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

  Since the eighth century, the highly contagious smallpox virus has periodically ravaged Japan, but not much is heard about it these days. In the past, when someone came down with smallpox, the first thing the family would do is decorate the Shinto altar with sacred straw ropes and prepare a tray with an offering of food to placate the evil smallpox demon (hosogami). They did this in the hope that the demon would go away. Smallpox was called the red plague because of the red rash and blisters it created on the skin. Since the smallpox demon does not like red, the person with smallpox would wear a red cap, put on red socks, and put red sheets on the bed.

  They thought that by doing these things, they could fully recover in just three weeks. To celebrate a recovery, they prepared a hot bath with rice wine in it. Friends and relatives would come together to offer the smallpox demon rice with red beans in it. A Shinto offering of red paper strips (heisoku) was also set up. They also prepared a straw doll with straw sandals, balls of red bean rice, and some coins for the smallpox demon to travel back to the other world. This is how they send off the smallpox demon. The straw doll is taken to a village crossroads where it is left. People who have been spared contracting smallpox are happy to see those who have had only a mild case of smallpox sending away the smallpox demon. (11-262)

  A long time ago in Wasedochi, there was a woman named Oben. She was washing some Japanese radishes in the Sawa River near her house when she saw something glittering in the water. When she scooped it up, she saw that it was gold. She figured that if she went upstream there might be a gold mine since Tono had a number of gold mines. There is also the tradition of mayoiga (lavish vanishing houses) found in the mountains.

  Sure enough, she went upriver, and at Mt. Mukurami, just as she had thought, there was a gold mine. But there was a nasty man there who wanted to keep the gold for himself. So when he heard about Oben’s interest in it, he killed her. Later, the villagers, to show their appreciation for her goodness, worshiped Oben at a Benten Shrine, located at what is today Mt. Benten. It is said that if a man climbs Mt. Benten, it will surely rain. (12-39)

  A long time ago, a blind couple were walking with their small child named Tanzo. They came to Wasedochi in Kuribashi village, and the child Tanzo took a wrong step and fell from the bridge into the river. He died. Not aware of what had happened, the blind mother and father called out over and over in all directions, “Tanzo, Tanzo,” but there was no reply.

  As soon as they realized that their child had died, they felt that without their “precious treasure” there was no reason for them to go on living. They thought that they should all be together again, so they jumped off the bridge into the river. Out of compassion, the villagers set up a small shrine to them by the river and prayed to it. The shrine is called mekura-gami, meaning “guardian spirit of the blind.” Even now, people with eye problems say that praying at the shrine helps their condition. Many people scoop up water from the marsh near the shrine and rinse their eyes with it. (13-27)

  A horse trader named Tokuya lived in Hashiba. One year there was flooding, and the river rose close to the houses. So Tokuya went out and said, “River Spirit, River Spirit, I will give you my daughter if you will shift the river in a different direction.” With this, the river flowed off in a different direction.

  Tokuya was agonizing over what he had just promised and didn’t want to kill his beloved daughter. Then along came two beggars, a mother with her daughter. The girl was eighteen, the same age as his daughter. Tokuya explained what he had promised to the river spirit and asked the girl if she would take the place of his daughter. Since the mother and daughter were poor beggars, they agreed to do it.

  That evening, a large number of people from the village gathered together and provided a large feast for the mother and her child. The next day, when they were sent off to the river spirit, they waded into the deep Yagen River pool in front of the house. The mother went in first, and then she took her daughter’s hand and pulled her in. At first the daughter refused to go under, but eventually she sank and disappeared. It is said that because of a curse by the beggar’s daughter, no girl child in the Tokuya household ever lived longer than eighteen years of age. (14-26)

  There was a house called Satoya near the deep pool of Noboto in Matsuzaki village. At one time, the Sarugaishi River flowed right up to the front of this house. The people in the house always worried about flooding when the river surged. So one day the master of the house went to the bank of the river and called out, “River Spirit, River Spirit, I will offer you my only daughter if you can make the river flow in a different direction.” When he woke up and looked the next morning, the river had moved from the front of the house and was flowing far away. Now, concerned about his promise, he had to figure out what to do.

  His decision was to push an unsuspecting female servant, who had come to the river pool to do some laundry, into the river. She sank into the water. Then she resurfaced in the middle of the river, made an angry face, and shouted, “I hate men. For that reason, you will never be able to raise men in your house.” After that, whenever a male child was born into this family, it died before reaching twenty years of age. Ito Eiichi (1883–1956), a local Tono researcher and friend of Sasaki Kizen, said that he heard this story directly from a member of the family. (15-25)

  The grandfather of the Abe household in Tsukumoushi village learned the art of deception and stealing from a traveler and became a skillful crook. He would never do anything wrong in his own village area but was always busy in places far away. When he got old, he returned to his native village, but with nothing to do, he found life boring. So he would go to where the young men in the area were busy making straw products and take pleasure in telling them colorful stories about his exploits.

