Folk Legends From Tono: Japan's Spirits, Deities, and Phantastic Creatures Read online

  Folk Legends from Tono

  遠野拾遺物語

  Folk Legends from Tono

  Japan’s Spirits, Deities, and Phantastic Creatures

  Collected by Yanagita Kunio and Sasaki Kizen Translated and Edited by Ronald A. Morse Illustrations by Marjorie C. Leggitt

  Rowman & Littlefield

  Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

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  First English-language translation copyright © 2015 by Ronald A. Morse

  The Japanese copyright to the original Japanese material has expired.

  Artwork copyright © by Marjorie C. Leggitt

  Photograph of Sasaki Kizen provided by the City of Tono.

  This 1935 supplementary collection of 299 tales is referred to in Japanese as 『遠野物語拾遺』(Tono monogatari shui). In English, the translator has titled this supplementary collection Folk Legends from Tono: Japan’s Spirits, Deities, and Phantastic Creatures.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available

  ISBN 978-1-4422-4821-2 (cloth : alk. paper)

  ISBN 978-1-4422-4822-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)

  ISBN 978-1-4422-4823-6 (electronic : alk. paper)

  ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

  Printed in the United States of America

  This translation is for my son Randall and my grandson Cameron.

  Contents

  Contents

  Preface

  Japan’s Traditional Spirit World

  Chapter 1: Biology and Human Emotions

  Chapter 2: Souls Adrift between Two Worlds

  Chapter 3: Family, Kinship, and Household Deities

  Chapter 4: Sidestepping Misfortune and Evil

  Chapter 5: Survival on the Edge

  Chapter 6: Tracking Nature’s Trickster Animals

  Chapter 7: Glimpses of Modern Monsters

  Chapter 8: No Spirit Forgotten

  Appendix A

  Appendix B

  About the Translator

  Preface

  For modern Japanese, Tono monogatari (Tales of Tono) represents a cultural snapshot of what village life was like for their grandparents and their great-grandparents. As such, current-day Japanese approach these stories with a sense of nostalgia as representing a time and place with warm rural community ties, a strong religious sensibility, and a tradition of making a living from the soil—a world totally different from their fragmented urban industrial lifestyles. This is the only way to explain why this work has been so popular in Japan and has gone through so many different editions: continuous updates, as well as cartoon (manga), animated, theatrical, and movie renderings.

  Tono monogatari has a strong international following as well. It has been translated into half a dozen foreign languages, and the town of Tono has become a “must-see” for foreign tourists visiting Japan. Scholars around the world have also written extensively about the significance of the work to an understanding of modern Japanese history.

  With the translation of the tales you are about to read, we finally have a complete version of the two collections of tales that make up the Japanese book Tono monogatari. The first collection of 119 tales was published in Japanese in 1910, and the second collection of 299 tales—the collection translated here—was added in 1935. The two collections of tales in Tono monogatari were published under the name of Yanagita Kunio (1875–1962), even though his Tono informant and storyteller, Sasaki Kizen (1886–1933), was the source of most of the tales.

  I translated the 1910 version of Tono monogatari in 1975 as The Legends of Tono, which has been available from Rowman & Littlefield Publishers in a hundredth anniversary edition since 2008.

  The second collection of 299 tales in Japanese was compiled by Sasaki Kizen, who, because of his vast knowledge of local tales and legends, is often compared to the brothers Grimm in Germany. Sasaki lived most of his life in Tono surrounded by the storytellers, friends, and family members who pop up in the tales throughout this book.

  Yanagita Kunio used his formidable literary skills to shape the style and presentation of the 1910 edition of Tono monogatari. But it was Sasaki Kizen’s talent as a storyteller that gave shape to the 1935 collection of tales that is translated here.

  By the time these tales were put down on paper in 1935, Japanese memories of both the feudal era (lasting up to 1868) and the modernization and enlightenment euphoria of the Meiji era (1868–1912) were quickly fading. By 1935, Japan was clearly in transition to becoming a modern state, and the flavor of that transformation is captured in the tales recorded here.

  Even though the 1935 collection of tales was originally conceived of as a companion volume to the 1910 Tono monogatari, it reflects a different era with its own personality. To be sure, this sequel collection of 299 tales is focused on the same rugged, mountainous terrain of Tono in northern Japan as were the 1910 tales, but there the similarities end.

  The legends published in 1910 were more narrowly sourced from Tsuchibuchi village in Tono, and they were written in a polished literary style by Yanagita Kunio. The 1910 book also had what might be called an “editorial vision”—it was crafted by Yanagita as a piece of literature and was quite different from what a local storyteller might have told. This difference in Yanagita’s and Sasaki’s styles of tale documentation was captured in a letter from Sasaki to Yanagita on June 18, 1910, in which Sasaki expresses his shock at Yanagita’s polished collection of Tono tales. After reading the copy of Tono monogatari that Yanagita had sent him, Sasaki replied, “The tales are not like anything that I remember telling you.”

