The Girl In The Butterfly Coat

Once, a long time ago, on one of the islands of Japan, there was a little girl called Chouko who lived with her idle, wicked drunkard stepmother in a house in the forest.

And, one day, Chouko was playing in the woods when she saw some boys who were terrorizing a little butterfly, threatening to tear its wings off and, beating them up with her fists, she drove the boys away.

The little butterfly she had saved was very relieved and said to her, “Oh thank you! I will tell the Empress of the butterflies of your kindness and when she hears how you helped me, I’m sure she will reward you”.

Then the little butterfly flew away.

But, the next day, as Chouko awoke, she discovered a magnificent coat lying across her bed that was covered in brightly coloured butterfly wings and, when she put it on, the butterfly wings all began to flap and glow brightly.

Then the little butterfly she had saved the day before fluttered down upon her bedstead, saying,

“That coat you are wearing is the butterfly coat and is only ever given to friends of the butterflies. It has powerful magic and will always protect you”.

Chouko thanked the little butterfly and then he flapped out of her window.

But, unfortunately, Chouko’s stepmother didn’t like her to own nice things and, when she saw her wearing the butterfly coat, she told her, “Take it off and give it to me. It’s much too good for the likes of you to wear”.

Chouko said she wouldn’t, “No. The butterflies gave me this coat. I won’t take it off”, she said.

And so Chouko’s evil stepmother picked up a stick and said she would beat Chouko until she took off the coat.

But the coat became a suit of armour and when Chouko’s stepmother tried to hit her with the stick it only broke in two.

After that Chouko’s stepmother became determined to get the coat away from her stepdaughter and, running a bath, she told Chouko that she must wash herself and would have to remove the butterfly coat to prevent it from getting ruined.

But Chouko made the coat invisible so that, when she got into the bath and her mother tried to search her room for the coat she couldn’t find it and it only reappeared once Chouko came back into her room .

Chouko’s stepmother wouldn’t give up though, she spent the night lying awake and plotting and the next day she sent Chouko out to the well to fetch water and when Chouko was near the edge of the well, her mother rushed up and pushed her down the well before calling to her,

“I’ll lower the bucket into the well. If you take off the butterfly coat and put it into the bucket then
I’ll pull it up and then, and only then, will I lower the bucket and pull you up”.

Fortunately, thanks to the Butterfly coat which had expanded and become like a soft pillow cushioning her fall, Chouko was not badly hurt but she had no choice but to do as her stepmother wanted and so she waited for the bucket to be lowered into the well and then she took off the butterfly coat and placed it into the bucket not knowing if her evil stepmother would ever keep her word.

And as the wicked Stepmother was pulling the bucket with the butterfly coat in it back up she was cackling and saying, “Ha! You little fool. Now I’ll never pull you up and you’ll stay down there forever”.

But then, to her horror, instead of the butterfly coat, she saw a horrible goblin in the bucket and it leapt out and grabbed hold of her hair.

Screaming, she called out, “Oh, Chouko! Chouko! Help me! Get this creature off of me!”

“Pull me up and I’ll help you”, shouted Chouko from the bottom of the well.

And so Chouko’s stepmother was forced to lower the bucket and pull her up with the horrible creature still clinging to her hair.

But when Chouko re-emerged from the well, the goblin turned back into the butterfly coat and the little girl put it on.

However, Chouko had decided that she could never trust her stepmother again.

“You’re an evil woman and you’ll never stop trying to harm me, will you!”, she shouted at her stepmother.

But Chouko’s stepmother, getting down upon her knees, swore to her that she was sorry for what she had done.

“I’ll prove it to you. I’ll make your favourite food for dinner and then we will be friends again won’t we”, she said in a soft, friendly tone of voice.

And then Chouko’s stepmother went off to the kitchen to prepare dinner for her; an unusual thing because normally it was Chouko that had to cook, as well as do all the other housework, for her stepmother.

But she still did not trust the old woman and she was right not to, because, while she was cooking and stirring her pot the old lady was pouring poisonous herbs into it.

Then, an hour later, her step mother came back out of the kitchen with a big feast she had prepared of rice and noodles and spicy chicken and fish head soup which she laid in front of Chouko.

But, just as she was about to eat some of the fish head soup, her butterfly coat started to flutter its wings again and suddenly the fish heads in the soup began shouting, “Stop, Chouko! Don’t eat this soup”.

Trying to stop the fish from speaking, the stepmother jabbed at them with a knife, yelling, “Shush! What are you saying, you stupid fish, that my cooking isn’t good enough?”.

But then one of the fish heads leapt up and bit the stepmother on the end of her nose and, while she was screaming and trying to pull it off, the other fish heads shouted to Chouko,
“Your Stepmother put poison in this soup to kill you so that she could take your butterfly coat”.

Getting up from the table, Chouko ran out of the house, saying, “I’ll never spend another moment in this house”.

But now Chouko’s stepmother was insane with rage and, picking up her cooking knife, she ran out of the house after her stepdaughter.

“Agggh, you!”, she shouted to Chouko, rushing after her with the knife, “I’ll make soup out of you”.

But as she ran towards Chouko, the butterfly wings upon her coat started to flap again and flap harder than they had ever done before lifting the little girl up into the air and, instead of plunging her knife into her step daughter, the evil old woman only plunged head first down the well and broke her bony old neck.

And the moment that the old woman died, the wicked spirit inside her; the thing that had made her behave so evilly came crawling out of the well, still determined that it would have the butterfly coat
and, seeing the horrible horned gigantic demon coming towards her with its six gargantuan arms and an enormous clawed hand at the end of each one, Chouko was terrified.

But then, suddenly, an enormous shadow was cast over the demon and, looking up, and gasping in awe, both the demon and Chouko saw that the sky was full of millions of butterflies.

“The butterfly coat told us that you were in terrible trouble”, said the little butterfly that Chouko had earlier saved, fluttering down onto the back of her hand, “And the Empress has sent you her entire army”.

Then, like a brightly coloured but mighty Tsunami, the flapping armada of butterflies came crashing down upon the demon and, terrified, he leapt back into the well and didn’t stop falling until he got to hell.

But then, through the forest came a beautiful woman dressed in a long flowing kimono with four arms, each fluttering a large silken fan and she was attended by other lavishly dressed women
and, as she approached, all of the butterflies fell to the ground bowing with respect; even the one
fluttering upon Choukos hand and they looked like a brightly coloured silken carpet on the ground.

It was the Empress of all butterflies and she had come to see Chouko and to ask her if she could adopt her as her daughter and take her back with her to her butterfly palace in the land of eternal Summer.

“You would be a butterfly princess, of course and have two large brightly coloured wings”, she said.

Chouko said there was nothing more in all the world that she would rather do and so, taking the hand of the Empress, they flew off to her butterfly palace where the little girl lived happily ever after.