The Golden Footprints Author:Taro Yashima and Hatoju Muku In Japan, foxes are precious creatures. The fur of a fully grown fox can be sold for money, and the meat of a fox is a feast that even a hunter's family like Shotaro's cannot have easily. So Shotaro took very seriously his father's injunction to make certain that the baby fox chained to a nestbox in the shed should not escape. — But the baby fo... more »x would not eat the food Shotaro brought, and the boy, watching it grow thinner and thinner and weaker and weaker, was in despair. Then one night the parent foxes appeared, and Shotaro, watching from a window of the darkened house, beheld an unbelievable strange scene acted out by black shadows on the white snow. And from that day on, the baby fox began to grow.
This story, translated and adapted by Taro Yashima from and original story by a contemporary Japanese writer, is a story of devotion. For the strange scene Shotaro watched in the moonlight was the beginning of a long, long secret between the baby fox, the parent foxes, and the boy. And when it ended, in a most unexpected and dramatic way, it had become a devotion that transcended even death. Mr. Yashima's sensitive drawings in two colors perfectly complement the poetic imagery of this unique book.« less