兎 – The Moon Rabbits in Japanese Folklore and Popular Culture
Through out Japanese culture there are several different references to rabbits in stories, and different sayings. Let’s take a look at some of them.
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Rabbits live on the Moon
On the 15th of August in Japanese is a holiday called お月見. This is a day where people view the Harvest Moon, have festivals and eat mochi. Great! So why eat mochi? Well, it is said that there are rabbits on the moon making or pounding rice into rice cakes or mochi.
https://japaneseuniverse.com/2024/02/18/pac-man-in-japaneseconcepts-behind-development-to-global-icon/The Rabbit that Sacrificed himself
There is a back story in Japanese folklore to explain this. Basically some animals, a monkey, fox, and rabbit want to be reincarnated as humans. In order to do so they are told by a god to prepare a feast for humans and they can then be reincarnated as humans. The monkey gets some fruit and/or nuts from the mountains, and the fox fish from the river.
The rabbit however does not have any food and instead jumps in the fire to be meat for humans. Immediately the god scoops him up. The god tells the other animals they shall be reincarnated as humans but the rabbit did a greater sacrifice and was brought to the moon. Now the image of the rabbit can be seen by all in the moon.
Sailor Moon
In the Sailor Moon series the main character, Selena Tsukino, is called 月野うさぎ in the original Japanese version. The name is a wordplay off of 月の兎 meaning the rabbits on the moon.
因幡の白兎 – Inaba’s White Rabbit
There is a story originating in Japan’s Kojiki which is a text explaining the mythological origins of Japan, Japanese god’s and Empirical family. Basically, the rabbit wants to cross over a body of water. He does this by taunting some sharks, saying let’s compare who has more friends, the rabbits or you sharks. The sharks then line up for him to show how many buddy’s they have and the rabbit then jumps on top of then one by one to get to the other side. The sharks are not impressed that they were tricked and rip off his fur.
After getting to the other side, three kami or gods tell him to jump into the water which will help his skin. Of course this is salt water so it makes it worse. Later a kind Kami comes by and has him go into some fresh water to wash off which makes the rabbit heal.
兎白神社 – Hakuto Shrine
There is actually a Jinja or Japanese shrine to this rabbit in Tottori Prefecture. It is called Hakuto Shrine, or in Japanese 白兎神社. I will post a link in the references section below.
Counting Rabbits
In Japanese special Kanji called 助数詞 are used to count things such as animals. 羽 which means feather counts rabbits.
Wait, feather? But rabbits don’t have feathers. Right, this Kanji primarily counts birds, but it also counts rabbits! At one time in the past, people were discouraged from eating meat like beef, pork etc. but bird meat was ok. In order to extend this so people could have variety someone started counting rabbits like birds. Another explanation may be because the soft meat of rabbits is similar to bird meat.
