Kintaro.

Kintaro is almost always shown as a compact, powerful child rather than a delicate noble infant. He wears the famous apron marked with the character for gold, carries a small axe, and appears red-cheeked, bare-legged, and comfortable in the wild. This look is essential to the legend. Kintaro does not emerge from the polished world of the court but from the mountain, where strength seems natural and social rank has not yet fully claimed him.

His iconography is inseparable from animals and landscape. Bears, carp, monkeys, hares, and forest slopes surround him, making him less a child wandering in nature than a child recognized by nature itself. In many images Yama-uba stands nearby as mother or foster mother, giving the scene a strange tenderness. Kintaro looks innocent, but the tools, animals, and split stones around him already announce the warrior he will become.

Kintaro's interactions begin in the mountain world, where he befriends animals, tests his strength against creatures larger than himself, and helps woodcutters with feats no ordinary child could manage. These scenes define him as a hero before he has entered any lord's service. He does not need court recognition to prove his worth. The mountain itself supplies his audience, rivals, and companions.

Later legend links him to Minamoto no Yorimitsu, who recognizes the child's power and brings him into a warrior household in Kyoto. At that point the tale shifts from folklore to heroic genealogy. Kintaro becomes Sakata no Kintoki, one of Yorimitsu's famed retainers. This transformation is not treated as a break so much as a fulfillment. The wild child does not lose his mountain strength. He simply carries it into the warrior world.