Urashima Tarô

Urasima Tarô by Utagawa Kuniyoshi

One day a young fisherman named Urashima Tarō is out fishing when he notices a group of children torturing a small turtle. Tarō-san decides to save it and lets it to go back to the sea. The next day, a huge turtle approaches him and tells him that the small turtle he had saved is the daughter of the Emperor of the Sea, Ryūjin, who wants to see him to thank him. The turtle gives Tarō gills and brings him to the bottom of the sea, to the Palace of the Dragon God. There he meets the Emperor and the small turtle, who turned out to be a lovely princess, Otohime.

Tarō stays there with her for a few days, but soon wants to go back to his village and see his aging mother, so he requests Otohime's permission to leave. The princess says she is sorry to see him go, but wishes him well. She gives him a mysterious box called tamatebako, which will protect him from harm, but which she tells him never to open. Tarō takes the box, jumps on the back of the same turtle that had brought him there, and returns home.

When he does, everything has changed. His home is gone, his mother has vanished, and the people he knew are nowhere to be seen. He asks if anybody knows a man called Urashima Tarō. They answer that they had heard someone of that name had vanished at sea long ago. He somehow discovers that 300 years have passed since the day he left for the bottom of the sea. Struck by grief, he absent-mindedly opens the box the princess had given him, and out bursts a cloud of white smoke. He is suddenly aged, his beard long and white, and his back bent. From the sea comes the voice of the princess: "I told you not to open that box. In it was your old age ..."

Another version of the legend says that he turns in to dust when opening the box, since nobody can live for 300 years.



 

The Tamatebako that Otohime gave Tarô-san is an origami cube that can be opened by any side. If it is opened by two sides it falls apart and is not easily put together again. The model of the cube and the instructions for creating it had been lost for centuries, but have recently been rediscovered.