradition.