Long, long ago in Japan there lived an old man and his wife. The old man was a good, kind-hearted, hard-working old fellow …

First published in 1903, Japanese Fairy Tales is a classic compendium of Japanese folklore. From the stirring opening tale of ‘My Lord Bag of Rice’, where a ferocious warrior faces a mythical beast, to moving fables of compassion like ‘The Tongue-Cut Sparrow’, the twenty-two collected stories present a glorious patchwork of Japan’s rich folkloric tradition.

Representing the West’s first commercial introduction to the storytelling tradition of Japan, these tales are as brilliantly entertaining – and important – now as they were at the beginning of the last century, and are presented here in a handsome new edition for a new generation.