Tsuru no Ongaeshi
Japanese folklore
Tsuru no Ongaeshi (鶴の恩返し; lit. "Crane's Return of a Favor") is a story from Japanese folklore about a crane who returns a favor to a man. A variant of the story where a man marries the crane that returns the favor is known as Tsuru Nyōbō (鶴女房; "Crane Wife").
According to Japanese scholar Seki Keigo, the story is "one of the best known" tales in Japan about supernatural and enchanted spouses.
Crane's Return of a Favor
A man saves a crane that had been shot down by hunters. That night, a woman appears at the man's door and tells him that she is his wife. The man tells her that he is not wealthy enough to support them, but she tells him that she has a bag of rice that will fill their stomachs. Every day, the rice never goes down in the sack, and it always stays full. The next day she tells the man that she is going in a room to make something and that he is not to come in until she is finished. Seven days have passed by and she finally comes out with a beautiful piece of clothing, but she is very skinny.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tsuru no Ongaeshi” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.