Quite. There’s a lot of elements in this story, but in the end, nothing seems to actually do anything.
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I had been planning to write a post just like this one. The story seems to use some heavy symbolism, but I just don’t know what these symbols might mean.
Here's my own long random rambling on what the story may be about
There’s another strong theme that I wanted to add: The child in the story keeps worrying while the adults are unconcerned, and seems to either be awake to the truth of his surroundings (noticing the candles, dreaming of the bird), or prone to wild fantasies, I can’t tell which. Although the mysterious crab story alerts even the adults of something strange possibly going on, to the point that the father goes to investigate.
There is a strong theme of time passing, of change. Winter ending and spring beginning would normally be a hopeful change, but the change in おじいさん is exactly the opposite. I guess not all change is good. The fact that a grandfather grows weak is no mystery in itself - he must be old, and old age would catch up with him at some point. Maybe the whole story is Taro trying to explain to himself in his childish, imaginative way, something that grownups just know is natural and inevitable - おじいさん in Taro’s mind isn’t just getting old, it’s the foxes’ fault, it’s the crab’s fault. Maybe Taro just felt that that winter trip would be too much for おじいさん, and that’s why he kept worrying. All the rest are manifestations of his worry.
Or maybe there really was something magical going on. Maybe the foxes did trick おじいさん, and gave him that crab that may have sucked his vitality, or that was already empty so he had been carrying it in vain, expending energy for no reason. They also gave him a lot to drink, and he felt so energetic at the time, as if he used up all his energy there and then, leaving nothing for later.
But what mainly concerns me is the bird. It’s too specific a dream to just be there to show Taro worrying. Why would おじいさん ride a bird home? Why was the bird dirty? Why did it die? There must be meaning there that I just can’t see. Was it the last bit of his strength? Maybe that bird is the invisible life force that has been carrying おじいさん since his birth, but it’s now tired to the point of death by exhaustion? This goes well with him having one last super-human bit of energy when he walked in the night across the plain with a huge crab on his back. But why did he even go on that trip that exhausted him in the first place?
We are never told why おじいさん needed to go to that town at that specific time either. In the end he certainly didn’t do what he went there for anyway, he only kept his promise to Taro that he would bring a みやげ, even if that みやげ was hollow. (empty promises?) おじいさん is also described as laughing (and smoking) a lot in the beginning, before he starts to fade away.
Okay, as I was writing my random thoughts I started to form a theory. おじいさん was getting old. His trip to the seaside town was a symbol of him passing on (so much death!). But the hopefulness and innocent love of Taro brings him back. Taro makes him promise to come back and bring him something, stopping him at the door at the last minute. So against all odds, he does come back. The adults, not surprised that he went on that trip or that he wasn’t returning, are very surprised to see him back again. He came back and he brought something as promised, but that something could only be hollow, just a symbolic offering, with nothing left in it. After that last effort for his grandson, おじいさん just withers away, already dead in spirit if not yet in body. man, these stories are grim!
Yes, I have no answers, only questions. I really liked the story though. I loved all the nature and weather descriptions, and the mysterious atmosphere of it all, the constant hinting at something that is just out of reach the whole time.
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Ah, that makes so much sense. I was already thinking that these must have been modernised at some point, but I didn’t know it was this explicit.
Haha, I think we were all planning to write a big post about this story’s meaning 
. I haven’t completely read that book report that I linked to earlier yet and it doesn’t seem to give any definitive answers either, but (if I understand it correctly) it discusses some parallels and contrasts in the story (parallels like the big bird and the big crab, the colour red in the candle flames, the fire and the crab; contrast between spring strengthening and the grandfather weakening - but such parallels and contrasts are just stylistic, I think). The author then discusses how Mimei was influenced by the nature North Japan and how recurring themes in his work are the impermanence of human life and how humans are bound to their fate, versus the infinite cycle and large scale of the natural world. These are certainly themes here, but I would still like to know if there is a deeper meaning behind this strange story.
