The Crab and the Monkey

The Crab and the Monkey, also known as Monkey-Crab Battle (さるかに合戦^?, saru kani gassen) or The Quarrel of the Monkey and the Crab, is a Japanese folktale. In the story, a sly monkey kills a crab, and is later killed in revenge by the crab's offspring. Retributive justice is the main theme of the story.

Rev. David Thomson's translation, The Battle of the Monkey and the Crab, was published as the third volume of Hasegawa Takejirō's Japanese Fairy Tale Series in 1885. Andrew Lang included a somewhat bowdlerized version in The Crimson Fairy Book (1903) and Yei Theodora Ozaki included it in her Japanese Fairy Tales (1908).

While out walking, a crab finds a rice ball. A sly monkey persuades the crab to trade the rice ball for a persimmon seed. The crab is at first upset, but when she plants and tends the seed a tree grows that supplies abundant fruit. The monkey agrees to climb the tree to pick the fruit for the crab, but gorges himself on the fruit rather than sharing it with the crab. When the crab protests, the monkey hurls hard, unripe fruit at her. The shock of being attacked causes the crab to end up giving birth just years before she dies.

The crab's offsprings seek revenge on the monkey. With the help of several allies—a chestnut, a cow dung, a bee, and an usu—they go to the monkey's house. The chestnut hides himself on the monkey's hearth, the bee in the water pail, the cow dung on the floor, and the usu on the roof. When the monkey returns home, he tries to warm himself on the hearth, but the chestnut strikes the monkey so that he burns himself. When the monkey tries to cool himself from the burn at the water bucket, the bee stings him. He tries to run out of the house, but the cow dung makes him slip and the usu falls down from the roof, killing the monkey.

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