What is the Japanese legend about the rabbit and the moon?
The image of the moon looks like the figure of a rabbit making rice cake, because the rabbits live in there and are making it. We Japanese are taught so from our parents when we were a little child, and teach our children the same, too. The story of the rabbit has a little difference in each area in japan. Monkey, fox, rabbit, the three of them met the old man tired down on the street. Three of them were going to help him. The monkey gathered nuts, and the fox caught a fish from river, and they gave it the old man as food. However, only the rabbit was able to get nothing, no matter how he did his best. The rabbit with no food got, jumped into the fire, in order to give the old man his own body as food. The old man watched it, indeed he was Taishaku-ten (one of the gods), let the rabbit rise up to the moon. After that, all the people remember the goodness of rabbit, every time they look up the moon. It is said that the shape of the rabbit in the moon can not be seen clearly, because of
