I needed a break.
I was sitting at my dining table, surrounded by a stack of sophomore essays on The Catcher in the Rye that were making me question my life choices. (If I read one more sentence about Holden being "relatable but whiny," I'm going to scream.) I needed something short, something classic, and something completely different. I saw Japanese Fairy Tales by Yei Theodora Ozaki. One hour and fourteen minutes. Perfect.
I poured a glass of cheap Merlot, put my headphones on to drown out the sound of the L train rattling past our apartment, and hit play.
And then I sighed. Loudly.
My wife Denise looked up from her crossword puzzle. "Bad reader?" she asked.
"The worst," I said.
Ozaki's Folklore Deserves Better
Let's start with the good stuff, because the source material here is actually wonderful. Yei Theodora Ozaki wasn't just translating these stories back in 1908; she was curating them. She took these ancient Japanese folk tales and polished them up for Western audiences.
We're talking about stories like "My Lord Bag of Rice"—which, honestly, is the best title for a hero I've ever heard. (My students would have a field day with that one.) It's a story about a warrior who helps a dragon king. It's got that dreamlike logic that only folklore has, where giant centipedes are the villains and rice bags are infinite.
Then there's "The Story of Urashima Taro," basically the Japanese spiritual successor to Rip Van Winkle, except it involves a sea turtle and an underwater palace. Tragic and beautiful. The prose deserves to be savored—it has that old-world cadence that usually makes me want to pause the dishes and just listen.
Usually.
The Performance (Or Lack Thereof)
Here is where it all falls apart.
The narrator, Michael Scott, commits the cardinal sin of audiobook narration: he just... reads.
I talk about this with my AP English class all the time. Punctuation isn't just a rule; it's a breath. It's an instruction on how to feel. Great narrators interpret the text. They act. They find the rhythm the author intended.
This narration? It felt like when I call on a student who hasn't done the reading, and they're just pronouncing words one after another to get it over with. I've heard Michael Scott do better work—War of the Worlds had more energy to it, though still not what I'd call inspired. Here it's monotone. Flat. There's no distinction between the narrator's voice and the characters' voices. The dragon king sounds exactly like the narrator, who sounds exactly like someone reading a grocery list.
I tried to stick with it. I really did. I wanted to get lost in the story of the "Tongue-Cut Sparrow" (another metal title, by the way). But about ten minutes in, I found myself zoning out—literally staring at a typo in a student's essay, realizing I hadn't heard a word of the audio for the last two paragraphs.
One listener online said they lasted three minutes before deleting it. I made it through the whole hour, but mostly out of stubbornness. And maybe because my hands were covered in red ink and I didn't want to touch my phone.
Why These Stories Still Matter
Look, I'm a huge advocate for audiobooks. They saved my reading life. But this specific production is a reminder of why the human element matters so much. You can't just feed text into a microphone.
Ozaki's translations are charming—gentle and weird in that specific way folklore is weird. Mild violence, moral lessons, talking animals. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland has that same dreamlike strangeness, though Carroll's nonsense runs wilder than Ozaki's moral framework. These tales offer a glimpse into Meiji-era attempts to share Japanese culture with the West. Historically fascinating stuff.
But the audio quality—not the technical sound, which is fine, but the soul of it—is nonexistent. It turns what should be a magical journey into a lecture.
The Verdict
If you want to experience these stories—and you should—go find the text. It's in the public domain. Read "My Lord Bag of Rice" out loud to your kids, or just to yourself. Put some feeling into it. Do the voices.
You'll do a better job than this audiobook did.
Who should listen: Honestly? Skip this version. If you're a folklore enthusiast or parent looking for bedtime stories with cultural depth, grab the free text instead and perform it yourself.
(And if you're one of my students reading this: No, you can't use this review as a source for your folklore project. Read the actual book.)
