Folk Legends of Japan (19 page)

A
T SOME DISTANCE
from Hachiro Pond is the marsh called Tatsukonuma. One day in July a girl named Tatsuko drowned while swimming in this marsh. Her parents searched for her when it became dark. They lighted torches and called out: "Tatsuko, Tatsuko!"

Tatsuko, who had been turned into a dragon
[tatsu],
appeared from the water. The parents were grieved to see their daughter in such miserable form, and they threw the torches into the water. Then those torches were turned into trout. Therefore the trout in this marsh have black heads as if they were burned. However stormy the marsh may be in other seasons, on this particular day in July it is strangely calm because Tatsuko meets her husband Hachiro on this day.

Some people say that Hachiro now lives in this marsh with Tatsuko, so Hachiro Pond is now growing shallow and Tatsuko Marsh is growing deep.

THE FOX DEMONS

De Visser begins his extensive study of "The Fox and Badger in Japanese Folklore" by saying: "From olden times down to the present day the fox has played the most important part in Japanese animal-lore. This clever brute is considered to be more skillful than any other animal in taking human shape and hunting and possessing men." He goes on to point out the double character of the
kitsune,
fox, as a benevolent messenger of Inari, God of Rice, in addition to his role as a wicked demon haunting and possessing men. Heam has a fine chapter on "Kitsune" in
Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan
(V, ch. 15, pp. 358-94), concerned with the fox beliefs of Izumo peasantry. They fear goblin foxes for their deceptive enchantments,for quartering themselves upon a family, and worst, for taking diabolic possession of persons (p. 371). Basil Hall Chamberlain speaks to this last point in
Things Japanese
(5th ed. rev., London, 1905), "Demoniacal Possession," pp. 115-21, where he refers to a phantom train of 1889 traced to a crushed fox, and says that twentieth-century newspapers continue to report fox deviltry. Mock Joy a, IV, pp. 13-14, "Foxes that Bewitch," cites a 1922 newspaper account of an old man held up by six robbers a few days after he killed a fox; he thought they had stolen his money, but it turned out to be his food. Other general discussions of foxes can be found in Anesaki, pp. 325-27, in his section on "Revengeful and Malicious Animals"; U. A. Casal, "The Goblin Fox and Badger and Other Witch Animals of Japan,"
Folklore Studies,
XVIII (Tokyo, 1959), pp. 1-94 [section on The Fox, pp. 1-49]; William E. Griffis, "Japanese Fox-Myths,"
Lippincott's,
XIII (1874), pp. 57-64; Joly, "Fox," pp. 69-74; A. H. Krappe, "Far Eastern Fox Lore,"
California Folklore Quarterly,
III (April, 1944),pp. 124-47 [a valuable comparative study].

Mitford's tale, "How a Man was Bewitched and had his Head Shaved by the Foxes," is similar to the legend below in that foxes cruelly handle a scoffer and lead him to commit murder.

Text from
Kikimimi Soshi
(Tokyo, 1931), pp. 290-92.

O
NCE A HUMOROUS MAN
named Santaro, while on his way to town, saw several foxes lying in the sun. He drew near the foxes quietly, and then suddenly shouted to surprise them. Taken unaware, the foxes jumped up about ten feet high and immediately ran away to the mountains, looking back and making their tails round. Santa was pleased to see them running away and said to himself laughing: "I've heard that foxes foresee events which will happen even a thousand days later. But now I know it's not true at all. They can't tell what's going to happen right now. They're nothing but animals."

He told this to every person he met in town, heaping ridicule on the fox. He bought some fish and when evening came started home.

Soon night fell, and it grew too dark to walk on. Santa looked around and noticed a light some distance away. He proceeded to the house from which the light came and asked for a night's lodging. There was only a white-haired old woman in the house, who agreed to put him up, and then said: "Now I am going to my neighbor's, so I want you to look after the house while I am away." And she went out.

Santa felt uneasy when he was left alone and waited impatiently for the old woman to come back. In the meantime the fire grew low. Santa looked for something to burn. Then he saw a white object in the corner. "What is it?" he wondered, and looked at it more closely. It was a dead man, and to his surprise the corpse began to get up, groaning the while. Stricken with terror, Santa rushed out of the house. The dead man ran after him uttering sounds with wide-open mouth and outstretched hands. Santa feared that he might be caught by the dead man and, without a moment's thought, climbed a big tree standing near him. The dead man failed to see this and passed by, groaning.

Santa felt relieved. "Thank God!" he thought. "But I wish the morning would come soon."

At last day dawned in the east. As it grew light, Santa perceived that the tree was a persimmon, and that its upper branches bore fruit. He climbed higher up the tree in order to get the persimmons. But the branch broke under his weight and he toppled from the tree. Unhappily, the tree hung over a river bank, and he dropped into the water. However, he suffered no injury, and only felt quite chilly. Then suddenly he became conscious of himself crawling around on the spot where he had surprised the foxes that morning. The fish that he had bought were of course gone.

THE FOX WRESTLER

"Foxes quite frequently rob people of their food," reports Yanagita,
Mountain Village Life
(ch. 61, "Foxes and Badgers," p. 426), and gives a case of an old man in Kamisanji-mura who was bewitched by a fox while on his way home with wine and sardines and was found worshiping the bottle, in which he had placed a sprig; the sardines had disappeared. Stories of evil foxes who impersonate people are in Yanagita-Mayer,
Japanese Folk Tales,
nos. 35-37, pp. 108-14. Cases where the disguise of the fox is imperfect and lead to his undoing appear in nos. 38,39,
43,
pp. 115-18, 127-28.

