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The Tanuki-Kettle

by Eugie Foster

When Hisa was a baby, her mother called in a soothsayer to cast her daughter’s horoscope. The old woman pulled out her astrology charts and consulted them while incense turned the air blue with perfumed smoke. That day, the fortuneteller had a headache and was in a black mood. Though Hisa’s mother brought her a cup of hot, green tea and fanned her sweating brow, the old woman continued to scowl.

“This child will be too bold for her own good,” the fortuneteller grumbled.

“Is there nothing I can do?” asked Hisa’s distraught mother. “I could hire tutors to teach her the folly of brashness.”

“That is not sufficient.”  The soothsayer’s eyes lit upon the brimming teapot. “She must grow up to be a lowly tea girl.”

Hisa’s mother wanted, above all, for her daughter to have a joyful and serene life, as befitting a devout follower of Buddha. Did not the teachings of Buddha extol the virtues of poverty and humility? Hisa’s mother bowed her head to fate. If the cosmos wished her daughter to be a tea girl, so be it. She bundled Hisa in the poorest swaddling she could find, purchased a teahouse in a humble village, and took up residence there. She raised her daughter to be thoughtful and kind, and above all to understand that every moment presents an opportunity to act, and that these choices determine one’s happiness.

When Hisa’s mother caught the lung cough and passed on to her next life, Hisa took charge of the teahouse. When a new landowner moved into the village and raised everyone’s taxes, she accepted it with philosophic grace. She did, however, wish the new landowner, Lord Seiichi, would be more considerate. He brought his hunting parties thundering through the narrow streets of the village at all hours, day and night, whooping fit to awaken the ancestral spirits. The rumble of hoofs knocked shelves awry on the walls, and pots and pans free from their hooks.

One dawn, when Hisa was preparing for her busy day, Lord Seiichi took his hunters racing past in the street outside the teahouse. Their commotion startled Hisa so much that she dropped the copper kettle she was scouring. A great gash appeared in the lid as the kettle bumped and rolled over the hard, stone floor.

“Oh, pickled plums!”  Hisa exclaimed. As everyone knew, an imperfect teakettle brewed imperfect tea. She examined the rent in the metal. It was quite wide.

Hisa glowered. Enough was enough. She would petition Lord Seiichi to cease the thoughtless ruckus and to compensate her for her loss.

As she opened the door, Hisa was surprised to see an iron kettle sitting on her step. It had a large, round belly and four stumpy legs. The spout was wide and curved like a fox’s mouth with two round, black eyes above it. And most curious, a pair of pointed triangles jutted from the top, exactly like a pair of ears.

“What an unusual teakettle.”  Hisa looked, but there was no one about.

She set aside her broken pot and brought the new, iron one inside. She poured sweet, cool water into it. Where her old kettle took eight dippers of water, this new one required a full twelve to fill.

Hisa stoked the fire high and lifted the kettle to the hook.

“Mistress, I thank you for the drink, but please don’t put me on the fire.”

Hisa spun around, sloshing water on the floor. “Who said that?”

“It was I, mistress. The teakettle.”

Hisa stared at the iron pot in her hands. “Teakettles do not talk.”

“I’m only pretending to be a teakettle.”

“What are you when you’re not frightening tea girls? A tengu demon, perhaps?”

“Oh no. Nothing like that. I’m just a tanuki.”

Hisa laughed. “A raccoon dog? My new teakettle is a raccoon dog? How on earth did you end up like this?”

“Well, mistress, a teakettle is round with a large belly, and so are tanuki, so it seemed an easy shape to take. I was in a hurry, you see.”

With gentle consideration, Hisa set the tanuki-kettle down. “But why did you need to change shape?”

“Ah.”  The tanuki-kettle seemed to droop. The high ears sagged, and the muzzle bowed, spilling a trickle of water. “I was chasing chickens in the lord’s courtyard. I only do it for sport, you understand. I didn’t mean any harm. But Lord Seiichi did not find my choice of recreation amusing. He assembled his hunters to chase me. In order to escape, I changed my shape. Tanuki are quite good at that. But please, good mistress, don’t put me on the stove. It’s very hot, and I’ll be burned.”

Hisa giggled at the tanuki-kettle’s anxious tone. “How will I make tea, then? Besides, you should not chase chickens. It distresses them, and does not the Buddha teach us to cause no suffering? Do you not think it fitting to suffer my cook fire as reparation for your naughty deed?”

“Oh, please, mistress!”

“I’m teasing you, Tanuki. Of course I won’t put you on the stove.”  She retrieved her copper kettle. “I can use this one. I will simply have to tell my patrons what happened and charge them half my usual fee.” She poured water into the broken kettle and set it on the fire.

The tanuki-kettle shuddered.

“Why don’t you turn back into a tanuki, if the fire troubles you so?” asked Hisa.

