The story of sweets and poison is one of the world’s wonderful children’s stories, collected and composed by Toshio Ozawa. The story of sweets and poison is a tale from old Japanese legends, or more precisely, it’s Japanese myths from ancient times that are taught to Japanese children until the end of the elementary stage. The story is told as follows:
The priest and the three novice monks: Once upon a time, in ancient times, in the past era, in one of the countries, there was a priest and three novice monks living with him in the temple. The priest would take out from the wall cupboard every day a jar containing a type of liquid sweets, eating whatever he wanted without any invitation to the novice monks.
Sweets and poison: One day, they asked him: Oh master, you take out from the wall cupboard daily a jar containing something. What is this thing, I wonder? The priest said smiling: This is blue medicine liquid. If the adults drink it, it’s medicine. If the children drink it, it becomes very strong poison. So if you drink from it at night, you will die. Do you understand?
The clever novice monk: The three novice monks answered: Yes, yes, we understood well, and left his presence. Among them was one clever who waited until they were alone and said: I think that this is sweets, not poison at all. Let’s taste it in some way!
The clever novice monk and his two colleagues’ fear of punishment: One day, the priest went out to supervise some Buddhist rituals. Meanwhile, the clever novice monk invited two of his colleagues and said to them: I think what’s in this jar is sweets, not poison at all. Let’s taste it together!
One of them said: If we do that, we don’t know how the master will get angry and punish us when he returns. No, no, I don’t want. But the clever novice monk answered him: Don’t worry. I have a beautiful way so he won’t get angry and punish us. The two decided that.
The clever novice monk’s plan: Then the three took out the big jar from the wall cupboard and started licking and licking until their bellies were full and they ate everything that was in it. When the priest’s return approached, the three arranged his room and cleaned it well. Then the clever novice took the ink stone (suzuri) which the master rubs his dry ink pen with - the most important thing for the priest - and threw it on the stones of the path in front of the temple gate. It broke and became pieces. He said to his colleague: No problem, this is enough. When the master returns, we’ll all start crying with my signal.
The return of the priest: Not much time passed until the priest master arrived on the stone path in front of the temple. The three novices started wailing and crying with a loud voice. When the priest saw that, he was surprised and asked them: Strange, what’s wrong with you, why are you like this? The clever novice said, crying heavily: I made a mistake while you were away, a terrible accident! The priest said: What did you? Tell me!
Executing the clever plan: The novice said: While we were arranging your room today and cleaning it, I noticed your ink stone was very dirty, so I took it to wash it in the river. But it slipped from my hands in front of the temple gate and broke. I felt I committed something terrible, so I decided to kill myself to apologize to you for that. But I didn’t know how to kill myself! Then I remembered that you used to always tell us: What’s in the jar is blue medicine liquid. If children drink it, they die immediately. So I decided to eat from it to die!
The idea of suicide: Then, his colleagues said to him: If you kill yourself, we will all kill ourselves with you too. But we are three, all of us drank from the blue medicine liquid that’s in the jar, and we couldn’t die. We said if we eat more, we will all die, so we ate everything in the jar completely. And despite that, we haven’t died yet. That’s why we were crying to apologize to you for what we did.
The priest’s forgiveness of the punishment: When the priest heard that, he couldn’t get angry and punish them, even though he wanted to. He understood them and said: Oh, oh… I understand, I understand. The truth is that what’s in the jar is not poison, but it’s sweets. What I told you then was what I said, so you wouldn’t eat it. No matter, no matter, there’s no point in talking about something you ate. The priest finished his speech and forgave the novice monks. And the tale ended there.