This legend was turned in to me in his term paper by a student of mine, Nobusada Kawasaki, at the University of Tokyo in March, 1957. The events it relates transpired in his home town, Funabashi-shi, Chiba-ken, in 1912.

Notes:
Shichi-go-san,
a national festival honoring children of seven, five, and three.
Orizume,
a box of food given to guests to take home from a party.
Yokan,
a sweet jelly of red beans.
Kinton,
boiled beans mashed and sweetened.

I
N MY CHILDHOOD,
my storyteller was a window-sill library which my father, a Buddhist priest, had made for the convenience of the children in the neighborhood. It contained many books, almost all of them recommended by Mrs. Carl Schultz, a specialist in juvenile literature.

One Thursday recently I returned home after your lecture wondering whether or not I knew something that could be called a folk tale. The only tales I seemed able to remember were those of Grimm or Andersen, or some famous Japanese animal tales. I racked my brains. "Don't I know
any
unique folk tale that was told me directly?" After a while I recalled a tale related by my grandmother. And I have decided to set it down here because I know my grandmother believed the story. This is what she said.

"When your mother was a child, the graveyard at the back of this temple was thickly covered with bamboo grass. And it was said that foxes were living there.

"The autumn that your mother reached the age of seven (she is now fifty-two), we celebrated her
shichi-go-san,
inviting our neighbors in to dinner. The guests returned to their homes in high good spirits, each carrying an
orizume
in his hand. Genbe-san, a farmer, took a short cut back to his house through the overgrown graveyard, in spite of our warning not to. He was a tall, powerful man, and oh that evening, he was fairly drunk.

"Next morning he was back at our house with a thoroughly sober appearance, and told us of an astonishing experience he had had the previous night on his way home. As he was hurrying through the bamboo grove he was stopped by a strange man who appeared to be about his age. 'Hey, you! Let's have a
sumo
match,' the stranger said to Genbe-san. Since Genbe-san was big and strong and had been boasting of his strength, he immediately agreed. It was a close contest and neither man could emerge victor. When both became tired, they stopped to take a rest. A few moments later, Genbe-san discovered that the stranger had disappeared without his having noticed. Feeling totally bewildered, he returned to his home. When he opened the
orizume
with his family, he received a further surprise. Broiled bream, lobster fritters, chicken en casserole, all were gone. Only two dishes—
yokan
and
kinton
—remained in the box.

"It was surely a fox that had done such mischief," concluded my grandmother, nodding sagely. Then she added: "Of course it was quite natural that there should be foxes living there, since brush had grown so thickly on that graveyard."

After I returned home, I brought this story into our dinner table conversation. Pretending to be a folklorist, I concealed my real intent from my family. I talked on as if I were merely retelling a reminiscence of my late grandmother. But I was surprised to find my father and mother apparently believing this story. Father even told me of another man who was tricked by a fox and made to walk all night in the woods.

So I am convinced that folklore can be found nowadays just as in olden times. It will last at least another generation!

THE FOX WIFE

Foxes often appear as beautiful women. Yanagita,
Mountain Village Life,
pp. 426-27, tells of a girl-fox who accosts a flutist in Hippo-mura and gives him food for playing; the food later disappears from a wedding party. In the story of "Sanuki Vixen," the storyteller describes chasing a fox out of a strawberry bed and finding a beautiful girl with foxlike features, whom_ he rebuffs; next morning she is introduced to him by his host as his kins woman from Kyoto (W. Alexander, "Legends of Shikoku,"
New Japan,
V, 1952, p. 579). Fox-wife stories are summarized in Krappe, pp. 130-31. The idea of gratitude appears in Mitford, "The Grateful Foxes," pp. 213-19, where foxes kill their own cub to provide a fox's liver, prescribed as the only cure for the ailing son of a tradesman who has rescued the cub from a trap. A variant in Yanagita-Mayer of the present tale, no. 61, pp. 178-79, "The Fox-Wife," begins with a married farmer's finding two identical wives on his return from the privy and arbitrarily driving one out.

Text from
Aichi-ken Densetsu Shu,
pp. 263-64.

O
NCE THERE LIVED
on a hill on the way to Kido a farmer named Narinobu. The road started from Nishihara in Ichinomiya, passed the Narinobu Bridge and Bonji Pond, and led to Kido. One night a beautiful woman came to his home and asked him to make her his wife. He granted her request and married her. Not long after that she bore a boy whom they named Morime and whom they loved.

One year the boy fell ill in bed, and the parents tended him day and night. It was May, but Narinobu's wet rice field alone lay waste and unplanted. He was worrying about it in his heart. Then one morning when he went out, he beheld his rice field completely planted. However, he discovered that all the rice plants were planted upside down. Astonished, he ran into the house to tell his wife. But he saw there a fox's tail hanging out of his wife's bed. His wife awakened and realized that her real form, that of a fox, was now discovered. When her husband told her that the rice plants were planted upside down, she took the child in her arms and went out into the rice field. There she repeated the following poem three times:

"Be fruitful.
My child shall eat plenty.
The inspector shall pass over.
Bear fruit in the husk."

No sooner had she finished the last word than the rice plants turned over erectly and grew high and thick before her eyes. Leaving her child to her husband, she waved her hand to the sky. Then a black cloud appeared and, with a gust of wind, turned day into night. In the darkness the fox-wife disappeared, rolling up the arrowroot leaves scattered nearby. For that reason arrowroot leaves always show their undersides.

The autumn came, but nevertheless the rice plants of Narinobu's field did not come into ears. The officer who inspected the field therefore exempted Narinobu from rice taxes. However, the ears ripened in the husk and the harvest was plentiful.