“I can’t. I can only change my shape at night. While the sun promenades in the sky, I’m stuck in whatever form I took when the cock crowed.”

Hisa covered her smile with her hand, not wishing to offend the tanuki-kettle. “Is it so terrible being a teakettle?”

“I cannot run or jump, mistress. And I have a fearsome itch behind my left ear.”

Hisa, struggling to maintain a solemn expression, scrubbed behind the teakettle’s ears. “Is that better?”

The tanuki-kettle sighed. “May good fortune be yours forever, mistress.”

Steam began to billow in clouds and streamers from the torn copper lid on the stove. Hisa scritched the tanuki-kettle one last time before lifting the hot copper kettle and pouring boiling water into serving pots filled with tea leaves.

Swirling a sip into a cup, she tasted it. “Bitter, as I feared,” Hisa said. “I hope my customers will be charitable.”  She set the pots on a tray.

“Wait, mistress. I can help.”

“You are volunteering to go on the fire?”

The tanuki humphed, and its mouth seamed shut.

Hisa was instantly contrite. “I’m sorry for teasing you. Please tell me how you can help.”

“I have already done it.”

“What?”

“I’m not telling, but you will thank me later.”

The tanuki-kettle refused to speak another word, no matter how Hisa cajoled and wheedled. She even scrubbed its iron ear again, and although one eye fluttered closed in pleasure, not a single word passed through its spout.

“I cannot spend my morning beseeching a kettle,” Hisa said at last. She picked up her tray and went out to her thirsty customers.

First was Kisho, the fisherman.

“I’m very sorry,” Hisa said. “My teakettle broke this morning, so the tea is bitter. But to make up for it, I will only charge you half price.”

Kisho, who was not known for his cheerful disposition, frowned and accepted the cup she offered. He took a cautious sip, and a magnificent smile spread over his face.

“That is quite a joke you played, Hisa! To make me expect bitter tea, and to serve me this kingly silver leaf!”  He slipped several shu on her tray, double the usual charge. “Keep it coming, eh?”

Perplexed, Hisa went over to Ryo, the tailor, and Haru, the goatkeeper. She served them tea with her apologies, and again, they, too, exclaimed it was the best, sweetest, and most delicious tea they had ever had. Haru gave her an extra shu, and Ryo, not to be outdone, gave her two extra.

Hisa skipped back into the kitchen. “Tanuki-kettle! Whatever it was you did, thank you!”  And she kissed the kettle on its cool, iron ear.

“I told you, you’d thank me.”  Despite the satisfied words, the tanuki-kettle sounded shy. For a moment, the gray iron took on a faint, pinkish cast.

Hisa wanted to stay and question the tanuki-kettle, but her customers clamored for her. At the end of the morning, her face flushed from running to and fro and her apron pockets bulging with money, Hisa plopped down in the kitchen.

“Goodness. I don’t think I’ve ever had such a busy day. It seems everyone from the cart drivers to the silk weavers came in to sample your tea!”

The tanuki-kettle regarded her with shining eyes. “Hisa, have you ever wanted to be other than a humble tea girl? I have a little magic–”

Hisa patted the tanuki-kettle on its round belly. “Do not squander more miracles on me. I am perfectly happy. I would not wish my life otherwise.”

“Is there nothing you desire?”

Hisa paused. “Well, I confess I am lonely sometimes, but that is not something tanuki magic can fix.”

Just then, the little chime over the teahouse door rang, announcing the arrival of customers. Hisa picked up her tray and ran out to greet them. She didn’t have a moment to catch her breath until the sun had turned away to allow Lady Moon to unveil her face. When she returned to the kitchen, the tanuki-kettle was gone.

“Ah, my friend,” Hisa said. “I would like to have seen you in your natural shape. I hope you are jumping, running, and scratching to your heart’s joy.”

Exhausted, Hisa lay down on her tatami mat and closed her eyes.

She was awakened by the rumble of hoofs. The vibrations grew so fierce, her broken copper kettle fell off its shelf and cracked its base.

“Scorched rice cakes!” Hisa cried. “Now it can’t even hold water!”

She stalked to the door and flung it open. Lord Seiichi would hear her grievance. Before she could take a step, a flurry of russet fur streaked at her.

“Mistress, mistress, save me!”

Hisa recognized the tanuki’s voice and spread wide her arms. The raccoon dog sprang, and as it hurtled through the air, its four legs stiffened. Its coat became sleek and hard, and its tail fused to its back.

“Oof.”  Hisa caught the tanuki-kettle in her arms and staggered back.

“Miss! You! Tea girl!”

With her arms wrapped around the kettle, Hisa turned. It was not the landowner who led the hunt, but his son, Akio. His face was angry and red as he swung off his horse.

