The Quarrel of the Monkey and the Crab

Long, long ago, on a bright autumn day in Japan, a pink-faced monkey and a yellow crab were playing together on a riverbank. As they scampered about, the crab came across a rice dumpling, and the monkey found a persimmon seed.

The crab held up the dumpling. “Look at the lovely thing I’ve found!”

The monkey held up his seed. “I’ve found something good too! Look!”

Now monkeys are very fond of persimmons, but this monkey had no use for a seed, which is as hard as a pebble and impossible to eat. Being greedy by nature, he envied the crab his tasty dumpling and suggested they swap. The crab, of course, could see no reason to trade his prize for a stony seed, and refused.

So the crafty monkey set about talking him round. “How foolish you are not to think ahead! Your dumpling can be eaten right now, and it’s certainly bigger than my seed. But plant this seed in the ground and in a few years it will grow into a great tree and give you heaps of fine ripe persimmons every single year. If only I could show it to you then, with the yellow fruit hanging from its branches! Of course, if you don’t believe me, I’ll plant it myself, but I’m sure you will be very sorry later that you didn’t take my advice.”

The simple crab could not hold out against such clever talk. In the end he agreed, and the swap was made. The greedy monkey gobbled the dumpling in no time and handed over the seed very unwillingly; he would gladly have kept that too, but he was afraid of making the crab cross and being nipped by his sharp, scissor-like claws. Then they parted, the monkey going home to his forest and the crab to his stones by the river. As soon as he got home, the crab planted the seed, just as the monkey had told him.

The next spring the crab was delighted to see a little shoot push up out of the earth. Year by year it grew taller, until one spring it flowered, and that autumn it bore big, handsome persimmons. They hung among the broad, glossy green leaves like golden balls and turned deep orange as they ripened. Every day the little crab loved to sit in the sun, poke out his long eyes the way a snail pokes out its horns, and watch his persimmons ripening to perfection.

“How delicious they will be!” he told himself.

At last there came a day when he knew the fruit must be perfectly ripe, and he longed to taste one. He tried again and again to climb the tree to reach the beautiful persimmons above him, but every attempt failed, for this crab could scuttle over the ground and stones but could not climb that trunk. Then he thought of his old playmate the monkey, who could climb better than anyone in the world. He decided to ask for his help and set off to find him.

Scuttling sideways up the stony bank and along the paths into the shady forest, the crab finally found the monkey having an afternoon nap in his favorite pine tree, curled securely in the fork of a branch. He woke up quickly enough when he heard his name called, and listened eagerly to the crab. When he learned that the seed he had traded for a dumpling long ago had grown into a tree and was full of good fruit, he was delighted, for in a flash he thought of a sly plan to get all the persimmons for himself.

He agreed to come and pick the fruit for the crab. When they reached the tree, the monkey was amazed at how fine it had grown and how heavily its branches were loaded with ripe persimmons. Up he climbed and began picking and eating as fast as he could, one after another, always choosing the ripest and best, until he could not eat another bite. He gave not a single one to the poor hungry crab waiting below, and when he had finished, nothing was left but the hard, unripe fruit.

You can imagine how the poor crab felt, after waiting so patiently all that time for the tree to grow and the fruit to ripen, as he watched the monkey gobble up every good persimmon. He ran round and round the tree, calling up to the monkey to keep his promise. At first the monkey paid no attention. Then he picked the hardest, greenest persimmon he could find and threw it at the crab’s head. An unripe persimmon is as hard as a stone, and it struck the crab a painful blow. Again and again, as fast as he could pull them off, the monkey pelted the defenseless crab with hard persimmons until the poor crab fell dead at the foot of the very tree he had planted himself.

When the wicked monkey saw what he had done, he fled from the spot as fast as he could, shaking with fear, like the coward he was.

Now the crab had a son, who had been playing with a friend not far away. On his way home he found his father lying dead and broken under the tree, with the hard green persimmons that had done the deed scattered all around him. At this dreadful sight the young crab sat down and wept.

