High on Mount Ashigara, a boy named Kintaro lived with his mother in a cottage beneath the cedars. He wore a red bib marked with the sign for gold—kin—and carried a little axe.
Little, however, was not a word anyone used for his strength.
Kintaro could lift a boulder that three woodcutters could hardly roll. He could bend a young tree until its leaves tickled the ground. When he stamped his foot, sleepy rabbits sat straight up inside their burrows.
His best friends were the mountain animals. He raced Deer down ferny slopes, climbed pines with Monkey and wrestled Bear on a patch of soft grass.
“No biting,” Kintaro told Bear.
“No tickling,” Bear replied.
Monkey climbed onto a stump to announce the match. Hare waved a broad leaf like a fan. Deer scratched a starting line in the soil.
Bear charged. Kintaro caught him around the middle, spun once and landed beneath him with a tremendous whump.
“I won,” said Bear, sitting on Kintaro.
“I meant to put you there,” came Kintaro’s muffled voice.
They were still arguing when dark clouds rolled over the peak. Rain crashed through the branches. The friends ran towards shelter, but the stream below them had become a foaming river. Its narrow wooden bridge spun away in the flood.
On the far bank, a doe called for her fawn. The fawn trembled beside Kintaro.
Kintaro tested one cedar, then another. He chose a tree growing away from every nest. One swing of his axe cut halfway through the trunk. The second made Monkey’s teeth click. With the third, the cedar leaned.
“Push!” Kintaro shouted.
Bear pressed one shoulder against the trunk. Deer pushed with his antlers. Monkey and Hare pushed mostly because they wanted to say they had.
The tree fell across the river.
Kintaro crawled over first, tying vines between the branches. Bear followed, steadying the trunk with his broad paws. One by one, the animals crossed. The little fawn went last, tucked beneath Kintaro’s arm.
Its mother licked rain from its face.
When the storm passed, everyone returned to the wrestling field. Bear declared that bridge-building counted as a rematch. Monkey declared that it counted as lunch.
None of them noticed the traveller watching from behind a pine. He had come from the capital in the service of the warrior Minamoto no Yorimitsu. He had seen strong men before—but never a laughing boy who could wrestle a bear and build a bridge before supper.
As the traveller left the mountain, Kintaro and Bear began their rematch.
This time Hare made one rule very clear: nobody was allowed to land on the referee.