Urashima Taro and the Sea Princess’s Box

Long, long ago in Japan, in a fishing village by the sea, there lived a young man named Urashima Taro. Every morning he rowed out in his boat to fish, and every evening he came home to his old father and mother, and people in the village said you couldn’t find a kinder boy from one headland to the next.

One evening Urashima was walking along the shore with his fishing rod over his shoulder. Suddenly he saw a crowd of boys huddled over something in the sand, shouting and poking at it with sticks.

“Flip her over again! Let her kick her legs!”

Urashima stepped closer. On her back lay a turtle, a big sea turtle with a greenish-brown shell like a wet stone. She was paddling the air with her flippers and could not turn herself over.

“Hey, boys,” said Urashima. “Let her go. You’re hurting her.”

“What’s it to you?” sneered the oldest one. “We caught her. She’s ours.”

Urashima thought. Scold them? They wouldn’t listen, they’d only dig in their heels. So he took the basket off his shoulder, where fresh fish glittered, all of his catch for the day.

“Let’s trade. The fish are yours, the turtle is mine.”

The boys looked at each other, grabbed the basket, and all you could see was their heels.

Urashima gently turned the turtle over and stroked her shell.

“They say turtles live for a thousand years,” he said. “It would be a shame if yours ended today. Swim home, and don’t fall into children’s hands again.”

The turtle looked at him with dark, wonderfully clever eyes. Then, shuff, shuff across the sand, and she vanished into the waves.

At home, his mother asked where the fish were. Urashima laughed.

“Today the sea gave me nothing. But I gave it something back.”

His father, who was mending a net by the door, only shook his head.

“You can’t catch fish with a kind heart, son.”

“Maybe not,” Urashima answered, sitting down beside him to help. “But I don’t regret that fish.”

The next day Urashima sat in his boat far from the shore. The sun was hot, the float lay asleep on the water, and the young man was nodding off himself when he heard:

“Urashima! Urashima Taro!”

He jumped so hard that the boat rocked. There was nothing around him but water. Who could be calling? Then, beside the boat, a familiar head bobbed up.

“Is that you?” Urashima said in surprise. “The same turtle?”

“The very same,” she nodded. “Yesterday you saved me. I have come to thank you.”

“You can talk?”

“Many creatures in the sea can talk,” answered the turtle. “It’s just that on land hardly anyone listens. Tell me, Urashima, have you ever seen the Palace of the Sea King?”

Urashima shook his head. His grandmother had told him about that palace long ago: somewhere at the very bottom, where there is neither storm nor wind, it stands, and no human can ever reach it.

“Climb onto my back,” said the turtle. “I will take you there.”

“To the bottom? But I’m not a fish. I can’t breathe under water.”

“With me, you can. Hold on tight.”

Urashima climbed onto the wide shell, and down they dived. He held his breath as long as he could, then carefully breathed in... and found that he was breathing as easily as on the shore.

Schools of silver fish flashed past: flick, flick! Jellyfish swayed like transparent lanterns. The light from above grew greener, then bluer, and then deep, deep blue, like the evening sky.

Once a gigantic shadow glided by below. Urashima pressed himself against the shell.

“Don’t be afraid,” said the turtle. “That’s a whale. He is only curious about who I’m carrying.”

The whale turned slowly, looked at Urashima with one enormous eye, snorted a stream of bubbles, blub, and swam on. And the water behind him rocked for a long time, like a cradle.

They swam for a long while. Then, far ahead, something pink and gold began to shine. It was a gate made of coral, and behind it rose the roofs of a palace, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, each roof curving like a wave.

By the gate stood the guards: swordfish with long sharp noses, solemn octopuses, and crabs who clicked their claws, click-click! in greeting.

“A guest has arrived who saved the turtle!” the turtle announced.

The gate swung open. Down the wide stairs came a girl so beautiful that Urashima forgot all his words. Her long black hair shone as if she had just stepped out of a wave, sprigs of white coral gleamed in it, and her silk robe shimmered green and pink, like the sea at dawn.

“Welcome, Urashima Taro,” she said. “I am Otohime, daughter of the Sea King. You took pity on my turtle when nobody was looking and nobody would have praised you. I have waited a long time for a guest like you.”

Urashima bowed low, and when he lifted his head, she was smiling.

A feast was held in the palace. Fish carried the dishes to the guests on plates made of shells, sea horses played on tiny flutes, and the jellyfish glowed so softly that nobody even thought of candles. Then little fish began to whirl in the middle of the hall, red ones, yellow ones, striped ones, and their tails fluttered like silk ribbons. Urashima watched and could not believe that it was not a dream.

Near the end of the feast Otohime asked:

“Urashima, would you like to stay here? Not as a guest, but as my husband?”

Urashima blushed to his ears, but answered at once:

“I would.”

That very evening a wedding was held in the Palace of the Sea King, and the whole sea hummed with music until morning.

The next day the princess led Urashima through the palace.

“There are four windows here,” she said. “There are no windows like them anywhere on earth.”