  One evening, after the old man finished telling his tales, there were loud noises from a nearby stable. One of the young men looked and saw that there were a few loincloths, like the ones the men were wearing, hung across the horizontal poles blocking entry into the stable. Frightened by the loincloths, the horse was neighing. The young man thought it was strange, but when he looked around, he saw that the loincloths they had been wearing had been removed and hung in the stable without their even noticing it. The old man might have aged, but he was still a master thief!

  Another time, the old man stood up some bamboo poles about a meter apart in the front yard. He would jump over the first pole and then balance himself on the next one. He was good at such stunts. The bamboo pole was fairly high and very narrow, but the old man could do this despite his age. One of his favorite comments was that humans could transform into spiders and frogs.

  As he approached the end of life and went blind, he reflected on the fact that he deserved being blind because as a thief he had tricked people about what they had perceived, and he was now being repaid for what he had done. He died about seventy or eighty years ago. The written scroll that he had been given by the traveler, which explained the art and techniques of stealing, is said to be buried somewhere in the nearby Kumano Shrine. (16-227)

  The main item of worship at Rokkoshi Shrine in Akazawa is a copper religious statue. At one time there were two statues. For a long time, it was said the quality of the metal was exceptionally good. At some point, one image was stolen or it disappeared, and only one was left. Another time, someone stole the remaining statue and tried for seven days and nights to melt it down in the Sabinai mine furnace, but it wouldn’t melt. The thief was frightened and is said to have returned the statue to the shrine. That is what they worship at the shrine now. (17-129)

  In Senai of Nakazawa, there was a family with seven children, all boys. Three of them went off to other areas of Japan, and nothing is known about what became of them. The eldest son drifted around the capital in Edo before returning to the mining area of Mt. Akazawa. Legend has it that he made counterfeit (ohazama) gold coins and became wealthy overnight. (18-226)

  It was in the early days of
the Meiji period (1868–1911) that two brothers from Nishinai took three horses to the mountain bordering Komaki to gather reeds used for roofing. Suddenly, two wolves appeared. There was no time to pull out the sickle in his packsaddle, so the younger brother picked up a dead branch of wood on the path and confronted the wolves.

  At that moment, the older brother gathered the three horses together, jumped onto one of them, and rode off, returning home. When he got home, if he had immediately informed family members or the villagers about what had happened, they might have been able to go and save the younger brother. But for some reason or other, the older brother didn’t tell anyone anything. The younger brother, who was barely fifteen years old, returned home in the evening seriously injured and barely alive. It is said that he died just as he put his hand on the front porch of the house. (19-213)

  The carpenter Kikuchi Isezo of Kamitoshi was building a storehouse in Nitakai. There was a frame-raising ceremony for the storehouse with a great deal of drinking and eating. The ceremony was one of several rituals performed for safety during the construction of a house or building.

  Isezo was drunk, and on his way back from the ceremony with his friends, as he passed Mt. Hachiman, he shouted out, “I heard for a long time that there has been a clever fox in this area. If you are really here, let me hear your voice. If you are here, I will give you this fish from the ceremony I attended.” He waved the fish.

  Then a fox cried out three times from the woods beside the road. Isezo went on saying, “You are there, but I won’t give you the fish. You have to come and try to take it from me.” He kept walking. Old Masakichi and the others with him worried that Isezo shouldn’t be saying these things, but he went on boasting, “I won’t be tricked by a fox. If I take this fish home, it will feed the entire family.”

  They came near to where the Shinto torii gate at Hachiman Shrine is now, and Isezo asked the others to let him go off and relieve himself. His friends thought that since they were in town now, it was probably safe, so they let him go off by himself. Isezo staggered into a rice field beside the road and never came back. Thinking it strange, the others traced his steps, and they found him half dead in the rice field irrigation pond, still in his special ceremonial clothes. This story was told by old Masakichi, who had been there. (20-205)

  This event took place fairly recently. Mr. Kikuchi’s dog was stretched out on its side under the eaves of the shed. Kikuchi’s chicken started fighting with the neighbor’s chicken. The dog was watching them fight, but as soon as it saw the chicken from its house losing the fight, it jumped up, grabbed the neighbor’s chicken by the neck, and killed it. (21-217)

  In Yasaki, there is a small shrine called bonari-do (the mother shrine). Once there was a miko (a maiden assistant at a Shinto shrine) in the area who came from Miyanome. She didn’t like the man her only daughter had married, but since the couple got along so well, she waited patiently for a good chance to do something about him.

  Around this time on the Sarugaishi River, there was a defective water intake lock used to regulate the water flow into the rice fields. Three or four times every year the intake gate collapsed, causing flooding in the fields. Troubled, the villagers considered several different solutions to the problem but couldn’t decide what to do. Finally they consulted with the wise shrine miko about what to do.

