These days, I almost never feel “free time.” At home I have many things to do, and I can easily use my phone or tablet. I also have many books I want to read. So I do not feel “bored.”

But in the past, I had a lot of free time. It was during my summer vacation in elementary school.

I woke up at the same time as my parents, and until they came home, I had almost nothing to do. I played in the fields, played in the river (it feels dangerous now), or did homework I did not want to do.

In the morning, I usually watched reruns of old anime. Dragon Ball, Ikkyu-san, Jarinko Chie, and Manga Nihon Mukashibanashi. I had watched them many times, so it felt like doing a task. That “too much free time” feels nostalgic now.

I read kousuke Hasumi’s book Why Was Momotaro Born from a Peach?

I found many simple questions about old stories that I could not answer, even though I thought I knew them well. I often said, “Oh, I didn’t know that.”

When I think about it, it is amazing that almost everyone in Japan knows stories like Momotaro and Urashima Taro. We study The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter in junior high school, but we already know the story before that.

When I was a child, Manga Nihon Mukashibanashi was on TV, so stories were part of daily life. But even now, without that show, children still know Momotaro. How do they learn it? Maybe through picture books or kamishibai.

It is wonderful that the same stories are shared for such a long time.

One thing that surprised me in the book was this: white rabbits do not exist in nature. I had never thought about it.

In stories, rabbits are often white. But wild white rabbits are albino and cannot survive easily.

So for people long ago, a white rabbit was a “rare color,” and it looked like a creature from another world.

In Japanese stories, white animals—white foxes, white snakes, white horses, white cranes—are special. White is a color close to gods or the spirit world. The white rabbit is part of this group.

Another interesting point was the relationship between wolves and shrines.

• People put dried fish (okoze) at shrines to call wolves
• Wolves left their smell on stones at the shrine
• People took these stones home to keep deer and boars away
• The smell lasted only one year, so they got a new stone every year
• This became the custom of getting new charms or talismans once a year

This shows how daily life and religion were connected.

Wolves were messengers of the mountain god, and they also protected crops. People understood nature and used its power in their lives. This knowledge became part of shrine customs.

Old stories and myths were close to everyday life.

When we read these stories, we touch the feelings and lives of people from long ago. And these stories become the base of our culture.