“Give me that tanuki,” he demanded. “It has been terrorizing my father’s chickens.”

Hisa raised an eyebrow. “This is a teakettle. Teakettles do not chase chickens.”  She jabbed the tanuki-kettle with a stern finger. “Do they?”

The tanuki-kettle uttered a tiny, apologetic whimper.

“It is a magical raccoon dog,” the landowner’s son said. “It can change shape.”

“What silliness. It is my new teakettle. I had to acquire a new one because you and your gang of ruffians,” and she waved her hand at Akio, “keep charging up and down the street when decent people are trying to sleep or make a living! Because of you, I dropped my old copper kettle yesterday, and the lid broke.”

Hisa shook her finger, and the landowner’s son, taken aback, retreated.

“Then, this morning,” Hisa continued, “your din caused my already-broken kettle to fall off the shelf and crack so it can no longer hold water.”

Akio fell back another step.

“And now you want to steal my new kettle?”

Akio’s eyes grew wide as plates. “I–I did not realize–”

“Of course you didn’t. All you care about is galloping about, chasing helpless raccoon dogs! And when you cannot catch them, you turn on innocent teakettles!”

The tanuki-kettle squirmed guiltily in her arms. Hisa thumped it with her finger, and it stilled.

“Let me make amends,” said Akio. “I did not realize the huntsmen were such a nuisance.”

Hisa, who had expected argument and blustering, stopped short. “You’re apologizing?”

“The Buddha has expounded on the importance of reflecting before, during, and after performing an action. Since I have neglected to reflect before and during my actions, it behooves me to at least consider them afterward.”

Until that moment, Hisa had not noticed how Akio’s eyes sparkled with intelligence and good humor, nor how strong and straight he stood.

“The Buddha is wise,” she agreed. “Would you like to discuss this over tea?”

Akio bowed. “I would be honored.”

Of course, when Hisa realized she needed to heat water and the only kettle was the tanuki, she hesitated. “Actually, I have not, um, properly tempered this kettle. Would you care for some rice wine instead?”

Akio grinned. “It is far too early for wine. Come, this is a teahouse. Let us have tea.”

Hisa had no intention of setting the poor tanuki on the stove, but at the same time, if she didn’t, Akio would surely wonder. She glanced down to see the tanuki-kettle close one eye in a conspiratorial wink. The next moment, a tendril of fragrant steam issued from the spout.

Hisa felt a grin tugging her lips. To hide it, she turned away to set a pair of cups on a tray and poured a stream of the most delicate, perfumed chrysanthemum tea.

Akio took a sip. His face softened into lines of delight. “This is most wondrous tea.”

Hisa lowered her eyes modestly and sipped. Indeed it was delicious, the finest tea she had ever tasted.

“Any tanuki, or tanuki-kettle, that can brew such wonderful tea can chase my father’s chickens whenever it likes.”  Akio bent low so he was eye to eye with the tanuki-kettle. “Although it would probably be best if such a tanuki restrained itself to times when my father was not at home.”

The tanuki-kettle blushed. “I’m sorry, master. I promised Hisa I would leave your chickens alone, for the Buddha frowns upon such indulgence. But it was the only way I could think of you meeting her.”

Akio choked on his tea. When he had finished coughing (and after Hisa had thumped him several times on the back), he stared at the tanuki-kettle.

“It spoke!”

“Of course it spoke.”  Hisa poured herself another cup of tea. “It is not a rude tanuki-kettle, just a mischievous one.”

Akio began to chuckle. His chuckles turned to guffaws. Soon his laughter belled throughout the teahouse.

“I have never met as bold and interesting a person as you, Hisa,” he said, wiping tears of merriment from his eyes. “May I visit you again?”

Hisa felt her heart somersault in her chest. “Of course.”

Akio called on Hisa every day. He made sure the huntsmen stopped shouting and galloping through the streets and he also cautioned them to never, ever harm a tanuki. The tanuki, for his part, stopped distressing the chickens.

In good time, Hisa asked Akio if he would like to wed her. Akio, who had been waiting for just the right moment to propose, agreed–when he could find his voice again. At their wedding, instead of sake, they served the most superb tea anyone had ever tasted. And if the guests noticed the teakettle winking or spilling tea as it whispered to the bride or groom, they were too polite to comment.

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Host Commentary

…aaaaand welcome back. That was “The Tanuki-Kettle” by Eugie Foster, and if you enjoyed that then we also ran “Black Swan, White Swan” as episode 184, and the flash story “When Shakko Did Not Lie” as Miniature 45. There’s also seven stories on Escape Pod, and I would 1000% recommend the previously mentioned “Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast” as just a remarkable piece of invention and story, honestly one of the best ever written; ten stories on PseudoPod, going back to episode four there, and including “When It Ends, He Catches Her”; and when you’ve finished all that, there’s still two more stories on Cast of Wonders. And her website, eugiefoster.com for even more links.

