White Japanese Fairy Tale: Winter Fairy Tale

Author: (Japanese) Yoji Tsubota
Publisher:
Publishing Date: Not available
Features: The Ungrateful Mouse by Kenji Miyazawa. In a dilapidated house, there lived a mouse. The mouse had no friends, so it decided to befriend a pillar. One day, the pillar said to the mouse, "Mouse, winter is coming soon, and it will be very cold. I have some feathers and other things on my head left by birds. Take some down to prepare for winter!" The mouse thought it was a good idea and quickly climbed up to move the things. However, in its effort to clear all the items from the pillar, it climbed up and down repeatedly. Finally, it slipped and fell hard. The pillar quickly asked, "Mouse, are you injured?" The mouse cried in pain for a while, got up from the ground, and its eyes filled with resentment. It growled fiercely at the pillar, "Pillar, you deliberately hurt me! If it weren't for you, I wouldn't have been injured. You owe me compensation!" The pillar was stunned but unable to move, so it didn't speak. Seeing this, the mouse grew even angrier and jumped up and bit the pillar several times, but it couldn't bite through. So it gave up. From then on, the pillar no longer spoke to the mouse.
After this incident, one day, the broom gave the mouse half of a cake someone had discarded. However, the mouse ate too much and got sick. It demanded compensation from the broom countless times, so the broom also stopped speaking to the mouse. Then there was the basket, which gave the mouse a piece of caustic soda for washing. The mouse ended up losing its whiskers. As a result, the basket was also extorted by the mouse several times and stopped speaking to it. In the entire kitchen, almost all the residents had been tormented by the mouse, and everyone avoided it. So, the mouse had no friends, and whenever anyone saw it, they quickly hid. P1-3