Folk Legends of Japan (22 page)

One night the man said to the young lady: "This is the last time I shall meet you, for my life will end tomorrow. How sad I am to have to say farewell to you!"

As soon as he finished those words he disappeared, and the shadow of a pine tree was seen on the sliding paper doors. Struck dumb with surprise, the lady knew not what to do and worried greatly about the matter.

At that time it happened that a bridge over the Natori River was swept away by the flood. It was decided to cut down a big pine tree at the foot of Mt. Chitose to supply the lumber for a new bridge. The villagers, never guessing that the spirit of the pine tree was the lover of the governor's daughter, called many woodcutters and had them cut down the pine tree. But when they attempted to carry the fallen tree to the Natori River, they found themselves unable to move it an inch, however hard they tried. When Akoya heard of this, she recalled the last words of her lover and hastened to the pine tree. She placed her hand on the tree and pulled the rope with the other people. Then the tree, which had stood as firm as a great rock, was easily moved and carried to the river without any difficulty.

Akoya never married and lived the rest of her life alone. Many generations passed. The pine tree was succeeded by others, several times over, and nowadays an old pine tree called the Pine of Akoya stands at the foot of Mt. Chitose in the suburbs of Yamagata-shi.

OKESA THE DANCER

Motifs C423, "Tabu: revealing the marvelous," and C945, "Person carried off to other world for breaking tabu," appear here.

This is the legend behind the popular Okesa dance and costume I mentioned in the Introduction. It was told to me by the leading folklore collector of Sado Island, Shunosuke Yamamoto, at his home in Mano-mura on Sado, July 7, 1957. Mrs. Fanny Hagin Mayer interpreted for me. Okesa is said to have lived in Ogi-machi on the southern tip of the island. A text of the legend was published by Mr. Yamamoto in his book
Sado no Shima (
The Island of Sado
),
published at Mano-machi, Sado-gun, Niigata-ken, in 1953 There, on p. 58. he writes: "Okesa was very popular not only because she was a beauty, but also for her beautiful voice. Nobody had ever heard the songs that Okesa sang, so the people of the place called them 'Okesa-bushi'."
(Bushi
or
fushi
means an air.
)
The author comments on the variety of Okesa legends, at least ten being current, and states that the strange-cat form, here given, is the best known.

T
HERE IS
an Okesa dance commemorating a girl who changed into a cat.

Once upon time there was an old couple and they had one little cat which they cared for very lovingly. The old couple became very, very poor, and their days were full of suffering. Then the cat asked them one day to let her go home for a little while. And the form of the cat vanished. It reappeared after a few days in the form of a very beautiful girl and explained that it had lived with them for a long time and enjoyed their affection, and had returned now in the form of a beautiful girl to help them. She sacrificed her beautiful body to become a geisha, in order to bring in money for the old couple.

Her name was Okie-san, and has become Okesa. She was very popular, and many people went to see her. But once a boatman saw in the next room, where Okesa had been just a moment before, a cat eating, lapping up the oil in which the wick was floating in the lamp. She was aware that she was being spied upon. Okesa said: "I am very worried because you have seen my real form, but I want you to promise never to tell anyone the real truth."

The next day the boatman took a boat to Hokkaido, and right before a great company of passengers he told this story that he had been forbidden to tell. At once the sky became overcast and a black cloud covered the sun. A big black cat reached down from the cloud into the boat and pulled him up into the sky.

PART FIVE

HEROES AND STRONG MEN

SEVERAL different cycles of heroic legends flourish in Japan. One goes back to early myth and tells of demigods who in prehistoric times founded the kingdom where the village now stands. A much fuller spate of tales deals with the exploits of samurai in the Middle Ages, especially those who fought in the twelfth-century wars between the Heike and the Genji clans, which saw the defeat and dispersal of the Heike to remote corners of the islands. In Shimaneken, for instance,
densetsu
are still told about Akushichibyoe Kagekiyo, a Heike general appointed governor of Izumo Province. When another lord's servant took away a nightingale from Kagekiyo's district, the bird sorrowfully sang "Ho-ho-koga Kagekiyo, Kagekiyo," and the servant sickened, until he released the bird to fly back to Kagekiyo. One night Kagekiyo shot a white arrow into the air, to locate a shrine for Hachiman, God of War; the arrow lodged in a pine tree and is still preserved in the shrine.

