Cover of Momotaro, by T. Hasegawa (1886)
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There doesn't seem to be a single tale in Lang's collection that does not feature magic in some form or another. This is obviously a credit to the Japanese's culture and belief's in spirits and the supernatural. Now, magic is a common mechanic in many realms of tales (Andersen collection for example). However, the Japanese make a point to give magic an omnipresent quality: no matter what part of the story that the reader may be in, there's always a sense of destiny and that a magical force could intervene at any moment to propel the story forward.
For example, in a relatively realistic story of the maiden with the wooden helmet (link), the maiden's deceased mother comes to her in a dream and tells her that she should finally accept a man's hand in marriage. Now, this maiden's mother was the reason she wore the wooden helmet to hide her beauty anyway, and previously in the story the author made it clear that the maiden was eternally loyal to her mother. So, the only way that the maiden could take her dream seriously is if the spirit of her mother actually intervened and appeared to her. The Japanese are often attributed with having the attitude that the environment and outside forces, rather than individual efforts, are the things that really drive the world. It seems that even in this very personal tale that they can't escape that tendency.
Magic is also often associated with animals in Japanese culture. For example, in the tale of How the Wicked Tenuki was Punished (link), the animals themselves are described as magicians and spell-casters. They are so good at conducting magic that they actually are able to fool humans, which reveals that the Japanese culture attributes quite a bit of the strange happenings in the world (at least at the time the stories were written) to spiritual or magical intervention.
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