Can’t respond to the OP, but thanks for the memory. Some cousins I rarely saw had this book, and I remember making a game of reading it with them (we’d each read one page, then pass the book). I’m pretty sure I haven’t thought about that in at least 35 years.
I think jovan’s posts have solved the issue, but I just wanted to point out a variant. It has the old person with ladder as in the OP. This paragraph is from Fanny Hagen Mayer’s article “Japanese Folk Humor” in *Asian Folklore Studies * (1982), P. 190:
“A couple thought a long name would insure a long life for their child. They went to the temple to ask the priest to name him, but they lost their little son when he fell into the well in their yard. While the parents ran to a neighbor to borrow a ladder and to explain to the deaf old woman why they needed it, Chôgiri-chôgiri-itchôgiri-nichôgiri-chôgiri-chôgiri-chôzaburo-anoyama-kanoyama-kayakiriyama-no-zutten-fudabô-no-tobatate-basa-no-nodokubiki-no-tongarime drowned (Mizusawa 1969b: 468-469). This is rather sardonic humor, but the tale is well distributed in Japan.”
Keigo Seki classifies this as Tale Type # 456, “The Child with a Long Name: A father hopes that his child will live long and gives him a very long name. The child falls into a well. While the father is calling the child’s name for help, the child dies. Spead all over Japan.” (“Types of the Japanese Folktale,” Asian Folklore Studies 1966).
It seems to be required that the child die in the traditional versions, but it’s not at all uncommon for a modern storyteller to be horrified by the traditional material and change it to a happy ending. The sibling with a shorter / more normal name seems to be authorial invention here.
Given that the story seems to be ubiquitous in Japan, I’m really curious about why Mosel set her telling in China. Did she hear the story as a Chinese tale, or did she decide that China made a more interesting setting?
When was the book published? China might have been a more politically correct choice at the time.