She slid open the first screen, in the east, and Urashima saw spring. Cherry trees were blooming, pink petals flew on the wind, and birds sang in the branches.

Behind the second screen, in the south, it was summer: green, green leaves, a hot noon, and cicadas, jing-jing-jing, so loud that it tickled his ears.

Behind the third, in the west, autumn was ablaze. The maples stood red as fire, and the leaves fell slowly, as if someone were rocking them in the air.

And behind the fourth, in the north, lay winter. Snow settled softly on the pines, and it was so quiet that Urashima could hear every single snowflake fall.

“How quickly the seasons change here,” he whispered. “It was spring a moment ago, and now it is winter.”

“Everything is a little different here,” answered Otohime, and for some reason she looked away.

The days in the palace drifted by one after another, light as little fish. Urashima strolled with the princess through the coral gardens, listened to the songs of the sea horses, and learned the names of fish he had never seen. Otohime taught him to understand the language of the waves: short and quick for a storm, long and lazy for calm weather. And the turtle carried him over the coral forests, and he laughed there more than in his whole life on the shore. It seemed to him that he had been there only a few days.

Then one morning he woke up and remembered his mother. How she stood on the doorstep and looked out at the sea. He remembered his father mending nets. They did not know where he was! Maybe they were still waiting, looking out for his boat every evening...

From that day Urashima grew sad. He walked in the same gardens, but he no longer saw the flowers.

“What’s wrong?” asked Otohime.

“My parents,” he said quietly. “I left without saying goodbye. Let me go home, just for a little while, only so they know I am alive. And then I will come back.”

The princess was silent for a long time. Then she sighed.

“I cannot keep you. Go.”

She brought a small box, black and lacquered, with golden waves on the lid, tied with a red silk cord.

“Take it with you. This box keeps something that is very dear to you. As long as it stays closed, the road back to me will stay open. But promise me this: never, do you hear, never open it.”

“I promise,” said Urashima, and he pressed the box to his chest.

The same turtle carried him up to the surface and took him toward his home shore. All the way, Urashima did not stop talking for a moment.

“Mother will scold me first,” he laughed. “And then she will feed me rice and cry. And Father will pretend he was not worried at all. I’ll tell them everything, about the palace and the four windows!”

The turtle said nothing. And for some reason she swam very slowly, as if she did not want to arrive.

“Goodbye, Urashima,” she said near the shore, and dived.

Urashima stepped onto the sand and looked around. The shore seemed the same: the same rocks, the same sea. But the pines above the beach were taller than he remembered, and the path to the village ran somewhere else. The houses were unfamiliar. People walked about in odd clothes and stared at him as if he were a foreigner.

By the well a woman was drawing water. Urashima greeted her, told her his name, told her his father’s and mother’s names. The woman only shrugged: she had never heard of them. Two children hid behind her and peered out, mouths hanging open.

He walked to the place where their house should have stood. Grass rustled there. Only grass, and an old stone overgrown with moss.

An old man went by with a bundle of brushwood.

“Grandfather,” Urashima rushed to him, “tell me, where does the family of Urashima Taro live?”

The old man squinted.

“Urashima Taro?” he repeated. “I have heard that name. My grandfather told me about him, and his grandfather told him. They say that three hundred years ago a young man from our village went out to sea to fish and never came back. His parents waited for him a long time. And then they, too, were gone... That was long ago, son. Very long ago.”

And the old man shuffled on.

Urashima stood there and could not move. Three hundred years! And he had thought that only a few days had passed in the palace. That was why the seasons changed so quickly behind the four windows. That was why the princess had looked away.

None of his family was left. No one who would know his face.

He slowly went back to the shore and sat down on the sand. The sea murmured as always: shhhoo, and it rolled back, shhhoo, and it ran up again. Urashima looked at the box in his hands.

He was alone in the whole world. Nobody here knew him. And down under the water Otohime was waiting, and he did not even know how to reach her: however much he called, the turtle did not come back.

“What if the way back is inside?” he thought. “Or at least some answer?”

In that moment he did not remember his promise. His fingers pulled the red cord all by themselves. The lid gave a soft click.

Smoke rose out of the box, violet and light, like sea mist at dawn. It wound around Urashima, touched his face, his hair, his hands, and slowly drifted over the water, toward the place where the palace lay hidden beyond the horizon.

And Urashima suddenly felt how heavy it had become to sit. He looked at his hands, and they were wrinkled and thin. He touched his hair, and it had turned white, like the snow behind the fourth window. A long gray beard lay on his chest.

The box was empty. Now Urashima understood what it had been keeping: his years. Three hundred years that had flown past him while he listened to the sea horses and gazed at the cherry blossoms.

There was no way back anymore.

Old, old Urashima Taro sat on the shore and looked at the sea. The waves ran up to his feet and drew back, and in their murmur he seemed to hear flutes, and the princess’s laughter, and the soft jing-jing-jing of the summer cicadas. He remembered the turtle on the sand, and all of his catch in strangers' hands, and he smiled.

The box was empty. But everything he had seen and loved stayed with him, and no smoke could take that away.