did. Haseo studied with various teachers, including Sugawara no Michizane,
who greatly favored Haseo while he showed dislike for Miyoshi no Kiyoyuki
(847–918), another famed scholar outside his circle. Michizane served as the
examiner for Haseo when the latter applied for a professorship of litera-
ture. Michizane failed Kiyoyuki on the civil service examination, but later
he passed Haseo to be a professor. Kiyoyuki was jealous of the favorable
treatment Haseo received in the examinations and came to despise Haseo.
According to Gōdanshō (The Ōe Conversations) and Konjaku monogatarishū,
both collections of setsuwa,13 Kiyoyuki’s enmity was expressed when he
reportedly said to Haseo, “I have never heard of ignorant professors.
Perhaps you are the first one ever” (Borgen 135–36).14
Both Sugawara no Michizane and Ki no Haseo were scholar-poet-
bureaucrats who were promoted through their talents in scholarship rather
than by their family lineage. Michizane was close to Haseo; when he was
A Tale of Lord Haseo
117
exiled to Dazaifu, he sent Haseo a collection of his Chinese poems of
indignant lamentation and despair over his exile. This was the time when
various factions in both schools and family lineages competed for govern-
ment positions and imperial patronage. Haseo may have possessed supe-
rior political or interpersonal skills to rise above factional disputes. When
Michizane was driven from power, in spite of Haseo’s close relationship
with him, Haseo managed to continue to rise in office, eventually reaching
junior third rank, middle councilor.
A story in Konjaku monogatarishū, the twenty-ninth story of volume
28 titled “Chūnagon Ki no Haseo no ie ni arawaruru inu no koto” (The
Harmless Haunt), contains a setsuwa that portrays Haseo in a somewhat
unflattering manner.15 It starts: “As a scholar, Ki no Haseo was so magnifi-
cently learned that he had no rival in all the world. However, he knew noth-
ing of yin-yang lore” (Tyler, Japanese Tales 232). After his dog behaved in an
unusual manner, he asked a yin-yang diviner ( onmyōji ) about the meaning
of this event. The diviner warned Haseo that the dog’s behavior foretold
that on a certain date a harmless oni would appear, so Haseo should stay
secluded. Haseo forgot the diviner’s advice and invited his students for a
Chinese poetry gathering. It turned out that what the diviner had called a
harmless oni was a dog with a bucket on its head. The narrator concludes:
“So it hadn’t been a demon after all, but the diviner had seen it as a demon
because that’s what the people first thought it was. Everyone admired how
the diviner had even specified that the demon wasn’t going to do any harm
or deliver any curses. What a masterly insight that had been! on the other
hand, no one thought much of Ki no Haseo. No doubt he was very learned,
but it hadn’t been very clever of him to forget all about the diviner’s advice”
(Tyler, Japanese Tales 233).
Here the learned Haseo is compared unfavorably to the yin-yang prac-
titioner.16 The episode of Haseo’s blunder focuses on his stolidity or insen-
sitivity to the divination or warning, in spite of his reputation as an erudite
man who has experience with artistic spirits at the Suzakumon. The story
must have drawn a laugh from some readers. This weakness in personality as
portrayed in setsuwa by the beginning of the twelfth century—intelligent yet
missing something—works well for the protagonist of A Tale of Lord Haseo.
He is smart, yet he tends to fail at a critical moment—he could not resist the
ghost’s sensuous beauty despite the oni’s warning. While admiring or envy-
ing the intellectual Haseo, readers can empathize with him for his mind’s
inability to assert itself over the flesh. The fact that a scholar as reputable
as Ki no Haseo, a man who could survive the many political storms of his
time, succumbed to a woman serves as a reminder that powerful intellectuals
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could also make foolish mistakes. This could be a reason why Haseo was
chosen from among many noted scholars to be featured on this scroll.