  American folklorist Richard M. Dorson, in his foreword to my translation of The Legends of Tono, argued that pioneer tale collectors like Yanagita judged “oral tales by the yardsticks of written literature and felt a responsibility to ‘improve’ the rough and un-polished specimens of the peasant’s delivery. Sasaki was not a good storyteller, wrote Yanagita. Today, we would disagree. . . . Today, folklorists recognize that oral style differs greatly from literary style and needs to be considered in terms of its own aesthetic, on the basis of faithfully reproduced verbal texts.”

  The style of the 1935 collection of tales is closer to what folklorists call “memorate,” remarkable and extraordinary experiences told in the first person. The tales are less polished than the 1910 material and include a considerable amount of local Tono dialect. Also, because the 1935 supplement includes newspaper accounts and more recent stories, it often has the flavor of “urban” legends.

  For those interested in the background of this 1935 collection of tales and how I have reen
visioned the text, please see appendix B.

  While there is a growing scholarly secondary literature in English about Yanagita Kunio and Japanese folklore studies, unfortunately there are too few translations of important Japanese primary sources. Hopefully this translation will contribute to correcting that imbalance. For those wanting an up-to-date guide to the secondary literature on these topics, there is an open source e-book available for download that details these writings: Yanagita Kunio and Japanese Folklore Studies in the 21st Century, edited by Ronald A. Morse (Kawaguchi: Japanime, 2012), http://www.japanime.com/yanagita.

  Getting these tales into a format for a non-Japanese audience was quite a challenge, and doing it would not have been possible without the assistance of many people. In particular, I would like to thank Miyuki Kobayashi for checking the accuracy of my translations and suggesting changes. Dot Connors, Christian Goehlert, Saori Maekawa, Oda Tomihide, Glenn Kardy, and Louis Gwen provided valuable editorial advice early in the project. Susan McEachern, the editorial director for Rowman & Littlefield, and her assistant Audra Figgins provided valuable assistance at several stages. The artwork for the book was designed and created by Marjorie C. Leggitt.

  Needless to say, in the end, I alone am responsible for what is presented here. My hope is that the reader enjoys reading the stories as much as I enjoyed translating them.

  Japan’s Traditional Spirit World

  The legends you are about to read will take you on a journey through the imagined belief system or “spirit world” that was a vibrant part of Japan’s oral folk tradition for hundreds of years. Told, embellished, and retold by storytellers and others, these tales reflect how townsfolk and peasant farmers living in a remote northern mountainous region of Japan perceived, discussed, and made sense of the world about them. These legends take us into their universe of magical folk traditions.

  As magical as they might be, these tales are believed by real people in a specific community: Tono. As a local transport center for a variety of goods moving between inland farming villages and coastal fishing ports, the town of Tono was where stories and gossip about experiences along the paths through the mountains and along the coast were exchanged. The many hills, passes, and valleys surrounding the Tono region served as the spiritual sanctuary for a wide range of deities—both good and evil—and provided the backdrop for the tales recorded here.

  The cast of characters crisscrossing the Tono hills is remarkable: yokai monsters, shape-shifting foxes, witches, grave robbers, ghosts, charcoal makers, hunters, miners, medicine men, packhorse drivers, the police, traveling merchants, roaming priests, shamans, social outcasts, criminals, drifters, disenfranchised samurai warriors, and specific Tono residents. Mix in the quasi-human yama-no-kami (mountain spirits and deities) and the wild animals inhabiting the area, and you have the psychic ecosystem where peasants tried to eke out a precarious existence in the lowlands of the Tono basin. Welcome to their rich and mystical world.

  1

  Biology and Human Emotions

  We start with a focus on the most basic unit of culture, the individual human being. Then we expand further and further into other areas of Tono life. The tales in this chapter are related to basic human biological instincts—doing what it takes to survive economically, protecting one’s family and property, maintaining social relationships, and being creative. All of the tales in this section relate to the fragility of accomplishing these goals. By way of example, Yanagita Kunio, the founder of Japanese folklore studies, was personally motivated to study rural economic issues because of his concern with the causes of infanticide, the theme of the first legend.

  In Tono, the selective disposal of newborn babies (mabiki, or infanticide) during times of famine or hardship was widely practiced. The bodies of strangled newborns were usually buried in the dirt floors of the house so that their souls would be close by.

  In Tsukumoushi village, there was an old woman known as Hokkaeshi (rising from the soil). When Hokkaeshi was born, her mother thought she had strangled her and buried her in the dirt-floor kitchen area where they kept the stone for grain grinding. It is said that right after the infant was buried, its delicate hands emerged from the soil. It had somehow come back to life. They dug her up and raised her as a member of the family.

