■ あらすじ　
　爺が悪さをする狸を捕らえ梁に吊した。縛られた狸は爺の留守中に
婆を騙して紐を解かせ、婆を殺した。爺が嘆き悲しんでいると兎がやって来て仇討ちを申し出た。兎は炒り豆で狸をおびき出し、狸に干し草の束を背負わせて火をつけ、火傷で寝込む狸に薬だと唐辛子の絆創膏
<ばんそうこう>を貼った。さらに兎は魚捕りだと騙して自分は木の舟に乗り、狸には泥舟を与え、泥舟が水に溶けて狸は溺れ死んだ。

■ Outline of this story
　An old man captured a mischievous badger and hung it to a rafter by the feet. While the old man was away, the badger tricked his wife into undoing the cord, and then killed her. Later, as the old man lamented his wife's death, a hare came forward and offered to avenge the murder. The hare lured the badger out of his hole with parched beans, had it shoulder a bundle of dried-grass, and then set fire to the bundle. When the badger retired to its hole to nurse the burns, the hare applied a sticking plaster that he said would heal them but that actually contained red pepper. Afterward, inviting the badger to go fishing, the hare boarded a boat of wood, but tricked the badger into boarding one of clay. The clay boat gradually dissolved in the water, and the badger was drowned.

Note
　This is supposed to be one of the five best-loved Japanese fairy tales. The story about the badger killing the old man's wife and that about the hare killing the badger were originally separate ones from different regions. The two were combined into a tale of rewarding good and punishing evil that is still told today. In spite of some scenes of chilling cruelty, D. Thompson produced a faithful translation, explaining that the "kachi-kachi" onomatopoeia for the clicking sound of the flint struck by the hare to set fire was also homonymous with the word for victory ("kachi"), and that the "bo-bo" onomatopoeia for a fire's roar was similarly homonymous with the word for defeat. The version published by Yachizo Matsumuro has more text but few illustrations, and does not credit any illustrator.