The One-Legged Ghost

In the rainy season in Japan, colorful umbrellas sprout everywhere, giving the streets a festive atmosphere. The Japanese have an old legend about how the umbrella first came to their country. It was a little boy I named Yoshi who saw it first ― a mysterious one-legged creature that came flying into his village from the other side of the mountain. The villagers thought it was a one-legged ghost until the headman, thinking quickly, announced that it must be a god and that they should build a wooden shrine for it.

One day when Yoshi crept into the shrine to avoid a rainstorm, the god spread out its body, rolled through the shrine door and down to the ground. Yoshi grabbed the god by its leg, and then when the god rose with the wind over his head, Yoshi was amazed to find he was not getting wet.

The villagers rushed out to touch Yoshi's dry clothes. The headman knew he had to think quickly. " This is not a god, but a water-stopping thing," he said. Everyone took turns holding the one-legged former god that day and on every rainy day after that until it wore out. And so they made many more in many colors just like it. And they called each of them a "kasa," which means umbrella.