Beautiful maid of
Tnanegaike-pond
A pond named Tanegaike is located at the foot of Mt. Maniyama in Tottori prefecture.
A young maid,
Tane worked for a milionair's household in the village.
She had a beautifully fair skin.
The incident happened at one winter night when a group of young villagers got together at the richman's house.
The night had grown late.
Youngmen got hungry so much that all the topics of their conversation were focused on something to eat.
No matter how they may talk about food, it was impossible to find any food at this time of the day.
Tane with a fair skin entered the room, and said, "I have a big idea to prepared it for you."
She left the house.
Everybody was surprised to see that she was carefully holding a lot of persimmons in her apron.
Thus she brought a plenty of persimmons every night.
One youngman wondered why she was able to find that fruit at a winter, because persimmons are charactristic at a late autumn in Japan.
(We Japanese have a rural image with a thachet, around which there is a persimmon tree whose branches are heavily laden with persimmons. It is a beautiful cut.)
He tailed her. She briskly walked down to the pond without noticing to be followed.
No sooner did she touch the water, she disguised herself as a white snake.
She swam heading for a small island in the center of the pond.
The white snake landed, then climbed with ease up to a persimmon tree which had grown a bunch of fruits.
The snake plucked them off one by one.
The young man, gazing at her from beach, was almost palarized with freight.
Next morning he got on the island, found that there was a camellia tree instead of a persimmon tree. Whatmore, he found a white snake crawling at the root of the tree.
As she had shown true colors, she never showed up any more.
by courtesy of Tottori City Hall
In an air-conditioned car Mr.Komatsu who was a speaker of this tale drove to this pond. Our party was four in all,Mr. Sumi and Mrs. Taniguchi with us.
Tanegaike-pond is close to a famous Tottori Dune.
The pond is located at the bottom of a sharp slope.
Going down a narrow field pass, Mr.Sumi said ,"This folk tales might be a part of a story of repaying kindness.
Another story, prior to this, might have existed.
Something like a young man saved a life of a white snake. No one knows what it is."
It is a pity that I should accept it, as a destiny of fading old folk tales.
It was August afternoon. We stood at a beech getting scorching sunshine.
The hot breeze clung to us. The shiny white beech refrected so much, fine sands burnt under my foot.
A small island which Tane was supposed to land is covered with pine trees.
No persimmons at all.
At the right hand of the beech, We can see a deep woods in which Goddess-Kannon is enshrined.
Is there any relation to Goddess-Kannon?
I wonder why this pond is clossly connected with a snake nature.
Mr. Komatsu said,
"Bringing a pack of rice-balls (onigiri in Japanese) for lunch, I made an excursion here with my deceased mother, who is 100 years old if she lives now in 1996. It was before World War Two."
E? More than 50 years ago? He mutters the pond is as it was.
No sign-boards for advertisement. no tourists are the good part of this pond, for Tane might want to live secretly.