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My Favorite Japanese Folktale
Legend has it that 700 hundreds of years ago, Iwata was plagued by evil demons. Once a year, Iwata held Naki Matsuri, a Crying Festival. A white-feathered arrow would fly into the roof of an unsuspecting villager’s home. This arrow symbolized the next daughter to be sacrificed to the demons. The villagers, afraid of the demon’s curse, begrudgingly put the daughter in a coffin and left it outside for the demons to carry away.