赤べこ

Nobody knows where these cows came from. 1611. A massive earthquake hits Aizu, in northern Japan. On a cliff above the Tadami River, the main hall of Enzo-ji, a temple that had stood since the year 807, comes crashing down. Villages upriver send timber, floating it down the river. One problem. The logs are at the bottom of the cliff. The hall goes at the top. And the workers can't get them up. Then, out of nowhere, a herd of red-haired cows walks out of the forest. And they start hauling the timber. Log after log. All the way up the cliff. Until the hall stands again. The town carved a stone cow at the temple, to say thank you. Then they started making little red ones out of paper, with a head on a string that never stops nodding. Families came to believe it kept their children safe from smallpox. They call it akabeko. Four hundred years later, it's still nodding. If you'd like one of your own, Maison Homura will go and look for it. And still, nobody knows where those cows came from.