Folk Legends of Japan (7 page)

Text from
Bungo Densetsu Shu,
pp. 58-59, from Kita Amabe-gun.

I
N THE THICK WOODS
at Yamada there is a small shrine by a little stream. A long time ago a young sister and brother fled to this village in order to hide from their pursuers. They found a cave called Komoridan and there they lived. One day a woodcutter who passed by the cave saw them and took pity on them. He decided to give them a cup of rice every day. The mother of the woodcutter became curious about her son's doings and asked him what he was up to. He told her about the sister and brother, begging her not to tell the other people about them. The old woman promised not to tell.

One day as the old woman was washing clothes in the river, the men who were chasing the brother and sister came to her and said: "If you tell us where the young people are, we will give you a reward." The greedy old woman was tempted to tell about them, but she remembered her promise to her son, so she did not tell them openly but turned her head in the direction of the mountain where the two young people were hiding. As soon as the pursuers saw that, they hastened to the mountain to search for the fugitives. Finally the pair was caught, and they were about to be killed under a big pine. Then the head man of the pursuing party took pity on the sister and brother and made a sign, shaking a baton in his hand. However, the men took it to be the sign to kill the two and they cut off their heads.

From that moment on, the old woman's head curved to one side and never regained its normal position. And her descendants all suffered from sore eyes. Moreover, an epidemic spread throughout this village. Therefore the villagers, fearing the curse of the two young people, enshrined the brother's spirit at Yamada and the sister's in the neighboring village of Kazamashi. This is said to be the origin of the Goryo Jinja [Shrine of the Vengeful Spirit].

THE SHRINE BUILT BY STRAW DOLLS

Hearn speaks of the belief in dolls coming alive and refers to a legend of a doll running out of a burning house (V, pp. 309-10). The present tale may belong to a cycle about the legendary carpenter Hida-no-takumi (the skilled worker of Hida). The pertinent motif is F675, "Ingenious carpenter."

Text from Katsuhiko Imamura, "Folktales from Bizen" (present Okayamaken), in
Tabi to Densetsu,
V (August, 1932), p. 579.

A
LONG TIME AGO
a feudal lord searched for a skillful carpenter in order to have a shrine built on the borders of Bizen and Bitchu provinces. But he could not find one. One day a carpenter came traveling from a distant province. The lord wondered why he came alone, because all the carpenters who had come before had had many apprentices. So he asked the carpenter: "Can you build a shrine all by yourself?" Then the carpenter answered: "Yes, I can. I will take it on my own responsibility if you give me the job." The lord granted his request, as he thought he was a rather unusual carpenter. All the people had a great interest in this carpenter. He told everybody not to come to the place where he was working until the building was completed.

The lord and all his servants were anxious to see the carpenter's work, but they let him work alone. The carpenter made rapid progress. In the daytime he worked alone, but by next morning he had done a great deal. The lord was curious about this and one night he secretly looked into the carpenter's working place. To his surprise he saw thirty or fifty carpenters identical with the original carpenter, all working busily. He tried to tell which was the true carpenter, but he couldn't. They were working hard in silence.

The days passed, and the shrine was about completed. The lord went there to give a reward to the carpenter, but he could not tell which one was the real carpenter. He asked the one beside him, who answered: "It is the one who has a mole near his eye." So the lord looked for the carpenter with a mole near his eye and gave him the reward. When the shrine was entirely constructed, that carpenter went away before anyone knew about it, and all the other carpenters fell down into the valley and died. People found many straw dolls down in the valley afterwards.

It is told that there was a small shrine where the straw dolls were found, and this shrine is the present Kibitsu Shrine.

VISIT TO ZENKO-JI DRIVEN BY A COW

This famous legend has become proverbial. Murai gives a Buddhist tradition on "The Origin of Zenko-ji Temple," pp. 57-61, and a variant of the present text on pp. 40-51, "An Old Woman at Nunobiki." His rendering of the verses traced from the cow's slobber is this:

Do not regard the fact,
As a mere ox's freak;
'Twas mercy of Buddha
To lead thee to righteousness!

The lines refer to a woman's cloth carried off on an ox's horn to a statue of Buddha. When in Nagano, I duly saw the grand Zenko-ji and was startled to come suddenly upon a frieze below a small altar showing the farmwife running frantically after the cow and her cloth, past astonished bystanders. The shrine on the mountainside at this old woman's village can be seen at the fourth station beyond the famed summer resort of Karuizawa. The story says that the old woman ran all the way from her village to Nagano, a distance ordinarily requiring ten hours to walk. A lovely illustrated four-page leaflet carrying a version of the legend has been issued by Zenkoji Temple, written by Priest Junsho Hayashi, and captioned "Pilgrimage to Zenko-ji Temple led by an Ox." Priest Hayashi interprets this title, which is used proverbially, in the sense of "entering the religious life led by grief," because ox is "ushi" in Japanese and "ushi" literally means grief.

Text from Masao Koyama,
Chiisagata-gun Mintan Shu
(Tokyo, 1933), p. 76.

Note: A temple often has two names, the first referring to the mountain on which it is built. Thus, for example, we have rendered Nunobiki-yama Shason-ji as "Shason-ji on Nunobiki-yama."

L
ONG AGO
there was an old couple in Chiisagata-gun. They were badhearted and did not believe in any god or in Buddha. One day the old woman was bleaching cloth under the eaves. Suddenly a cow came there and, catching the cloth on its horn, ran away. The old woman became very angry and ran after it to get back the cloth, but the cow ran away somewhere and the day grew dark. The old woman looked around and found herself in front of the temple of Zenko-ji in Nagano. She could see the slobber of the cow by the light of the Buddha's statue. She read it as follows: "Don't complain about the god. It is from yourself that you find the way to a religious haven."

