Folk Legends of Japan (27 page)

Once upon a time there lived deep within these mountains a charcoal burner, Matajuro. He was so poor that no one would come to marry him. He lived a lonely life on the mountain, burning charcoal and taking it to the faraway harbor of Shimoda to sell, and so sustained himself from hand to mouth.

At this time, there was a famous
choja
in Kyoto who had a beautiful daughter named Ofuji. Her parents were worried because there had been no talk of marriage for her, although she had come of age. They could not tell the reason why she had no opportunity to marry. One day they consulted a fortuneteller, and he told them that it had been decided in her previous existence that a charcoal burner named Mala-juro who lived deep in the mountains of Kamogawa in Hata in Tosa should become her husband.

So Ofuji was persuaded by her parents to make a trip all by herself over sea and mountain from Kyoto to the recesses of Mt. Shiraishi. She arrived at a place called Deai [Encounter], a lonely spot where no one was likely to pass by. Then there came along a man, blackened with charcoal dust from tip to toe, carrying on his shoulder a straw bag filled with charcoal. Ofuji was so glad to see anybody that she asked him if he knew the charcoal burner Matajuro of Kamogawa. To her great surprise, he answered that he was that very Matajuro and that he was going down to the harbor of Shimoda to sell the bag of charcoal. Ofuji told him the reason behind her long trip from Kyoto and asked Matajuro to take her as his wife. Matajuro was quite embarrassed at her sudden request and refused it, since he had no place to lodge such a beautiful lady. However, Ofuji's determination was firm and she insisted. At last Matajuro yielded and led her to his cottage in the mountain. When they reached it, Ofuji found that the poverty in which he lived was almost beyond description.

As soon as they got to Matajuro's cottage, Ofuji took two gold coins out of the money she had brought from home and asked Matajuro to buy things with these coins at the town of Nakamura. Matajuro was seeing coins for the first time in his life, so he did not know how precious they were.

When he came to Kamoda at the lower village, Iwata, he saw a wild duck playing in the rice field. He wanted to catch it, and threw one of his coins at the bird in lieu of a stone. The coin did not hit the bird but making a curve in the air, dropped into the swamp. Matajuro took the other coin with him down to the town of Nakamura and tried to buy many things just for trial. The shopkeepers there sold him goods with unexpected pleasure.

Shortly after Matajuro returned home to the mountain, he told his wife how he had cast away one of the coins into the swamp. Ofuji was amazed at this story, and told him that such a gold piece was a precious treasure and that the people of the world would toil greatly to get just one such. Then Matajuro said mat there were plenty of such things behind the cottage where he made charcoal and that ashes produced by burning were just like these gold pieces. So Ofuji and Matajuro together went to the place where he had made charcoal, and found, as Matajuro had said, that all the heaps of ashes there were glittering with gold.

From shat day forward, the two burned almost daily the
ko
trees which grew in the mountain. They packed the gold thus produced in the charcoal bags under the disguise of charcoal and kept sending them to Ofuji's parents in Kyoto, who were greatly astonished. Before long, this couple went to Kyoto and became millionaires by the name of Konoike. Later, the village people in Naka Kamogawa built a shrine on the former site of the charcoal furnace.

This is commonly known among the local people as the Charcoal Treasury Shrine.

Also, they say that the place now called Deai in this village was named for the meeting there between Matajuro and Ofuji. The place-name "Wakafuji" [Young Ofuji] originated from the feeling of renewed youth in Matajuro when he made his decision to take Ofuji with him to his cottage in the mountain. And the reason for the ashes around the charcoal furnace changing into gold is explained on the ground that since he kept burning
ko
trees for three years, the smoke went up to heaven, from where gold poured down in heaps to the earth.

The villagers also say that if you keep burning
ko
trees for three years, you will become a millionaire.

ASAHI CHOJA

Two traditions of retribution on rich landowners who stop the sun so they can finish their rice planting in one day are in Mockjoya, IV, pp. 40-41, "Stopping the Sun," and in Yanagita-Mayer,
Japanese Folk Tales,
pp. 150-52, no. 52, "Koyama Lake." None has the ending of the first text below. The folk-Biblical legend of Joshua stopping the sun and the moon for thirty hours to enable the Israelites to defeat the Canaanites is in Joseph Gaer,
The Lore of the Old Testament
(Boston, 1951), pp. 191-93, "The Longest Day in the World."

The second text gives an entirely independent account of the decline of the same
choja,
involving Motif C55.2, "Tabu: shooting at consecrated water."

Texts from
Bungo Densetsu Shu,
pp. 115-16. Thefirstwas collected by Tomi Ninomiya and the second by Hiroko Yoshimura, both in Kuzu-gun, Iida-mura.

Note:
Cho,
2.45 acre.

