Is the crane a metaphor for the woman? Or does it transform into one? OR does the guy marry a bird? I've been listening to this all week and cannot discern which is right...maybe that was Colin's intention? A little help here?
It's a story about a peasant living in, I assume, rural Japan, it being a Japanese folk tale. He finds a wounded crane on the road as he's walking one night. It has an arrow in its wing, and he pulls out the arrow and revives the crane. A couple of days later this mysterious woman shows up at his door and he brings her in. Eventually, they fall in love and are married. Although they're poor-- she's a seamstress, a weaver-- she suggests that she can make this cloth that he could sell and make money. But the one condition is that when she's weaving he can't look into the room at her weaving. This goes on for awhile, until eventually the peasant's curiosity gets the best of him and he looks in. It turns out that the woman is a crane, and she's pulling feathers from her wings and putting them into the cloth, which is what makes it so beautiful and soft. Apparently, having looked in at her breaks the spell and she turns permanently back into a crane and flies away.
