AtagoyamaMount Atago

Ippachi and Shigehachi are taikomochi (professional jesters who entertain at parties) who got into trouble in the Minami district of Osaka and now work in Gion, Kyoto. One spring day their patron says, “The weather is fine, let's go for an outing in the countryside,” and the party, with geiko (geisha), maiko (apprentice geisha) and the proprietress of the ochaya (a teahouse where geiko entertain guests), sets off to the west.

Past Nijo Castle they come out into the fields, and at a maiko's request Ippachi chases butterflies, but they get away and he takes a bad fall. When he hears they are going to Mount Atago, the patron teases him: “There are no mountains in Osaka, so climbing must be hard for you.” Ippachi shoots back that Osaka has Sanadayama and Chausuyama, but the patron dismisses them as “boils on the ground.” Out of stubbornness Ippachi brags, “I'll skip right up a little hill like Mount Atago,” so he is made to carry everyone's luggage, and on the unfamiliar mountain path the two of them are soon completely worn out.

When they finally reach the teahouse at the top, there are kawarake, unglazed clay dishes, piled up at the front of the shop. They are for kawarake-nage, a game of throwing them from the top of the cliff at a target in the valley below. The patron is an old hand and lands one after another on the target, but when Ippachi tries the same, he cannot hit it at all. As a sore loser he says, “In Osaka we don't throw this sort of thing. We play by throwing gold and silver coins.” At that, the patron takes koban gold coins out of the front of his kimono and really does throw them into the valley.

When Ippachi asks what will become of those coins, the patron answers, “Whatever is thrown belongs to whoever picks it up.” The old woman at the teahouse tells him the path down is long and dangerous, and Ippachi's eye falls on a large umbrella drying at the shop. If he opens it and jumps, he should float gently down to the valley floor. But when he stands at the edge of the cliff, his legs freeze and he cannot move. Unable to watch any longer, the patron whispers to Shigehachi, and with a push in the back from Shigehachi, Ippachi, clinging to the umbrella, lands in the valley.

Ippachi frantically gathers up the coins and is overjoyed when the patron tells him, “They're yours.” But then the patron asks, “So how are you going to get back up?” and Ippachi is stuck. He had thought only about getting down and had no plan at all for getting back up.

So Ippachi tears up the nagajuban (a long under-kimono) he is wearing, twists it into a rope, ties a stone to one end, and throws it to the top of a large bamboo growing on the slope of the valley, where it wraps around. He pulls on the bamboo with all his strength until it bends far over, gives one kick off the ground, and the spring of the bamboo carries him up the cliff in one go. When Ippachi makes it back to the patron and the others, the impressed patron praises him and asks about the coins...