All I can find online is a review page reference to a children’s book published in 1988 (glowing reviews, btw), an Amazon page for the book (a single 1-star review), and a YouTube narration of one version of this story.
Looking deeper… the Amazon page says that it’s based on a traditional story from Saitama. I don’t have many sources from that part of the country. Lots of books on Kyushu stories, but not Kanto, so if it’s one of the more obscure little tales then I won’t have seen it before.
The transcript of the book on the YouTube video is completely different from what you’ve got on this page, though they’re both the same story, so your grade school primer there’s a different version. The second YouTube video I found is close to the first, but the wording’s still a little different.
Found a few more videos that use the same script as #2.
And… that’s about all I can find. I don’t doubt that it’s included in at least one folktale collection from Saitama, but I can’t find anything to prove that. To be fair, I also cannot prove that several volumes in my own collection physically exist, according to Google, so…
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Cool, one I hadn’t seen yet!
All I can find online is a review page reference to a children’s book published in 1988 (glowing reviews, btw), an Amazon page for the book (a single 1-star review), and a YouTube narration of one version of this story.
Looking deeper… the Amazon page says that it’s based on a traditional story from Saitama. I don’t have many sources from that part of the country. Lots of books on Kyushu stories, but not Kanto, so if it’s one of the more obscure little tales then I won’t have seen it before.
The transcript of the book on the YouTube video is completely different from what you’ve got on this page, though they’re both the same story, so your grade school primer there’s a different version. The second YouTube video I found is close to the first, but the wording’s still a little different.
[Video #1](https://youtu.be/kNBmmVo-BU8)
[Video #2](https://youtu.be/f0_-HvEjcAU)
Found a few more videos that use the same script as #2.
And… that’s about all I can find. I don’t doubt that it’s included in at least one folktale collection from Saitama, but I can’t find anything to prove that. To be fair, I also cannot prove that several volumes in my own collection physically exist, according to Google, so…