An image of the Moon Rabbit grounded in Japanese iconography. From Asuka-period examples onward, the rabbit within the lunar disk was paired with the solar crow in medieval Buddhist painting and received as a bearer of celestial phenomena. In early modern times, depictions of a rabbit using a Chinese-style mortar and pestle spread through books and prints, and by the eighteenth century the mortar shifted into a characteristically Japanese hourglass shape. The rabbit came to be understood not as compounding an elixir of immortality but as pounding mochi, linking it through wordplay to moon viewing and full-moon festivals. In lore, a self‑sacrificing rabbit ascends to the moon by Indra’s grace, with the lunar shadows and smoke-like markings read as its traces. In folk practice, people gazed at the moon seeking the rabbit’s silhouette, and the theme persisted in moon‑vigil gatherings and storytelling, overlapping with other celestial yokai and lunar deities.