  She told them that there was only one solution. “At dawn in two days a man with white robes riding a white horse will come by. If you grab him and throw him into the water intake gate, you can have him become its guardian spirit and then it will function properly.” At the arranged time, men and women from the village came out and waited at various locations for a person dressed in white on a white horse.

  The miko also realized that this might be the right opportunity to get rid of the son-in-law that she didn’t like. She got up early that morning and dressed the son-in-law in white, put him on a white horse, and sent him off on an errand to the nearby Tsukumoushi village.

  Then, at the designated moment when he came by the water intake, the villagers grabbed him and asked him to become the guardian spirit of the intake. He replied, “If this is a request from the gods, I’ll gladly do it. But human sacrifice should be both male and female. My wife should sink into the water with me.” He called out to his wife who just happened to be nearby. She said, “If I am to join him, I should wear white clothes as well.” They mounted the white horse, rode into the river, and disappeared. Then the sky clouded over, the thunder roared, and it rained heavily for three days and nights. On the fourth day as the river subsided, the deep water became shallow and a large rock appeared in the intake gate.

  The villagers used this rock as the foundation for building a new intake gate. For several hundred years after that, the village was safe from flooding. Because the husband and wife and the horse were sacrificed, a shrine was set up near the new water intake gate to worship seki-gami-sama (the spirit of the water gate). Even now, every year there is a festival at this shrine.

  Things didn’t turn out exactly as the mother (miko) had carefully planned, and she ended up losing her dear daughter. Saddened, she killed herself by plunging into the water at the same spot. It is said that bonari-myojin (mother deity) is the shrine for worshipping the mother’s (miko) spirit. (22-28)

  A long time ago, a man from Tsukumoushi was traveling in Arami Province. As he was walking, he noticed that the rice plants on both sides of the road were heavy with grain. He thought that this grain would be good as seed stock for his next year’s planting, so he broke off a few stems and put them in his pocket.

  The next spring, he planted the grain in the seedling area. It turned out that this variety of rice was not the usual variety for daily household use, but was for boiling and making rice cakes (mochi). Thinking how good the rice cakes would be, he planted all of his fields with the young seedlings.

  Then one day a man from Arami came by and said that last year the head of a house in Tsukumoushi had stolen some rice stems from his fields and then used them to plant his own rice. The two men argued about this, but the man from Tsukumoushi denied he had done anything wrong. The man from Arami left, warning that he would be back at harvesttime and use the rice grains as proof that the rice had been stolen.

  Worried, the Tsukumoushi farmer thought that the god of Mt. Hayachine might help him if he made an appeal. Rumor had it that the deity of Mt. Hayachine sometimes answered prayers even when wrongdoing had taken place. So he climbed the mountain, paid his respects, and prayed. At harvesttime, the man from Arami came again and said he wanted to go into the fields to inspect the rice plants. So they went into the fields together.

  Surprisingly, until the day before, the rice plants were rice cake (mochi) rice, but now they seemed to be just regular table rice. Embarrassed, the man from Arami apologized and headed off home. This happened clearly thanks to the help from the deity of Mt. Hayachine. The rice was really mochi rice, but it appeared as regular table rice. This mochi rice, called Oide-mochi, can still be found in the village. The female deity of Mt. Hayachine is said to help worshippers even if they steal something. She has a large following. (23-69)

  There was a man in Sekiguchi who went every day to enjoy himself in the pleasure quarter (ura-machi) of Tono with its restaurants and brothels. The brothel he frequented was named Sankoro (the sun, moon, and stars brothel). So the locals called him Sankoro. Eventually, Sankoro became the family name, and it remains that way even now. (24-252)

  This story dates from around the 1870s. A woman from Tono showed very unusual behavior. Since her late teens, she had tried to convince every man she had a relationship with to commit double love suicide. This didn’t just happen once or twice. Even when she married, she tried to get her husband to commit double suicide. They divorced, and she returned home. After trying this ten or more times, she became the mistress of a samurai warrior in Ishikura-machi. Even with him, she proposed double love suicide,
and they went to the Hayase River to throw themselves into it. It is said that she died first, and the man had a change of heart and returned home. (25-230)

  As you go along the road to Nakasai, there is a stone that is the guardian spirit of abundant breast milk (the protector of birth and nurture). There is the story that, for some reason or other, a Buddhist nun was transformed into this stone. (26-13)

  Komagata (guardian deity) Shrine was an ishi-gami (stone spirit) locally known as Okoma-sama. Worshippers offered it objects shaped like a male phallus. The origin of this shrine goes back to the rice-planting season. A single traveler, carrying what seemed a strange child on his back, passed by young women of the village who were planting rice. The childlike object had a red hood, a blank facial expression, and no eyes or nose. The traveler came to the location of the present Okoma-sama shrine and rested. Or, it is said, this is the place where he died. Talk has it that this was why the shrine was built there. (27-15)