Shippeitaro (episode)

* Ursa Major (MM)

***Fables and Folktales: Shippeitaro*** is the eighty-third episode of the *Miscellaneous Myths* series and the fifth episode of the Fables and Folktales series. It tells the story of how the dog Shippeitaro was used to save a mountain village from the Spirit of the Mountain.

## Introduction

Red begins by reflecting on how everyone has an inner storyteller; everyone has the thought at some point that if they were thrown in a high stakes situation, from punching Nazis on a tank to questing with a group of companions in a New Zealand-esque setting, they would be awesome at it. Red says that this feeling often matures as one gets older, morphing from stick fights and other such games on a playground into more creative outlets such as game nights or writing. She notes that the feeling, although vital, isn't good at reading reality as not-a-story very well.

Transitioning, she goes into the story of *Shippeitaro*, wherein the protagonist suffers from his own inner storyteller's impulses. The story was translated into English in the late 1800s by Mrs. T. H. James and was later put into the *The Violet Fairy Book* by Andrew Lang in 1901. *Shippeitaro* differs from *Tokoyo and the Sea Monster* since it is documented in Japan and has several regional variations, meaning it is an authentic Japanese tale and not potentially written by a European proto-weeb.

## Summary

The story begins with a young man going out in folklore Japan to have fame and adventure. Unfortunately, he finds himself completely unable to find any such adventure; he couldn't find a monster to slay nor any damsel to rescue, and he was unable to show off his heroic nature against an easy villain. Eventually, he has a stroke of luck and finds a mountain with a menacing subtitle that probably holds many plot hooks. He begins hiking through the forest on the Mountain of Plot Hooks, only to find it to be A Huge Pain In the Ass, and he is forced to take shelter in a stone shrine in the forest at nightfall.

At midnight, a horrible noise wakes up the young man, and he looks outside only sees a plethora of cats. Red notes that Japanese culture thought of cats as untrustworthy and sinister; hence these cats act very unnervingly, dancing and caterwauling in the moonlight. As they do this, the young man notices a few words in their noise: "Don't tell Shippeitaro! Don't tell him we've been partying it up
on this mountain! It'd be just awful if our one weakness was exploited! Don't you do it! Don't nobody do it!" After the midnight hour passes, the cats retreat from the area and the young man goes back to sleep.

The young man wakes up a bit hungry and makes his way to a nearby village by a path that he didn't notice in the night. When he gets there, he hears a young woman screaming for help and inquires some of the indifferent townsfolk about the situation. They inform him that they have to make an annual sacrifice to the Spirit of the Mountain, wherein they decide by lot who to put in a cask and leave in the shrine—in which the young man sheltered—for the Spirit to eat. The young man is understandably troubled by this, but he remembers what the cats were saying and asks what "Shippeitaro" is. The man he is talking to tells him that Shippeitaro is the name of the local lord's dog but also that petting a dog can only help so much. The young man zips away from the bewildered townsfolk and to the home of the lord. Once there, he frantically asks for the dog, but the lord is somewhat suspicious of the request. After the young man tells him of the dog's grave importance, the lord reluctantly consigns the dog to the young man who promises to return it in a day. Then, the young man goes to the family of the sacrificial girl and tells them to hide her in a closet while he puts Shippeitaro in the cask instead, and he goes back to the shrine and waits with the cask.

At midnight, the cats return with a mondo-cat that is the Spirit of the Mountain. It opens the cask to eat the sacrifice and gets its utensils ready, but Shippeitaro jumps out and attacks it. The young man then uses his as of yet useless sword to decapitate the Spirit, and he and the dog scatter the remaining cats. The young man returns with Shippeitaro, declaring that someone has been a good boy, one guy thinking that it is he who is a good boy. The good boy is then returned to the lord and honored annually with a great feast; the young man is there, too, saying how doing good is its own reward.

## Conclusion

Red concludes by saying how sometimes heroism isn't always about slaying the biggest dragon, and sometimes it's just finding the right tool for the job. In this case, it was a cute, good-boy doggo.

## Credits

Red sings *Memory* from the musical *Cats*.

## Characters Appearing

* Unnamed Young Man
* Shippeitaro
* Spirit of the Mountain

## Hecate (Trivia)

* Unlike other episodes, Red does not speak in front of the White Void; instead, she sits in the armchair where she makes Trope Talks. She made the switch because she did not like the resolutions of her drawings of herself, done in 720p, not matching with the 1080p resolution of most of her more recent work.