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Once upon a time, there
was a young man who liked puppets (木偶) so much that he became an apprentice(学徒) to a master puppet-maker. Sadly, the young man was not so clever, and
his teacher and the other apprentices were always telling him he had no talent for
making puppets, and that he would achieve nothing in making puppets.
Even so, he was fond of it so much that he worked day after day to improve
himself. Though he made every effort, they would always find something wrong with
his puppets, and the poor puppets ended up being thrown out of the workshop.
The young man wasn't going to give up, so he decided that from then on he
would spend all his time making just one kind of puppet. Whenever he found a fault
in his puppet he would throw it away and start again. Years passed, and with each
new attempt his puppet became a little bit better. By that time, his puppet was
much better than anything that the other apprentices could make, but he kept making
improvements. Living like that, the man wasn't making any money, and many people
laughed at how poor he was.
By the time he was an old man, his puppet was truly wonderful. Finally, after
so many years of work, he finished work on his puppet, and said, "I can't find
anything wrong with it. This time it is perfect." And for the first time in
all those years, instead of throwing his puppet away, he put it up on the shelf,
feeling truly satisfied and cheerful.
It is well-known that the perfect puppet, Pinocchio, came to life after that,
had a thousand adventures, and gave that old man –whose name was Geppetto—more joy
than any other famous puppet—maker had ever got from any of their creations.
