Folk Legends of Japan (25 page)

However, when they came to Nagata in Kuchiba-mura, he met a buyer. As the buyer showed six fingers, the dealer thought that he meant six hundred copper coins and they struck a bargain. But on payment the buyer handed him six hundred pieces of silver. The dealer was astonished and asked him why he paid so much money. The buyer answered that it was really a fine horse worth more than six hundred pieces of silver.

Just as he said, this horse was finally bought by the Shogun Yoritome in Kamakura.

THE FAITHFUL DOG OF TAMETOMO

A similar legend, elaborately told, is in Suzuki, pp. 80-85, "Kuro, the Faithful Dog," save that the hero ignores the dog's warning and is killed by a small snake which turns into a great monster. De Visser in "The Dog and the Cat in Japanese Superstition," pp. 23-24, recounts faithful-dog legends from the eighteenth century. The Welsh tale of "Llewellyn and His Dog" (Motif B331.2), famous in Western tradition and known in India with the mongoose replacing the dog, differs from the Japanese form in that the loyal animal kills a snake threatening its master's child and is then slain by its master when he sees it smeared with blood.

Tametomo is a celebrated hero, uncle of the still more celebrated Yoshitsune, who fought a losing struggle with the Minamoto clan against the Tairas in the civil war of 1157-59. He was a renowned archer and sank a ship with his bow. Anesaki discusses the legends of Tametomo, pp. 307-9.

Text from
Bungo Densetsu Shu,
pp. 88-89. Collected by Toshiko Iwao.

A
KAIWA IS SITUATED
between Mt. Kibaru and Mt. Miyake, astride an important road which since olden times has connected Kuchizuna and Takeda.

The ancient hero Minamoto Tametomo, an heir of the Genji clan who lived in the twelfth century, displayed from early childhood the marks of an unusually strong and violent disposition. His father Tame-yoshi worried about him and decided to send the youth to the province of Bungo, with a samurai servant named Hatano Jiro, and entrust him to the care of the Ogata family who lived there. The master and the servant set out on their journey with a pet dog and eventually reached Bungo. They traversed mountains and fields and came to Akaiwa Pass. The view from that point was so beautiful that they decided to rest under a big pine tree and admire it the longer. Tametomo was entirely charmed with the splendid scenery all about.

Then the dog, which had been squatting down quietly beside Tame-tomo, suddenly burst out barking and sprang violently at Tametomo. Rough and quick-tempered, Tametomo impulsively unsheathed the sword he wore at his waist and in a moment cut off the dog's head. But it did not drop to the ground. Instead, it flew up into the pine tree and bit the throat of a big snake glaring down at them with fierce mien from the tree. The unexpected attack of the dog's head gave the snake a mortal injury. Writhing in agony, it breathed its last and fell down to the ground as the great tree itself toppled and fell.

The master and the servant were dumfounded at this event. When they had recovered, they looked at each other sorrowfully. Tametomo regretted the imprudence that had led him to kill his faithful dog. They buried the dog's corpse carefully and left there in mourning.

BANJI AND MANJI

This is a version of the legend quoted from Yanagita, ch. 4, in the headnote to "The Hunters Turned to Rats." It crosses with a popular Japanese theme of rivalry between mountain deities; Ichiro Kurata gives variants from different parts of Japan, told on specific mountains, in "Yama-No-Kami (Mountain Deities),"
Contemporary Japan,
X (September, 1941), pp. 1304-12. Where in one form, as the present, the hunter who befriends the mountain spirit prospers and the unfriendly hunter suffers, in reverse a hospitable mountain goddess is rewarded and a surly one punished; hence Mt. Fuji has snow while Mt. Tsukuba remains vernal. As Mock Joya writes, IV, p. 2: "Kami-sama is almighty, but there are many tales of mere humans helping and saving kami (gods). The story of Banzaburo of Nikko is one of the most widely known of such stories" ("Banzaburo of Nikko," pp. 2-3. Banzaburo and Banji are interchangeable).

Text from
Too Ibun,
pp. 54-55.

I
N THE MOUNTAIN VILLAGE
called Oide in Tsukumoushi-mura, Hei-gun, there were two hunters named Manji and Banji. Manji was a skillful hunter and shot much game. On the other hand, Banji was often without a single deer even though he tramped around the mountains all day. One day when Manji went to the mountains hunting, he met a beautiful woman suffering in labor. As he passed by, she asked him for his help. But he went on, refusing to aid her because the hunters held severe taboos against childbirth. Some time after that Banji came along. When he was asked for help by the woman, he was willing to assist and take care of her. The woman gave birth to twelve babies. She was very glad and thanked Banji, promising to give him the blessings of the mountain. She said: "If you call out your name 'Banji,' you will have good luck in the mountains hereafter."

From that time on Banji shot much game every day. To commemorate the bounty of the mountain goddess, he observed a holiday on the twelfth of every month. Later the hunters came to observe a holiday only on the twelfth of December. On that day not only the hunters but the farmers in general do not go into the mountain. For they say if they do, they will meet some evil.

That woman was really the mountain goddess. When a hunter shouts "Banji, Banji, Banji," he will have good luck, and if he wishes to curse another hunter he shouts "Manji, Manji, Manji." Then that man's bullet will not hit any animals.

This is because Manji was cursed by the goddess and deprived of luck in the mountain.

