Myth of stork wife

20. The Stork Wife
Once upon a time an honest man who was cutting grass in the hills rescued a stork that had an arrow in its throat. In the autumn a young woman he did not know came to his house and asked to stay and they married. They had nothing with which to celebrate New Year as it approached. The wife said she would do her best to weave something for her husband to take to the feudal lord to sell. He received a lot of money for this and was asked to bring another length of cloth. When he told his wife, she said she was not sure she could weave that much, but she would try. She told her husband not to look into the room until she was finished. He thought that strange and spied anyway. He saw a naked stork plucking the remaining few feathers from her body with her beak and weaving them into the cloth. She reminded him that she had told him not to watch her weave and asked why he had done it. She said that since she had been seen, she could no longer stay with him. She was the stork he had saved and had come to repay her debt of gratitude, but now she had to leave. She flew away completely naked as she spoke. The weaving she had done was known as shokuk6 brocade. Nagano, Kitaazumi-gun