1. A
LONG TIME AGO
Asahi
Choja
lived at Sencho-muden. He had three pretty daughters whom he loved very much. This
choja
owned a thousand-cho rice field behind and a thousand-cho rice field in front.

One year, during the reign of Emperor Keiko, little rain fell when the season of rice planting came round. The rice fields dried up and the people were not able to plant rice. So the
choja
prayed for rain to the dragon god of the old pond at Takatsuhara in Asono-mura, making a promise that he would give one of his daughters to the god if the god would grant his request. Thereupon the rice fields became wet and the people commenced the work of rice planting.

While they were so engaged, a monkey trainer passed along the nearby road. The people stopped planting for a while to look at the monkey trainer's show. So they were not able to finish planting before sunset. Therefore the
choja
took his fan and beckoned the setting sun to come back again. And the sun indeed reascended, and the people were able to finish planting their rice that day. The
choja
was satisfied. "Well, that is very nice," he said.

Then, however, the
choja
remembered his promise to the dragon god. He asked his eldest daughter if she was willing to become the wife of the dragon god, but the eldest daughter refused. The
choja
asked the second daughter, but she also refused. Finally the third daughter answered that she would go to the dragon god if one condition was fulfilled. The condition was that she be placed inside seven wooden tubs. The villagers did as she desired and carried her in the sevenfold tubs to the old pond, from where she was to be taken away by the dragon god during the night. After they left her, she began to recite the sutras with all her heart.

When the day broke, the villagers returned to the pond. They found the girl alive in a tub. She was weeping but safe, perhaps because she had recited the sutras. The six outside tubs and all but one ring of the seventh tub were broken.

For this reason the ring at the bottom of a tub has ever since been called a
nakiwa
or weeping ring.

When harvest time came, all the rice plants of the
choja's
rice fields were changed into rushes.

2. This
choja
in his best days indulged in luxury. Disdainfully he shot an arrow at the
mochi
given as an offering to the god at New Year's time. The moment the arrow hit the
mochi,
it turned into a white bird and flew away. From that time on the
choja's
fortune steadily dwindled. His rice field, which extended over more than a thousand
cho,
came to produce little or no crop.

Today there remains a shrine dedicated to the white bird and a mound where the bird was buried on the place called Asahi Yashiki [Asahi Estate]. They say a plum tree there bears strange blossoms.

SANYA CHOJA

This legend embodies Motif N531.3,
"Dream of treasure bought.
Treasure has been seen by man's absent soul in sleep inform of a fly. The purchaser of the dream finds the treasure." Three variations on this theme, all
chojatan,
are in Yanagita-Mayer,
Japanese Folk Tales,
nos. 44-46, pp. 129-34, in which a bee, horseflies, and a dragonfly are seen hovering by the sleeper's mouth. Ikeda assigns Type 840 A, "A Bee Creeps Out of a Man's Nostril," to her analysis of eighteen Japanese versions (pp. 228-29).

Text from
Bungo Densetsu Shu,
pp. 12-13. Told by Yasue Sonoda.

L
ONG AGO
there was a peddler called Sanya-no-suke at Hagiwara. He sold ginger and sieves in the district around Takeda. One day he went peddling with a friend, and on their way back they took a rest by the side of Mt. Toroku. The friend fell into a comfortable sleep. Sanya cast a casual glance at him, and just at that moment a mountain-bee came flying up and entered the nose of the sleeping man. After a while it came out and again entered the nose. It repeated this several times. Sanya shook his friend awake and asked him: "Didn't you feel something strange?"

"Well, a bee flew to me and told me to go to that mountain, because much gold is buried there; but I don't believe in such a dream," answered the friend.

So Sanya said: "Then, won't you sell me that dream?"

The friend consented. So Sanya gave him his ginger and sieves and bought the dream. He went to Mt. Toroku by himself and dug the ground at the place where he thought gold was buried, but he could not find it. Nevertheless, he continued digging very hard, forgetting any other work, so that at last he had to feed himself with only wheat which he managed to buy a little at a time.

At last his labor was rewarded. He found a gold vein. He soon prospered and became one of the richest men in the western part of Japan. He constructed a great mansion in the region now called Ebisumachi and Manya-cho (in Oita-shi). To such extremes did he carry his love of luxury that he built a room with a glass ceiling in which fish lived and swam about. He entertained himself looking up at the fish.

Hineno Oribe-no-kami, the lord of that district, was often invited by Sanya Choja to his home and spent pleasant times with the
choja's
son. One day when they were together resting easily, the
choja's
son lifted up his leg and pointed with his toe to the goldfish in the ceiling. This act offended the lord, and as a result Sanya and his family and kinsmen were condemned to death. Sanya appealed to the lord saying: "We shall present you with so many coffers containing a thousand gold pieces each that they will make stepping-stones from my house to your castle, if you will pardon us from so cruel a punishment."