I’ve gone round in circles on this outro, because the world has ground me down of late, and it is hard not to be jaded and cynical about, well, everything. The hate, the cruelty, the weaponised misery. I hate it, and would very much like a refund. But that is, really, the core of this story, for me, and the core of the contemporary problem: we’re all so exhausted, and have been burned so many times, we don’t have it left in us to talk any more. Particularly, I think, in US politics, where the Republicans and Fox News and all that seem to have gotten it into their heads that the Democrats are going to destroy America—because they let a black man be president, I guess, oh no—and so therefore any action against them is completely justified, no matter how undemocratic or violent or immoral, and anything the Democrats say is a lie and a trap so you don’t need to listen to it or engage with it, and there’s basically no good faith left. How can you run a democracy like that? And the UK, of course, despite being the older democracy, the nation that once had a reputation for seriousness and restraint, is these days cast in the role of the starstruck younger sibling idolising and imitating their big brother, and so that toxicity is bleeding through over here, as evidenced by—and I don’t think I can name it more succinctly than this—the culture war bullshit.

To be clear, this is not some “they take the low road, we take the high road” nonsense I’m building towards here, because I’ve spent the best part of two decades watching the left reach across the aisle to try and compromise and all it’s done is drag the Overton window rightwards. The Democrats win in a landslide, they try and govern in a bipartisan compromise: the Republicans win by a whisker and they rule like fucking god-kings. Right now I’m watching, yet again, UK Labour try to defeat the rising threat of the Reform party, Nigel Farage of Toad Hall and all his toadies, by allowing them to beg the question on immigration: by allowing them, yet again, to set the terms of the argument and engage on their chosen battlefield, as if the people tempted by the far-right can be mollified with just the right amount of racism, transphobia and cruelty. Which hasn’t worked, ever, at all, and yet somehow the received wisdom is that next time will do the trick! Instead of ever thinking hang on a minute, these are a bunch of barely-vetted randos and chancers with no idea what it takes to actually run anything and we’re the goddamned government of the United Kingdom, maybe we have it in our gift to steer the bloody conversation and offer a compelling alternative narrative from our own principles that stands in opposition to this reactionary guff without acknowledging and thus legitimising it!

Though of course, that would require the current incarnation of UK Labour to have some principles, which they don’t, they just have focus groups. Who are inevitably swayed by a media landscape shaped by whatever bollocks Farage is spouting this week. Anyway.

Maybe I’m romanticising politics of the past when I feel like there were always disagreements on the best way to run a country, sure, but there was at least a recognition that everyone in the room was working for the best of the country, and all that we disagreed on was the path to take. Now, though, we can’t even take that for granted.

And what I wish could be common again, and what I miss in my own set of beliefs, is the idea that other people are, at heart, fundamentally decent. Willing to listen, and accept fault, and change. Willing to help others when they need it, willing to offer the benefit of the doubt and greet others with kindness not suspicion. And I know that all I have to do to believe this again is choose to believe it, but it takes such a groundswell of emotional energy to maintain it in the face of, well, everything going on right now. It takes courage to be kind, bravery to believe the best of others, and to make yourself vulnerable over and over to being disappointed, taken advantage of, mocked. But hope is not a childish thing to be put away in favour of cynicism; hope is not a fragile wisp; hope is the thing that stands up again after being knocked down, wipes away the snot and blood and goes again; hope is the resilient, stubborn thing that keeps fighting even when it would be easier to surrender to cynicism. Hope is what holds the door open to change when it would be easier to close it against the world and bunker down. Cynicism is cowardice. Kindness is courage.

I don’t know when I, we, any of us, will have the time and space to rekindle that flame and guard it once more. I have my suspicions that a large part of how things are these days—do you remember, before the internet, when companies couldn’t ask you to fill out a million online forms for everything but had to do their own bureaucracy? I do!—a lot how things are these days is to deliberately keep us busy, overwhelmed, and exhausted, such that we have no fight in us, such that we latch on to the first simple explanation offered to us for how to escape this trap and never even give it the thirty seconds of thought it takes to see through some of the accusations and proposals floated for which out-group is to blame and how to solve it—never have those thirty seconds in the first place.

And I’m starting to think that the answer is not to keep fighting on terms and battlegrounds defined by others—as Toni Morrison said, “the very serious function of racism is distraction”—but simply to ignore their noise, starve their stupidity of oxygen, and reclaim that time to heal ourselves, and consider our own ideas and approaches with no regard to whatever nonsense is being spouted by others.

Which is to say, right now in 2025 the truly fantastical part of this tale to me was the idea that someone would listen the first time they were told they were harming others and change their behaviour in response. I’d very much like to try the tea, too, though.