All Stories
Browse our complete collection of folk tales, Panchatantra stories, and moral stories from around the world.
Korean Folk Tales
The Story of Chunhyang
A governor’s son climbs a mountain to admire the spring view and glimpses a girl flying up on a swing among the peach blossoms in a garden below.
Japanese Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
My Lord Bag of Rice
The warrior Hidesato steps over a dragon, kills a giant centipede for the Dragon King of Lake Biwa, and is rewarded with a rice bag that never empties.
Japanese Folk Tales
The Tongue-Cut Sparrow
A kind old man finds the sparrow his cruel wife drove away and chooses a small box of treasure, while his greedy wife carries home a box of demons.
Japanese Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The Story of Urashima Taro, the Fisher Lad
A kind fisherman rescues a tortoise, marries the Sea King’s daughter, and returns home after three days to find that three hundred years have passed.
Japanese Folk Tales
The Farmer and the Badger
A wicked badger tricks and kills a farmer’s trusting wife, and a loyal rabbit punishes him with burning grass, a pepper salve and a boat of clay.
Japanese Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The “Shinansha,” or the South Pointing Carriage
In this legend, Emperor Kotei counters a fog-making enemy with a south-pointing chariot, and the storyteller also credits him with inventing a boat.
Japanese Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The Adventures of Kintaro, the Golden Boy
A boy of amazing strength grows up wrestling with mountain animals until a disguised general sees him uproot a tree and takes him to become a samurai.
Japanese Folk Tales
The Story of the Man Who Did Not Wish to Die
Sentaro wants to live forever, so a saint sends him on a paper crane to an island where nobody can die and everyone longs to, until a shark tests his wish.
Japanese Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The Bamboo-Cutter and the Moon-Child
An old man finds a shining girl inside a bamboo stem; she sets five suitors impossible tasks, refuses an emperor, and is carried back to the moon.
Japanese Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The Mirror of Matsuyama
A dying mother gives her daughter a mirror, and the girl’s faith that she sees her mother’s face in it leads a jealous stepmother to accuse her of witchcraft.
Japanese Folk Tales
The Goblin of Adachigahara
A lost pilgrim shelters with a kind old woman on a haunted plain, peeks into the room she told him never to open, and runs for his life until dawn.
Japanese Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The Sagacious Monkey and the Boar
An old performing monkey about to be sold to the butcher asks a wise boar for help, and the two stage a baby-snatching so the monkey can be the hero.