NUE THE HUNTER OF HATOYA

The world of difference between two cultures can be seen in comparing the mountain hunter Nue with American frontier heroes like backwoodsman Davy Crockett or mountain-man Kit Carson. The American legends are naturalistic and humorous-exaggerative; the Japanese are supernatural-magical. The animals that Nue hunts turn out to be demons or genii, and the mountain itself is a zone of occult mysteries fraught with taboos. The motifs in the first and third episodes below, "Magic charm catches fish," and "Magic treasure ball catches game," do not appear as such in the
Motif-Index,
but could be placed under Motif S1327, "Magic object locates fish (game)." The main motif of the second episode, D1385.4, "Silver bullet protects against giants, ghosts, and witches" (a gold bullet here), is widely known in Europe and the United States.

Text from
Too Ibun,
pp. 151-56.

Note:
Saru-no-futtachi;
a kind of legendary monkey resembling a human being. He likes women and often steals them from villages. He varnishes himself with resin and sand, so that his fur is as hard as iron and a bullet cannot penetrate it. (Kunio Yanagita,
Tono Monogatari,
new ed„ Tokyo, 1948, p. 26, from a statement by the present storyteller, Kizen Sasaki.) This creature seems to be known only in Iwate-ken.

A
LONG TIME AGO
a skillful hunter called Nue lived at HatoyainKamigomura. He had an only daughter. One day as she was weaving by the window, she stopped moving the shuttle and began muttering and laughing to herself. When Nue saw that, he wondered what was causing the girl to behave so. Looking around carefully, he spied a little snake clinging to the window. Whenever the snake shook its tail the girl laughed and murmured. Nue realized that the snake was tempting the girl to do these things, so he shot it with his gun and threw the dead snake into the stream that flowed in front of his house.

The next year when the season for the melting of snow came, a great many strange small fish gathered in the stream. Nue had never seen such fish before. He caught them, uttering the charm which had been handed down from his ancestors, and stirred them with grass sticks. Then the fish all turned into small snakes. At this Nue became fearful and took all the snakes to the field near his house and threw them away. When summer came, a strange grass grew thickly and luxuriantly there, and the cows and horses that ate the grass all died.

2. Once Nue went to the mountain on a hunting trip and decided to stay overnight. Suddenly a light shone from a big tree nearby, and he saw a woman spinning at a spinning-wheel. Guessing she must be a fox or a badger, he fired at her, but the woman only laughed and would not go away. Nue shot again and again, but the woman kept on laughing. He gave up shooting and went home that night.

Next morning when he told his father about the woman of the previous night, his father said: "Such a creature cannot be shot to death by an ordinary iron bullet in the ordinary way. If the bullet is covered with mugwort and iris grass such as are used at the May Festival, and if the gun barrel is stuffed with grass or the leaves of trees, the bullet will hit such an enchanted creature. But if the creature still suffers no harm, then a gold bullet must be used to kill it."

In addition to these instructions, his father taught Nue many other hunting secrets. Nue went to the mountain again that night. Again he saw the same light coming from the big tree and the same woman with the spinning-wheel. He fired the bullet covered with the mugwort and iris grass used at the May Festival, but the woman only laughed at him in the same teasing manner. He thought there was no recourse but to use the precious gold bullet. He stuffed it into his gun and fired it straight at the woman. With a shriek the woman and the light were gone in a trice.

When day broke Nue followed the blood drops on the ground until they led to a strange dead creature in a rock cave. He carried the creature back to his home. When his father saw it he said that it was a so-called
saru-no-futtachi.
Nue presented its fur to the feudal lord and was rewarded and given the name Nue by the lord.

3. One day Nue was hunting near the swamp of Fukasawa on Mt. Kataha. He shot and killed a big white deer. When he skinned one side of the deer, the skin continued to stick to the carcass of its own accord; and when he skinned the other side, the skin stuck to the carcass again, and the deer was restored to life. As soon as it came to life it ran away. Nue pursued the deer to the mountain peak where now stands the shrine of Shisuke Gongen. There the deer was finally destroyed. One of the deer's eyeballs proved to be a magic treasure ball. At the moment that Nue seized this ball in his hand, a gray horse appeared before him. He mounted the steed and rode back home. When he dismounted from the horse it ran away back to the mountain.

Thereafter, everything came to pass as Nue wished on his hunting expeditions. The magic ball was handed down from generation to generation as a precious treasure of his house. But on the occasion of the fire in 1916 that consumed the ancestral home, the ball vanished from sight, and in consequence the house of Nue has not enjoyed such good fortune as was its wont in the past.

So say the villagers.

THE STRONGEST WRESTLER IN JAPAN

Joly explains one theme that enters this legend, in connection with an
ubume,
the spirit of a woman who has died in pregnancy and cannot rest in the underworld; she travels about with her baby in her arms begging a passerby to hold it; when he does so, the baby becomes heavy as lead and (unlike the present tradition) drops to the ground in the form of a boulder (pp. 32-33, "Ubume," and p. 16, "Bakemono"). Two versions, in which the holder of the baby is rewarded with great strength, are in Yanagita-Mayer,
Japanese Folk Tales,
pp. 245-47, no. 83, "The Strong Man and the Woman in Travail." The idea expressed there is that the baby's weight is equivalent to the pains of childbirth; the woman with the hahy is a mountain deity, and the prayer of the samurai holding the heavy baby enabled her to assure its birth. The same volume has a series of tales about strong men, strong women, and wrestlers, pp. 245-61, nos. 83-89.