After crying for a while, though, he told himself that tears would do no good. He believed it was his duty to avenge his father, and he made up his mind to do it. He searched for some sign of who had done it. Looking up into the tree, he saw that the best fruit was gone, and all over the ground lay bits of peel and plenty of seeds, as well as the unripe persimmons that had plainly been thrown at his father. Then he knew the monkey was to blame, for he remembered his father telling him the story of the rice dumpling and the persimmon seed. The young crab knew that monkeys love persimmons more than any other fruit, and he was sure that the monkey’s greed for them had cost his father his life.

His first thought, burning with anger as he was, was to rush off and attack the monkey at once. But on second thoughts he saw that this was useless. The monkey was old and cunning and would be hard to beat. Cunning must be met with cunning, and he must ask his friends for help, for he could never overcome the monkey on his own.

So the young crab went straight to the mortar, an old friend of his father’s, told him everything and begged him tearfully to help avenge his father. The mortar was very sorry to hear the sad story and promised at once to help punish the monkey. But he warned the young crab to be very careful, for the monkey was a strong and crafty enemy. Then the mortar sent for the bee and the chestnut, who were also old friends of the family, to talk the matter over. They soon arrived, and when they heard every detail of the old crab’s death and the monkey’s wickedness and greed, they both gladly agreed to help.

They talked for a long time about how to carry out their plan, and then they parted, and Mr. Mortar went home with the young crab to help him bury his poor father.

Meanwhile the monkey was congratulating himself, as wicked folk often do just before their punishment catches up with them, on how neatly he had managed everything. He thought it rather fine to have robbed his friend of all his ripe persimmons and then killed him. Still, however broadly he smiled, he could not quite shake off the fear of what might happen if he were found out. Not that he could be, he told himself, for nobody had seen him. But if he were, the crab’s family would surely hate him and try to take revenge. So he stayed indoors for several days. He found it terribly dull, being used to the free life of the woods, and in the end he said to himself:

“Nobody knows it was me! I’m sure the old fellow was dead before I left him, and dead crabs can’t talk. Who is there to say I did it? Since no one knows, what’s the use of shutting myself up and moping? What’s done is done!”

So out he went to the crab settlement and crept about as slyly as he could near the crab’s house, trying to overhear the neighbors’ gossip and find out what the crabs were saying about the death of their chief, for the old crab had been the chief of the tribe. But he heard nothing at all. “They’re all such fools,” he said to himself, “that they neither know nor care who killed their chief!”

For all his “monkey wisdom,” he never guessed that this seeming lack of interest was part of the young crab’s plan. The young crab was purposely pretending not to know who had killed his father, and to believe that his father had died through his own fault, so that his plans for revenge would stay secret.

So the monkey went home from his walk quite satisfied, telling himself he had nothing more to fear.

One fine day, as the monkey sat at home, a messenger arrived from the young crab. While the monkey was wondering what this could mean, the messenger bowed and said, “My master has sent me to tell you that his father died the other day, falling from a persimmon tree while trying to climb up for fruit. Today is the seventh day, the first memorial day since his death, and my master has prepared a small festival in his father’s honor. Since you were one of his father’s best friends, he invites you to join them, and he hopes you will honor his house with your visit.”

The monkey was overjoyed inside, for now all his fear of being suspected melted away. He had no idea that a plot had just been launched against him. He pretended to be shocked to hear of the crab’s death. “I am truly sorry to hear that your chief has died. We were great friends, as you know. I remember how we swapped a rice dumpling for a persimmon seed. It grieves me to think that the seed turned out to be the cause of his death. I accept your kind invitation with many thanks, and I will be delighted to honor my poor old friend!” And he squeezed a few false tears from his eyes.

The messenger laughed to himself. “The wicked monkey is shedding false tears now,” he thought, “but before long he’ll shed real ones.” Aloud, though, he thanked the monkey politely and went home.

