Kabu is a turnip farmer's son who collects ukiyo-e prints of legendary heroes and reads them the way other kids read comic books, which means he has spent most of his life with his head somewhere other than Furumi. Kabocha is the blacksmith's daughter, sharper than him and more practical, and lately being lined up to take over her father's forge. When a blight starts eating Furumi's crops, Kabu takes an idea straight out of one of his prints: go and ask the Crow Witch, who is supposed to live in the woods at the edge of town. Kabocha tells him there's no such witch. He sings her through every hero he can name who saved a village with nothing more than nerve, and the logic of the song is that if they could do it, it can't be that hard.
The witch is real, and closer than the stories suggested. She hears them out and answers with an upbeat song about everyone who has come to her before them looking for a magical fix, and what each of them paid for it. It's a fair warning, delivered so cheerfully that it doesn't land as one. Then she gives them a golden sunflower whose seeds can sustain the whole village: one seed satisfies a person for an entire day, and each person may take only one.
Kabu brings the flower home and becomes the keeper of the bargain, which is the first time in his life the whole village has looked at him the way the people in his prints get looked at. The townsfolk are sceptical until the first seed works, and then it turns out the seeds are delicious. For a few days everything is orderly. Everyone lines up each morning for their single seed and Kabu hands them out.
It doesn't stay orderly. People get restless and less satisfied, and the restlessness finds a target in the kid holding the flower: who decided he was in charge, and why should he get to say who eats? Every night the flower drops whatever seeds are left unclaimed. Kabu, who wanted to be the hero and is finding out that being the hero mostly means being the one people are annoyed with, starts to feel the job slipping away from him.
One night, while he's guarding the flower, a young girl asks for a second seed. It's going to drop them all tonight anyway, she says, and they'll just go to waste. It sounds reasonable, and Kabu would very much like to still be liked in the morning, so he gives it to her. No sooner has she eaten it than the sky fills with crows, and the Crow Witch arrives to tell Furumi that it has failed.
She raises the sunflower into the air. It pulses with a magic nobody in the square understands and then bursts into a million pieces that fly off across the sky in every direction. One of them hits Kabu, and his head turns into a turnip.
In the aftermath, the village is back where it started, with no flower and a blight that is still spreading. Kabu and Kabocha decide the only thing to do is find the scattered seeds, return them to the witch, and ask her forgiveness, and maybe she'll turn Kabu's head back to normal while she's at it. Kabocha could stay and take over the forge. She chooses the road. Kabu takes his father's scythe and heads out of town into the woods, the leaves on top of his head bouncing with every step.
OPEN THE BEAT SHEET ▼
- 1Furumi's crops are failing to a blight. Kabu, who collects ukiyo-e prints of legendary heroes and reads them like comic books, sings Kabocha the stories of everyone who's ever saved a village: if they could do it, how hard could it be? Kabocha thinks the Crow Witch is a story told to keep children out of the woods.
- 2The witch is real. She hears them out, then sings them a cheerful warning about the people who came to her before them asking for magic, and everything they got that they didn't ask for. Then she gives them a golden sunflower anyway: one seed will satisfy a person for an entire day, and each person may take only one.
- 3Kabu brings the flower home and becomes the keeper of the bargain. The village is sceptical right up until the first seed works, and then it turns out the seeds are delicious. Everyone lines up for their one seed each morning, and Kabu is the boy who saved Furumi.
- 4TURNING POINT — The order holds for a few days. Then people get restless and less satisfied, and the questions start: who put Kabu in charge, and why does a kid get to decide who eats? Every night the flower drops the seeds nobody claimed, and every morning they're gone.
- 5TURNING POINT — Late one night, while Kabu is guarding the flower, a young girl asks him for a second seed. The flower is going to drop them anyway, she says, and they'll only go to waste. Kabu wants very badly to still be the hero by morning. He gives her one.
- 6CRISIS — A flurry of crows fills the sky over the square. The Crow Witch arrives and tells the whole village that it has failed.
- 7TURNING POINT — She raises the sunflower into the air, where it pulses with magic and bursts into a million pieces that scatter across the sky. One of them strikes Kabu, and his head becomes a turnip.
- 8TURNING POINT — Furumi is back where it started, with no flower and a blight that is still spreading. Kabu and Kabocha decide the only thing left is to find the scattered seeds, bring them back to the witch to ask for forgiveness, and maybe get Kabu's head back while they're at it.
- 9CRISIS — Kabu takes his father's scythe from the shed and walks out of town into the woods, with Kabocha a step behind him.
SUPPORTING CASTKenta · Daisuke▼
Nagano is Japan's fifth-largest prefecture by area and one of only eight landlocked ones, a mountain-bound world of alpine passes, deep valleys, and isolated post towns strung along ancient trade routes. Winters sealed the passes for months at a stretch, and a village this far from the coast or the capital learned to solve its own problems, because nobody was coming to solve them first.
The region carries an old story about the cost of that kind of isolation. Obasute, a real valley near Chikuma, takes its name from a legend in which a village too poor to feed everyone carried its elderly up the mountain during a famine and left them there. The same slope has been one of Japan's most celebrated moon-viewing spots since the Heian era, written about for how the harvest moon sits over the rice terraces below. The postcard and the famine sit on top of each other, and only one of them made it onto the postcard.
We didn't have to invent a village that turns to a stranger in the woods instead of each other when the crops fail. Nagano had a few centuries' head start on that story already. The crow witch, per the episode's geography, lives in the mountain foothills, right at the edge of where the human world becomes something else.