  The child was called by the nickname “Hokkaeshi,” and her real name was never used. Also, when she was buried at birth, one eye was crushed, and she remained blind in that eye for life. She died of old age about ten years ago. (1-246)*

  In Wasedochi, there is a small persimmon tree that never bears any fruit. Sometime in the 1150s, there was a battle between the Minamoto and Taira family clans, and many warriors died. It is said that this persimmon tree was planted on top of the mound where the corpses of the soldiers were buried. Legend has it that this is why, even though the souls of these soldiers make the tree’s flowers bloom, there is never any fruit. (2-18)

  In Otabeeshi, there was a house where a mother and son lived together. The mother was over sixty years old and could not work, so the son took care of her. In 1615, the son went off to fight in the Battle of Osaka. The villagers, concerned about the old woman remaining alone, would sometimes check on her, but she always seemed to have food. Thinking this strange, one person peeked in and saw that she was eating dirt. Even today, this spot is called “bakuchi,” which means “old woman (ba) eating (ku) dirt (chi).” (3-6)

  In the village of Aozasa, there was a boy who was a stepchild. He was sent into the hills to put the horses out to pasture. They built a fire all around him and he burned to death. The youth liked to play the flute, and he continued playing it while the fire consumed him. Where he died is now called Flute Blowing Pass. (4-2)

  In the past, when people reached the age of sixty, they were sent off to the dendera-no community grave site to die. This practice was quite common. The villages of Kamigo and Aozasa and the hamlets of Nitakai, Ashiaraigawa, Ishida, and Tsuchibuchi all sent their old people to die at dendera-no in Aozasa village. It seems that there were areas in various villages designated as dendera-no locations. At Takamuro in Tsuchibuchi village, there was a location called dendera-no. It is reported that this is where old people were sent from the following hamlets: Tochinai, Yamazaki, Hiishi, Wano, Kude, Kakujo, Hayashizaki, Kashiwazaki, Mizunai, Yamaguchi, Tajiri, Ohora, and Marukodachi. (5-268)

  Legend has it that ikusa-ba (the battlefield) was a village where the lords of the Usu and Iide fortresses had a battle. Late at night, it is said that one can sometimes hear the shouting of the soldiers and the neighing of their horses. (6-267)

  The patch of land on the border between Nukamae and Zennoji Temple is called dendera-no or rendai-no. It is a graveyard. The Juodo Temple is surrounded by a mixture of trees. At one time, when this temple was burned in a forest fire, the statue of the Juodo deity flew out of the temple and found refuge in the branches of a nearby tree. Even so, because the fire was so intense, the statue was scorched.

  Sasaki Kihei’s house is nearby, and he is the caretaker of the temple. Whenever someone is about to die in the village, he seems to have a precognition of it happening because of what is called omaku or shirumashi. This is when the feelings of the living or dead congeal into a walking ghostly form visible to humans. Some refer to this escape of the spirit (soul) from the body as an out-of-body experience.

  There are also songs sung or noises made by these souls or ghosts before the individuals die. If it is a man dying, he takes a horse to dendera-no at night and sings a mountain song or makes noise with the horse harness. If it is a woman dying, she sings a well-known song in a low voice, sobs, or talks in a loud voice. She keeps moving until she reaches ikusa-ba (the battlefield) and stops. Or when some women die, there is the sound of pounding rice in a mortar. In this way, people pass through dendera-no in the dead of night. In Kihei’s house, when they talk about who will die next, before you know it the person is dead. (7-266)
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br />   The following took place well into the Meiji era (1868–1912). It seems that a young man and woman, who were being chased by someone, came to Tsuchibuchi village from Oguni. A man with a sword was tracking them and caught up with them in the rice fields of Hayashizaki. He killed them without the slightest resistance by either of them.

  What led to this is unclear. With tears running down his cheeks, the man who cut them down buried their bodies beside the road. He placed a decorative hairpin from the woman’s hair as a marker on the burial site. It is said that he then returned to where he had come from. Whenever the old women who saw the whole thing talk about it, tears come to their eyes. (8-233)

  In a swamp deep in the mountains of Takanosu, all of the large round leaves of the herbal butterbur plant have small holes in them. A long time ago, a princess from somewhere ran away and hid in these mountains. A man who longed for her came after her with his soldiers. They followed her trail and came to this swamp but had no luck finding her.

  Discouraged, the man turned to his troops and asked what he could do to get his mind off of the princess. They answered that since there was really no way to end his yearning, he should just enjoy the leaves of the butterbur plants that were there. Even today the leaves of the butterbur in this swamp have small holes in them. (9-17)

  The grandmother of Mr. Iwaki was a friend of Sasaki Kizen. She was a wet nurse servant to the samurai Kange family in Tono when she was young. Once, late at night, she thought she would give the baby some milk and headed for the straw cradle that the baby was in. She saw a lovely girl about thirty years of age staring fixedly into the cradle. Surprised, she called out to the master and his wife in the next room, but the girl had already disappeared. In this family, the master from two or three generations back had a child with a maidservant. At that time, the master’s wife, angry with jealousy, poisoned the maidservant. The maidservant had a husband, who was also despised by the master’s wife, and she worked him mercilessly as well. Rumor has it that the girl Mr. Iwaki’s grandmother saw was probably the ghost of the poisoned and bitter maidservant. Sometimes, when the grandmother went to shut the storm doors to the house, it is said she would see the girl sitting close by. (10-169)