Equivalent to delivery stork?

So, in some countries, there's a myth about babies being delivered by the stork and is probably what a lot of children are told about where babies come from. I'm curious as to what Japan's equivalent of this is? Do they also have the delivery stork myth or are children told something else altogether about where babies come from? If so, what are they told?

Yes, babies in Japan are also delivered by storks. We call them "kou-no-tori."

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2013/05/why-storks-are-associa...

and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Stork#Storks_and_childbirth

have a range of ideas as to why storks are associated with babies.

(Thanks for asking this interesting question. I had no idea that it was a common idea across so much of the world.)

what the OP has asked is whether Japan has a similar myth from the old times or not. I think that Japan originally does not have a similar myth about baby delivery. we have the words that "赤ん坊は天からの授かりもの". this means that babies are gifts from TEN(天). TEN is a sky, people(=GOD ?) living in a sky, someones(somethings) existing beyond human being.

Oh, I thought storks bring babies from the sky ;)

Anyway, all myths come from somewhere at some point. In Japan, the stork myth is so old and common enough that the current Prince said, "All depends on the favors of the stork." when asked about his future children more than a decade ago.

At least, everyone in his generation (who are almost old men by now) used to believe that babies are delivered by storks, before they learned about the birds and the bees.

When the kids were very small, my wife used to tell them that the stars in the sky were babies waiting to be born and looking down on the world so they could choose the family they would be born to. I had the impression that this was a common 'belief' in Japan but perhaps it was only her?

The delivery stork myth in Japan was introduced from the West (maybe Germany) during the Meiji period.

By the way, when I was a child living in Tokyo, I had heard some mothers told her kids "you are are born from rotten cabbage" and it's not abuse but joke, though I didn't catch on to the meaning...

Being a Japanese born in Japan, I never knew that stars were babies, but I often hear that people become stars when they die.

I've also heard about babies being born from (in?) a cabbage field, but not from rotten ones. But I think the cabbage myth is from Europe as well.