Status Updates From Japanese Fairy Tales

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The Story of Yamato-Takeru is very different here than the saga in the Kojiki, being more of a childish fairy tale of fights against robbers and bandits rather than the moving saga of an anti-hero who is doomed to a life of combat by virtue of his excess strength and brutal character.

The White Hare of Inaba, though it sounds like a simple animistic fairy tale, is in fact divine myth present in the Kojiki.

Read "The Happy Hunter and the Skilful Fisher", in truth a rendering of the myth of Hoori and Hoderi from the Kojiki. It's very different from the actual rendering of the myth: Hoderi doesn't forgive Hoori and is just using the fish hook as an excuse to dethrone him, he is the ruler of Japan which I don't think they are (?), the entire Toyotama-hime story is omitted, etc.

Story is of circum-Pacific distribution.

read the Taketori Monogatari here. Wonderful story, and one with much to say about: the story seems to derive from the myth of Cheng'E, though with much that is original. The motif of five samurai having to get one fabulistic object each seems to be a repeat of the sailing theme in the Argonauts story as well as the romance of Kilhwch and Olwen, where one man must get five such objects.

The "Story of the Man Who Did Not Wish to Die" is a variation on the Gilgamesh motif, search for immortality which is ultimately vain and pointless. The story has a Buddhist or perhaps Taoist character - the start begins with some backstory about Xu Fu, here called Jofuku, the famous deified Qin-era alchemist, so you have a bit of history within a story.