Monkey's Liver

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-16

[00:00:00]Fun fact of the day.

[00:00:03]This story comes to us from Japan.

[00:00:08]Monkey's liver, a Japanese folktale.

[00:00:12]One day, the Dragon Queen of the Sea fell deeply ill. The Dragon King and his subjects were worried that she might never recover, and so he brought all the doctors in the ocean and some from the shore to examine his wife. But no matter what treatments or medicines they tried, the Dragon Queen did not get any better.

[00:00:24]All the doctors agreed that there was no hope for the Queen, except for one who said that the Dragon Queen's disease could be cured if she ate the raw liver of a living monkey.

[00:00:32]The Dragon King had no idea how he would retrieve a monkey's liver. He only ruled the sea, and monkeys lived in high trees on the land. Only two of the Dragon King's subjects had legs and hard bodies that allowed them to even venture onto the shore, the tortoise and the jellyfish, who at that time looked and functioned quite similarly. The tortoise, being the Queen's messenger, was chosen to swim to land and bring a monkey back to Ryugu, the Dragon Palace.

[00:00:50]The tortoise reached the land and saw a monkey high in the branches of a tree on the shore. The tortoise crawled out of the water onto the beach and then called up to the monkey, introducing himself and engaging in a pleasant conversation.

[00:00:58]The two talked for so long that the day was nearly over, and the tortoise said he would have to return to the sea. But the tortoise asked the monkey if he would like to come with him, riding on his shell to see the beautiful and rich world under the water. The monkey excitedly agreed, and he climbed down his tree and onto the tortoise's shell to join him.

[00:01:11]When the Dragon Queen heard that a monkey had been brought to Ryugu in order to cure her, she felt sorry for him, and she ordered that he be welcomed, well-fed, and entertained while he still lived. The monkey climbed all around and played with all the subjects of the Dragon King, and no one told him why he had been brought to the palace. Most of the time, the monkey was perfectly happy in the sea, but every now and then he would be overtaken by fear and homesickness, and he hid himself in a dark corner so that his hosts would not see him unhappy. In one of these moments, the jellyfish swam up to him. The jellyfish said that he understood the monkey's sadness, since the monkey would be put to death any day now for no crime other than his liver being medicine for the Queen.

[00:01:40]The monkey was horrified at this new information. He continued to act as happy as before for the rest of the day, but when night came and rain began to fall on the surface of the water, he started to cry so loudly that the tortoise had to come and check on him.

[00:01:48]The monkey told the tortoise that since monkeys like him were climbers, and since their livers were so heavy, they often removed their living livers and hung them on the branches of trees. The The had been so excited to visit the Dragon Palace that he had forgotten to bring his liver with him. But now that it was raining, the monkey said, his liver would become soaked and rot. He begged the tortoise to bring him back to the beach to fetch his liver and bring it back to the palace for the rest of his visit.

[00:02:06]The tortoise went to the Dragon Queen and King and their advisers, and they all agreed that it was pointless to keep the monkey in Ryugu if he did not have his liver with him. So, in the morning, the tortoise carried the monkey back to the beach where he had picked him up.

[00:02:14]The monkey climbed up the tree where the tortoise had first seen him, but he told the tortoise that his liver had gone missing, likely stolen by another monkey, and he would have to go further inland to find it. The tortoise agreed to wait on the beach for a short time.

[00:02:22]By the time evening arrived and the monkey had still not returned, the tortoise realized he had been tricked.

[00:02:26]Afraid that all the other monkeys would attack him, the tortoise swam back to the Dragon Palace without the monkey or his liver.

[00:02:30]When the tortoise got back to Ryugu, he told the King and Queen what had happened. They realized that someone must have told the monkey what they were planning to do with his liver, and so they ordered every one of their subjects to appear before them so they could punish whoever had betrayed them.

[00:02:39]Every ocean animal that was capable of swimming or crawling did so, except for one. The jellyfish.

[00:02:44]The Dragon Queen knew who the culprit was. The jellyfish was brought before the Dragon King. For his loose tongue, the King called for his executioners to beat the jellyfish until his shell and all the bones in his body were completely broken, until he was nothing more than a shapeless mass of pulp.

[00:02:55]Ever since, jellyfish have not had any bones.

[00:02:58]The end.