A Summary of "The Lucky Tea Kettle"

There once was a badger that was playing on Mt. Fuji and carelessly walked into a trap and squealed as loud as he could. A tinker heard the badger and rescued him. Then he was asking how to repay him and the tinker said he didn’t need to be repaid, as the tinker was leaving the badger used his magical power and turned into an ornamented tea-kettle, and hopped into the tinker’s basket and the tinker didn’t notice.


When he got home his wife took the basket off his back and looked inside and saw the tea kettle. She asked the tinker where he got it. He said he didn’t know. Then they thought of what to do with it, finally they came to the conclusion of offering it in the temple for a tea ceremony. The priest took the tea kettle and decided it would be good for a tea ceremony. That night while the priest was preparing the tea, he placed the tea kettle over the fire. Then it jumped off yelling “HOT, HOT, HOT.”

Then everyone ran for their lives because they thought it was bewitched by a ghost. The priest begged for the tinker to take the tea kettle back, the tinker accepted to do this and as they were about to fall asleep the tinker placed the tea kettle beside his pillow. The next morning he awoke to a voice saying “Tinker San, Tinker San, Wake Up” and he saw the whiskery face of his badger friend, and he described his plan that the tinker set up a show booth for him and he could be “The Worlds Only Living Tea-Kettle”

The next day he set to work and the news spread like a wildfire. Then the time came for the first performance. The badger performed an entertaining dance and an amazing tightrope act.

Eventually he became very fond of the badger and said that he had seemed to have become tired, so the badger returned to his tea kettle form and was reoffered to the temple and was retaken by the priest and the tinker and his wife lived happily ever-after.