Senryō Mikan (The Thousand-Ryō Tangerine)
千両みかん・せんりょうみかん
The story
At the height of summer, the young master of a great merchant house takes to his sickbed, and when asked what he craves, he says he wants to eat a tangerine. The head clerk rushes all over town hunting for the out-of-season fruit, and at last, in one wholesaler's warehouse, finds a single tangerine carefully kept in storage. But the price the wholesaler names is a staggering one thousand ryo.
What to listen for
The comedy of a topsy-turvy sense of money — a thousand ryo for a single tangerine — set beside the clerk running himself ragged out of devotion to his young master's life. A story of logical play over the outlandish worth of one midsummer tangerine.
Background
A thousand ryo was a colossal sum, worth tens of millions of yen today. Kishu tangerines were properly a winter fruit, and in an age with no refrigeration, keeping one unspoiled all the way into midsummer was nearly impossible.