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I couldn’t believe it myself 
Basically yes 
Could mean a lot of things, I guess, including it could mean that there’s an error somewhere…
But on to your questions:
だれが点したものか
Yep, agreed. (But there is more to it…)
But here you’re thinking だれか, not だれ + particle が
I investigated this a bit further because もの is such a special word that in my experience it often indicates some special meaning, and look what I’ve discovered 
So altogether I’d translate this sentence part to something like “wondering who might have lit them” or somesuch… (but please don’t force me to come up with a consistent sentence here )
(I also double-checked with my 先輩 regarding my understanding of ものか、and for the core part they suggested something along the lines of “the candles stood on the plain so that one would wonder who lit them”).
I couldn’t really find a good explanation either. Maybe I can check back with somebody else again.
I think the most helpful jisho entry will be 堪らない - Jisho.org - maybe “tremendous” might fit best?
不思議なことがあればあるものだ。
When I first saw this, I thought of あればあるほど but that’s not it…
Instead, I would just translate it directly:
不思議なことがあれば - if mysterious things exist (in the world / at all)
あるものだ。- then this is one of them
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Oh cool. I should remember to always treat もの as a special case, because more often than not, that’s what it is. So the sentence would be something like… And several hundred candle flames, such that one would wonder who lit them (or lit who knows by who), stood on the white, lonely plain over there. No wait. What is the subject here? The only が is after だれ。 Is it people who are standing instead of candles? No, it doesn’t work. Still confused. 
Deepl translates this as “couldn’t help but wonder”. In the Jisho definition you linked to, there is indeed a definition of “cannot help doing”, written in kana alone after te form, so that would fit. Could not help but find it mysterious maybe?
Thanks! 
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I thought this was just もの［者］because いる means that we are talking about people, so that you get 家のもの = the people of the house/family members and 家のもののいる前に = in front of where the family members are. So I interpreted the full sentence as: “That crab that you got, what kind of crab could it be?,” mother said and from there she brought the crab that the grandfather had carried, to (in front of) the family members.
But maybe my thinking is too simplistic. I guess that in my interpretation it’s a bit strange that いる is the present tense (now that I think about it).
Or is 家のもののいる simply another way to say ‘living room’? (As if we need any more 
).
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I really like this explanation, and I wouldn’t worry about the present tense at all. The Japanese don’t seem to be as strict with tenses as we are. But what would that の do between 家のもの and いる? Maybe it’s in place of が? If that’s the case, it makes perfect sense!
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Quoting-ception :joy:
I was actually thinking だれが, because the clause is a question clause ending with か, but you can see how good I am with translations 
Thank you for the もの（だろう）か grammar point! That definitely makes more sense now 
I think this makes sense! In children’s stories 者 is often spelled もの without the kanji, which leads to weird ののs in the text. Also, 前に in many cases requires the preceding part to be in present tense.
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Yes, I noticed that as well, and I also noticed that some translators (for example, the translator of I am a cat) just take over the tense in the translation which leads to really strange English, in my opinion
I forgot to mention that but yes, I do think it’s another の instead of が.
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Wow, thanks! That’s what I was missing 
No, it’s not, because it’s a relative clause (modifying 前) and relative clauses express their time relative (who would have thought that 
) to the main clause. So いる means that they were there in that moment when she brought the crab.
Here are a few more explanations: Relative Clauses | Japanese with Anime
Yep, exactly. Kinda crazy how everything falls into place once the main knot is untied 
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Two final (completely random) thoughts regarding this story:
I finally got to read something that features a カニ! Now we just need a story about a crocodile…
I thought it was pretty cool that 影 can apparently mean ‘light’ as well as ‘shadow’. That’s one schizophrenic kanji
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I think it’s not a binary split in this case. 影 means “shadow”, but also ‘reflection’ or ‘image’ so it’s more like 星影 is the ‘image’ left by stars and “influence” (影響) is like a “repeated image”. 人影 can also mean both “shadow of a person” and “image/figure of a person” . In a way, a shadow is an image left by something on a surface, right? 
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Yeah, I know, but I still thought it was a funny example of how language works sometimes
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