The festival of ‘O-tsukimi’ is the moon viewing festival based on the Japanese Folk Tale of ‘The rabbit in the Moon’. This folk tale is the reason Japanese people believe that rabbits lived on the moon. Even today in Japan, the moon is pictured with the scene of a rabbit or rabbits making ‘Mochi’- pounded rice cakes.
The story of ‘The rabbit in the Moon’ is about the Old Man of the Moon, who one day looked down into a big forest on Earth and saw a rabbit, a monkey and a fox sitting together around a fire. They were friends. Deciding to find out which of the three is the kindest, the man goes down to Earth and changes himself into a beggar. He asks the three friends to help him as he is very hungry. Hearing this they all run off to find him some food. The monkey brings back a lot of fruit while the fox brings back a big fish.
The rabbit, however, is unable to find any food for the man, and so asks the monkey to gather some firewood and the fox to build a big fire with the wood. Once the fire burned bright, the rabbit explained to the beggar that he didn’t have anything to give him, so he would put himself in the fire, and when he is cooked, the beggar could eat him. Just before the rabbit jumped into the fire the beggar turned back into the Old Man of the Moon and told the rabbit that he was very kind, and that he shouldn’t do anything to harm himself. So, he decides that the rabbit is the kindest of the three, and he takes him back to the moon to live with him.