There are many kappa in the rivers. The Sarugaishi River has especially many.
At the "riverside house" in Matsuzaki village, women in two successive generations became pregnant with kappa children. The children they bore were cut to pieces, put into a one-sho cask and buried in the ground. They were ugly and grotesque.
The husband's family home was another "riverside house," in Nibari village, and its master told people what had happened.
One day the whole family had gone out to the fields, and when they were about to come home in the evening, the woman was crouching at the water's edge, grinning. The next day, during the midday rest, the same thing happened.
As this went on, rumor spread that some man of the village was visiting the woman every night. At first it was only when her husband was away carrying loads to the coast, but later it came even on nights when she slept beside her husband.
It must be a kappa, the rumor grew. The family gathered to keep watch, but it was no use. The husband's mother even slept beside her. In the middle of the night she heard the young woman laughing, and though she knew it had come, she could not move.
The birth was very hard, but someone said, "Fill a horse's feed trough with water and give birth in it, and it will be easy," and when they tried it, it was so. The child that was born had webbed hands.
The young woman's mother, too, is said to have once borne a kappa's child. Some say the bond goes back more than two or three generations.
This family, too, is quite distinguished, of samurai descent. One of them has served on the village council.
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Near the Obako pool on the Kogarase River there is a house called "the new house."
One day they sent the horse to the pool to cool off, and while the boy leading it had gone off to play, a kappa came out and tried to drag the horse into the pool. Instead it was dragged by the horse all the way to the stable door, and it hid under the feed trough.
The family thought it odd that the trough was turned over, and when they lifted it a little, a kappa's hand shot out.
The whole village gathered and debated whether to kill it or let it go. In the end they made it swear solemnly never again to trouble the village horses, and let it go.
That kappa left the village, and they say it now lives in the pool of the waterfall at Aizawa.
* Stories of exactly this type abound all over the country. Wherever kappa are said to live, this story is sure to be found. Why should that be?