When he had gone, the wicked monkey laughed out loud at what he took for the young crab’s innocence, and without the least shame he began looking forward to the feast in honor of the crab he had killed. He changed into his best clothes and set off solemnly for the young crab’s house.

All the members of the crab’s family and all his relatives were waiting to greet him. When the bows of welcome were over, they led him into a hall, where the young chief mourner came to receive him. They exchanged words of sympathy and thanks, and then everyone sat down to a splendid feast, with the monkey as guest of honor.

After the meal he was invited into the tea-ceremony room for a cup of tea. The young crab showed him in and then left him alone. Time went by and the young crab did not come back. At last the monkey grew impatient. “These tea ceremonies are always so slow,” he grumbled. “I’m tired of waiting, and I’m very thirsty after all that sake at dinner!”

He went over to the charcoal fire and started to pour himself some hot water from the kettle bubbling there, when out of the ashes something burst with a loud pop and struck him right on the neck. It was the chestnut, who had hidden in the fireplace. Taken by surprise, the monkey leaped back and dashed for the door.

Out from behind the screens flew the bee and stung him on the cheek. The monkey was in agony, his neck scorched by the chestnut and his face swollen from the sting, but he kept running, shrieking and chattering with rage.

Now the stone mortar had hidden on top of the crab’s gate with several other stones, and as the monkey ran beneath it, down came the mortar and all the stones on his head. How could any monkey bear such a weight falling on him from the top of a gate? He lay pinned to the ground in great pain, quite unable to get up. As he lay there helpless, the young crab came up and held his great scissor claws over him.

“Do you know now who I am? You killed my father,” he said.

“So you—are—my—enemy?” gasped the monkey.

“Of course.”

“It—was—your—father’s—fault—not—mine!” gasped the monkey, still without a trace of sorrow.

“Still lying? Then I will make an end of you!” And with his great claws the young crab finished the wicked monkey. So the young crab took revenge for his father’s death by killing the monkey.

Where this tale comes from

“The Quarrel of the Monkey and the Crab” is the sixteenth tale in Yei Theodora Ozaki’s Japanese Fairy Tales. Ozaki closes it by calling it the story of “the monkey, the crab, and the persimmon-seed,” and the hard, unripe persimmon is the key to the whole plot.

The young crab’s helpers are a stone mortar, a bee and a chestnut, each of which strikes in its own way at the memorial feast. Ozaki’s telling is blunt about how both the old crab and the monkey die; this telling retains both deaths, as well as burning, stinging and crushing injuries.

Read the original: Japanese Fairy Tales (Project Gutenberg)

Reading guidance: older readers; adults should preview before sharing. The crab is beaten to death with fruit, and the monkey is burned, stung, crushed and killed in revenge.

The seed is not the betrayal

The monkey sells the seed with persuasive talk, but the promised tree really grows. The crab’s patience produces fruit. The central wrong comes later, when the monkey agrees to help harvest it and instead takes the ripe fruit and attacks its owner. Calling the original trade simply bad obscures both the crab’s successful work and the broken agreement.

The memorial feast reverses the misuse of hospitality: the monkey arrives expecting generosity while the hosts plan an ambush. The helpers combine different abilities, yet cooperation alone does not settle the morality of what they do. The ending treats revenge as a duty, a judgment readers can examine rather than inherit.

Divide the events into exchange, cultivation, harvest and revenge. Identify one choice in each stage that changes the outcome. Could the allies use their combined strengths to protect the crab community without repeating the monkey’s violence?

Questions to ask

• Did the seed turn out to be worthless? At what point did the monkey actually betray the crab?
• Why did the young crab pretend not to know who killed his father?
• How did each of the friends, the chestnut, the bee and the mortar, help?

Related stories

• The Farmer and the Badger — another Japanese tale of a cruel trick and a friend’s revenge
• The Jelly Fish and the Monkey — a monkey who uses a trick to escape danger rather than take revenge
• The Story of the Old Man Who Made Withered Trees to Flower — greed punished in another of Ozaki’s tales