Once a crab was walking along sideways when she found a riceball someone had dropped. Riceballs were her favorite food. She picked up her find with her large pincer to take home to her family. As she did, a monkey who was picking lice in the top of a high persimmon tree noticed the crab down below. The monkey ate the lice, of course, but mostly he enjoyed popping them, just in case it caused the lice pain.

For the same reason, when he saw the happy crab, he wanted her riceball even though he had already filled up on persimmons.

"Kani, Kani!" he called, "Do you want to trade your riceball for a persimmon?"

"Okay," the crab replied.

That surprised the monkey. "I'm almost out of persimmons," he said. "Will you take a persimmon seed instead?"

"Okay," the crab replied.

Thinking that the crab was too stupid to be any fun, the monkey slid down the tree and picked off a persimmon seed that was stuck in the hair of his cheek. He dropped it in front of the crab, stuffed her riceball in his mouth, then ran to sit on a rock and play with the lice some more.

"Thank you, Saru-don," the crab called to him. She took the seed back to her hole and planted it out in front. The crab dunged it about with dung, and every day she watered and weeded the spot. Before long a sprout popped up, and it grew taller and stronger every week.

One spring after the sprout had become a tree, it was covered with blossoms, and a bee friend of the crab' s pollinated them on an afternoon when he wasn't busy. When the blossoms fell they left behind the start of fruit that grew into shiny green balls, and by late fall many of them had become delicious orange persimmons.

It was time to start picking, and the crab realized she had a problem-- the fruit was far beyond the reach of her pincers. Fortunately the monkey came by just them.

"Saru-don, Saru-don! Do you remember the seed you traded for a riceball? It's grown now, and the fruit is ripe. Will you pick some for me?"

The monkey quickly scampered up the tree, and stuffed a juicy red persimmon in his mouth. "Almost ready," he called down, and stuffed in two or three more. "These aren't bad," he said as he moved up to the next branch-- "Delicious, in fact." He said everything except "thank you," but it was hard to hear his words through the mush of persimmons.

As the monkey moved over to the left side of the tree, the crab called up to him, "Saru-don, please save me one!"

"Don't nag so much," the monkey growled back. He reached up for a hard, shiny, green persimmon, and threw it down so straight and fast that it cracked the poor crab's carapace.

The bee found her there at the foot of the persimmon tree. He helped her back to her home, then flew off to find the mortar.

"Usu-don, Usu-don, the monkey has injured the crab!" The mortar, who had been cut from a tree stump years before, rolled out of the kitchen, and they hurried back to the crab's home, but on the way they met the chestnut.

"Kuri-don, Kuri-don, the monkey has injured the crab!"

After the three friends had fed the children and put them to bed and had changed the crab's dressing, the crab recovered enough energy to tell them the whole story. The mortar advised her not to get too excited, and brought another cool cloth to help her get to sleep.

The friends talked as they watched over the crab, and they became angrier and angrier.

"This monkey is a real menace, Usu-don," the chestnut said. "Someone has to do something."

"There is no one to do it but us, Kuri-don," the mortar replied.

"He runs fast, and is clever in a way," the bee said.

"That's right, Hachi-don. We will have to find him when he is not expecting anything."

The bee flew off a little before dawn, leaving the others to watch over the crab. He returned late in the morning and reported that the monkey had awakened and left his house. The three left the crab in the care of her three sons, and hurried to the monkey's home.

"I'll wait here in the back of the firepit," the chestnut said. "Perhaps you could wait in the water barrel, Hachi-don."

The mortar nodded his approval, and silently climbed up into the eaves.

Finally, late in the afternoon, the monkey returned. He picked up the fire tube and puffed on the coals until they began to glow. The chestnut found himself growing hotter and hotter as he thought about the monkey's coarseness, and finally he burst with rage and flew out of the firepit, striking the monkey in the eye with great force and great heat.

Howling with pain, the monkey leaped to the water barrel to cool his burn. As soon as he removed the lid, the bee buzzed out and stung his nose. The monkey, clever as he was, figured out that something unusual was happening, and rushed to the door to escape.

Just then, the heavy mortar dropped from the eaves and pinned the monkey to the dirt floor of the entryway. They remained there while the chestnut explained, calmly but at great length, how angry everyone was about the monkey's wild deeds.

In the end, the monkey went with the others back to the crab's home. They stopped by the persimmon tree and the monkey, accompanied by the bee, climbed up and selected four shiny, ripe, orange persimmons.

Once inside, the monkey pushed the fruit forward as he bowed and apologized. "Kani-san, Kani-san. I'm sorry for the inconvenience I have caused you, and I will make certain that nothing of the kind happens again."

After that, the monkey visited several times each fall to pick persimmons for the crab and her family. The rest of the year he stayed far away.