This study reports an analysis of how children in a Japanese kindergarten are scaffolded when facing the challenge of collaboratively retelling a "kitsune" story they have been told. What is referred to as a "kitsune" story is an example of a trickster tale with foxes as anthropomorphised animals. The participants were ten 5-year-old children and their teacher. Told a story by their teacher, the children were asked later to collaboratively retell it. How this retelling activity is supported -- theorised in terms of the metaphor of scaffolding -- is analysed on the basis of recordings. The findings show the nature of this evolving process. The conclusion is that the metaphor of scaffolding may require some contextual specification to remain a functional conceptual -- and in extension, pedagogical -- tool in activities fundamentally different from the activity studied in Wood, Bruner and Ross' founding 1976 study.