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Machibouke
Minna no Uta ／ Minna no Uta: Machibouke ／ Waiting in Vain ／ 待ちぼうけ
Description
At the corner of a farmer’s field stood a tree stump. A speeding rabbit crashed into it, breaking its neck and dying there. Rabbits are prized for their meat and fetch a good price at market, so the farmer abandoned farming and began waiting for more rabbits to collide with the stump and die. However, days turned into months and no new rabbits arrived, leaving his crops to fail and him rabbit‑less. The song teaches the lesson of waiting in vain: it is fine to hold an optimistic view, but one should not sit idly and expect something that may never happen, much like the Western adage “don’t count your chickens before they hatch.”