Such bits of legend hark back to stirring ballads and tales that sprang up after the civil wars and were gathered together in the thirteenth-century classic,
Heike Monogatari.
A truly heroic age existed in the time of the Heike, when samurai devoted their Spartan lives to combats, sieges, and raids, and treasured their swords, dogs, horses, and beautiful women. Renowned warriors like Tametomo and the mighty Benkei emerged as heroes of folk history and linger on today in fragmentary and broken legends.

In more recent times a new stock of heroes has arisen from the peasant class, farmers famed for their prodigious strength and woodsmen for their marvelous hunting. In Japan the
sumo
wrestler has commanded admiration from the nobility as well as from the common folk from whom he springs, and many village legends celebrate the bulk and might of wrestlers. Similar stories in Europe and the United States centering on phenomenally strong men no longer carry supernatural overtones. (In colonial times, however, George Burroughs of Salem, Massachusetts, was accounted a wizard because he lifted up barrels filled with molasses and cider.) The strong men of Japan are still regarded as more than human and are said to be possessed by a
kami. Sumo
originated in divine ritual, and the victorious
sumo
wrestler assured his province fertile crops.

THE CHILD OF THE SUN

This tradition has the quality of an ancient myth. Yanagita in the preface to
Fishing Village Life,
pp. iii-iv, notes that sea people relate much older ancestral histories than do mountain people, who customarily ascribe their origins to refugee warriors of the civil wars. "But in many islands the people relate that their ancestors are a god and goddess who came to their island in the remote Age of Gods."

Text from
Kikai-jima Mukashi-banashi Shu,
pp. 24-25, reprinted from
Shima,
II, 1934, P- 487.

T
HE SUN
sent his child down to earth. He was brought up by his mother. When he was seven years old he was one day playing outside and his friends mocked at him, saying that he was fatherless. And the child told that to his mother. She told him the story that she had kept secret up to that time. She said: "You are really the son of the sun." When the child heard this he thought he should go up to heaven, and he went up. When he came to the sun and told him why he had come, the sun became angry and said: "I have no child on earth. Take this boy to the demon and let him be eaten up." So the servants took the boy to the demon, and the demon immediately tried to eat the boy. But because he was the son of the sun, and nobly born, the demon could not approach him. And the demon bowed down before the boy. Then the sun realized that the boy was his real child, and he said to the boy: "You may go down to the earth and wait for the time when I will feed you and your mother." And he sent the child back to the earth.

There the child tended the cows. One day when he was feeding a cow in the field, a sheet of paper dropped down from the heavens. The cow swallowed that paper, and the child kicked the cow's belly. Then the cow vomited up the paper. This paper contained a sacred prophecy. When it came out from the cow's mouth, the letters were colored red from the blood of the cow. The child became a prophet by the command of the sun, and the mother became a priestess. The boy was the first prophet of the island.

Note: This paper is the bible of the island. It is preserved on the island, written in Toki (the dialect of Kikai Island), and some letters are inscribed in red.

THE JEWEL THAT GREW GOLDEN FLOWERS

Legends of a princess who broke wind in public are discussed by Ikeda, pp. 198-99, under "The Gold Bearing Tree" and by Yanagita-Mayer,
Nippon Mukashibanashi Meii,
p. 416, no. 26, under "The Golden Eggplant," Motif S411.2. "Wife banished for some smallfault," reported from India, is central. This historical tradition incorporates the theme of breaking wind which is very popular in Japanese humorous tales and is often told about an old bamboo-cutter who swallowed a bird. See "The Old Man Who Broke Wind," pp. 207-8.

Text from
Okierabu Mukashi-banashi,
pp. 176-77.

L
ONG AGO
there was a king. One day when his pregnant wife brought him breakfast she broke wind. The king became angry and exiled her. So the wife departed from the king's house, and gave birth to a boy. The child grew up, and when he was seven years old he asked his mother: "Mother, have I no father?" And the mother said: "You are so young that I cannot tell you." But the child wished to know the secret. At last his mother told him the story. And she said: "You are the son of the king."

Then the child asked his mother: "Have you a jewel shaped in six squares?" The mother answered: "Yes, I have. The king gave it to me when he drove me out." And the child said: "Give it to me." And he went to the king with that jewel. He stood at the gate of the king's palace and cried aloud: "I have the jewel from which grow golden flowers." The king heard this but at first pretended not to hear. But the boy kept shouting the same words all through the night. At last the king lost patience and ordered a servant to bring in the child. When the child came to the king, he did not use the servants' entrance but the nobles' entrance.