This story is my favorite story in this unit. I thought that
the Tanuki was going to secretly kill his son and that his wife, the fox, would
find out and fins a clever way to punish him. The Tanuki reminded me of the
trickster Anansi from the West African folklore/fairytales. Like the Tanuki,
Anansi also selfishly betrayed his family members in order to gain something.
In this case, both the Tanuki and Anansi betrayed their family for food. I also
loved that the sons were the heroes in both of these stories. I was really
happy when the Tanuki’s son realized that his father had betrayed and killed
his mother and instead of confronting his father, he thought of a clever plan
of how to use his father’s cockiness against him and avenge his mother’s death.
There seems to be a lot of murder in the stories that
involve the Tanuki. As I was reading the story, I knew that the Tanuki would
play a cruel trick on the peasant man but, I never would have guessed that the “trick”
would be the Tanuki murdering the peasant’s wife and then feeding her to him.
That part of the story was a little extreme. It made for a good story but, it
was still pretty extreme. When the hare set the Tanuki on fire and almost
killed him, I thought that surely the Tanuki wouldn’t trust the hare anymore
but, for some reason he did. The part of the story that said, “The Tanuki was
still feeling angry with the hare about the trick he had played him, but he was
weak and very hungry, so he gladly accepted the proposal” really shocked me.
They made the hare’s attempt to kill the Tanuki seem as if it was not a big
deal. I don’t know about whoever wrote this story but, attempting to set
someone on fire is definitely not just a harmless “trick.”
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