At these words the old woman immediately recovered a good heart and worshiped the Buddha. She went home with a clean, pious heart.

One day when she was going to pay homage to the Kannon of her village, the wind blew in and carried the cloth away to the mountainside. This remains now as the Cloth Rock of Saku. When the old woman arrived at the Kannon shrine, she found the cloth was hanging on the head of the Kannon's statue. So she came to believe in Buddha still more sincerely and she lived there as a nun.

This story may mean that Kannon, disguised as a cow. guided the old woman's fate. The Kannon is said to be the Kannon of Shason-ji on Nunobiki-yama [Mt. Pulling-the-Cloth].

THE TEMPLE OF RAIKYU GONGEN

Hito-dama,
literally "human spirit" but more commonly rendered as "death fire," is described in the
Minzokugaku Jiten
as a yellowish flame with a long tail which comes out of the body just before death. In some places people say that a death fire has a face and speaks. This belief appears in the following legend, along with the idea of goryo.

Text from
Densetsu no Echigo to Sado, I,
pp. 88-go. Collected in Hojo-mura, Karina-gun, Niigata-ken.

I
N ANCIENT TIMES
castles stood on Mt. Hachikoku and in Hojo-mura. Mori Tamanosuke was the lord of the castle on Mt. Hachikoku and Hojo Tango was the lord of the castle in Hojo-mura. Being at odds with each other, they often had quarrels and sometimes fought battles. But Mori excelled his enemy in wisdom and valor. Moreover, he was a young and handsome warrior.

Lord Hojo had a daughter whose beauty surpassed that of the prettiest flower. The father married his daughter to Mori, and by so doing he outwardly pretended to become friendly with Mori, while secretly planning his destruction. Friendship now took the place of hostility between the two lords. The young couple lived happily for half a year.

It was one summer day that Hojo determined to carry out his plan to ruin Mori. He sent a messenger for Mori. Unsuspecting, Mori readily accepted his father-in-law's invitation and immediately made ready to go. But his wife, feeling uneasy about her husband for some reason, advised him not to go that day. The husband departed nevertheless, saying with a smile that there was nothing to be afraid of.

When he arrived at Hojo's castle, he was at once guided to the bath to wash off his sweat. But the bathroom turned out to be a hell for him. When he was about to be steamed to death in the locked bath room, he realized for the first time his father-in-law's cowardly trick. He was furious but helpless. He regretted that he had not followed his wife's advice.

After her husband's death, the wife killed herself by thrusting a knife into her throat. Mori's castle on Mt. Hachikoku was soon reduced by Hojo. After that, a strange fire often appeared on Mt. Hachikoku. It always floated to Hojo-mura. When people saw it, they shivered with fear and prayed for the disappearance of the fire, but it grew brighter.

The fire was seen especially on summer evenings and it continued to burn all night long. It was said that the fire was the spirit of Mori's wife.

The priest of Fuko-ji Temple tried to subdue the fire. He built a temple called Gongen-do for the souls of Mori and his wife, and recited sutras for twenty-one days. Thereafter the fire never appeared again on Mt. Hachikoku.

THE ORIGIN OF ENOO-JI

In Hearn's similar legend of "Oshidori" in
Kwaidan
(XI, 176-78), the mate of the mandarin duck killed by a hunter upbraids him in a dream, and next day kills herself before his eyes. Anesaki, pp. 320-22, has, however, a happy ending to a tale of mandarin-duck lovers; the one freed by a servant rejoins its mate and assists both mate and servant.

Text from
Aichi Densetsu Shu,
p. 318.

A
PATHETIC STORY
is told concerning the bridge called Shiraki-bashi [White Wood Bridge] in Haruki-mura, Nishi Kasugai-gun. Once when Lord Todo of Tsu Castle crossed this bridge, he saw a pair of mandarin ducks swimming congenially on the water. For mere pleasure the lord shot one of them with a bow and arrow of white wood. One night soon after that he had a dream in which a pretty woman appeared and expressed her lamentation over the death of her husband, who had been shot to death by the lord.

The next year the lord passed across the same bridge again and this time also shot several mandarin ducks. When he picked up one of them casually, he saw that the bird had the head of the mandarin duck which he had killed there the year before.

"Then is this the female mandarin duck that lamented over the death of her mate in my dream last year?" thought Lord Todo. He felt pity for the birds and established a temple for the repose of the souls of the two mandarin ducks and called it Hakkyu-zan [Mt. White Bow] Enoo-ji [Mandarin Duck Temple]. The white-wood bow was kept in that temp'e.

The temple fell into decay afterwards and there are no traces of it now, but Shiraki Bridge still remains.

THE ORIGIN OF KAZO-JI ON MT. WOODEN PILLOW

This kind of religious legend explaining the origin of a temple or shrine is called an
engi.
Hearn relates temple legends in the chapter "A Pilgrimage to Enoshima" in
Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan
(V, ch. 4), saying: In nearly every celebrated temple little Japanese prints are sold, containing the history
of
the shrine, and its miraculous legends" (p. 78).

Text from
Shimane-ken Kohi Densetsu Shu,
Yatsuka-gun, pp. 18-21.

T
HE PRIEST WHO FOUNDED
the temple of Kazo-ji on Makuragi-yama [Mt. Wooden Pillow] was High Priest Chigen. His former name was Mita Genta. He belonged to a family branch of Emperor Kammu but he was exiled to Oki Island. Then he wandered around many places and also went across to China. On the return voyage from China, his boat was attacked by a sudden storm. Then a dark cloud covered all the sea and nothing was visible except an object like a mountain at the edge of the cloud. Genta prayed to the god: "If there is a god in the mountain, may he guide this boat to the foot of the mountain. If this transpires, I will be converted and become a bonze."