Stories · How Things Came to Be

The Hare Who Counted the Crocodiles

12 min · Japan · Wisdom · Letting go

On a quiet island shore, a hare tricks a line of patient crocodiles into carrying him across the water, and discovers that the cleverness which won him the crossing has quietly taken away his sleep. Only when he returns and speaks the plain truth does the sea, keeping its calm accounts, give him back his ease.

Retold from Japanese Fairy Tales, by Yei Theodora Ozaki.

Watch

Watch from this story on YouTube

Story 5 of How Things Came to Be, starting at 56:08.