kitano tenjin: Benevolent and vengeful
spirit of sugawara no Michizane
As mentioned, A Tale of Lord Haseo is the miraculous story of Kitano Tenjin
(see Tokuda, “Sumiyoshi monogatari zakki” 392–93; Tokuda “Kitano Shatō no
Geinō”). To show Tenjin’s efficacy, he has to rescue someone from a great
predicament; that someone is Haseo, and the troublemaker is an oni. Thus,
the supposedly harmless and artistic oni of Suzakumon was arbitrarily given
the task of attacking Haseo. Three months after his stunning creation had
been destroyed, the oni appears in front of Haseo again, this time to attack
him. At that moment, “Lord Haseo closed his eyes and prayed for Kitano
Tenjin’s divine help with all his heart and soul, and no sooner had he done
so than an angry voice roared out from the night sky. ‘What a nuisance you
are!’ the voice bellowed to the oni . ‘Be gone immediately!’ At these words
the demon vanished into thin air” (Komatsu and Murashige 119).
Considering Haseo’s background—born as a result of his father’s
prayer at Hase Temple and awarded promotion later in his life after praying
at the same temple17—one would assume that Haseo should have prayed to
the Bodhisattva of Hase rather than Kitano Tenjin, for his life. But as some
scholars point out, Kitano Tenjin’s voice from heaven reflects his rising
power compared with other deities (Andō; Yang, Oni no iru kōkei; Hijikata;
Murashige; Wakimoto).
While Sugawara no Michizane was alive, he fell victim to Fujiwara no
Tokihira’s slanderous tongue and was demoted from minister of the right
to chief administrator in Kyushu. After Michizane died at his place of exile
there, a rumor arose that his angry spirit might retaliate against his enemies.
His dead spirit became Daijō-itokuten (Heavenly Awesome Merits) whose
families, 168,000 evil spirits, were said to cause various natural disasters.
These attendants resembled kongō rikishi (guardian gods), thunder gods, oni
kings, yasha ( yaksa), and rasetsu ( rākşasa).18 Legend has it that Michizane, as Daijō-itokuten, had received permission from the deities Bonten (Brahman)
and Taishakuten (Indra or Sakra) to cause thunder and lightning to strike the
emperor’s residence in 930.19 Before Sugawara no Michizane was raised to
divine status as a protector of the wrongfully treated and the literati, he was
one of the most feared angry spirits of Japan. As such, Komatsu Kazuhiko
states that Sugawara no Michizane might well have been regarded by the
imperial family as an oni chief (Komatsu and Naitō 117). After later emper-
ors bestowed high court rank and kami status on Michizane and built shrines
A Tale of Lord Haseo
119
in his honor—the Kitano Shrine was built in 947, and Emperor Ichijō con-
ferred the title Kitano tenmangū tenjin (Kitano Tenmangū Heavenly Deity)
in 987—Michizane’s anger is said to have subsided.20
Yang Xiaojie notes
that although Tenjin was pronounced divine as
a result of perceived spiritual vengeance, the scholarly characteristics of
the man Michizane as the god Tenjin were emphasized and foregrounded
through organizational efforts by the “Tenjinkō” (the Tenjin Association),
established around the start of the thirteenth century, and others. The
groups advocated Tenjin’s ability to protect literati and to grant their wishes
if they worshipped him. So it was natural for Haseo, who was a successor
of Tenjin as a litterateur, to pray for help from Tenjin, the literati progenitor
(Yang, Oni no iru kōkei 226–27).
Tenjin Sugawara Michizane became the tutelary deity (protector) of
Hase Temple and the Hase community in the thirteenth century, as well as
a place for the Tenjinkō to meet. According to the eleventh tale of volume
1 of Hasedera genki, Tenjin Sugawara no Michizane appeared in front of the
Hase Temple’s gate in 94621 and met Takikura Gongen, the tutelary deity of
the Hase Temple at that time. Tenjin asked to become acquainted with Hase
Kannon and to receive favor from Kannon. Tenjin explained that when he
was exiled, he had been malicious and hurt many people. He was stricken
with regret and wanted to escape the cycle of sin and suffering with Hase
Kannon’s help. The Takikura deity then ceded his position as master of the
region to Tenjin (Nagai, Hasedera genki 46–50; Nojiri 5).
Behind the creation of this tale lies the rising power of the Kōfuku-ji,
to which Hase Temple became subsidiary. Kōfuku-ji had had close con-
nections with influential shrines such as Ise and Kasuga. Kōfuku-ji seemed
to exert more power in the region by introducing and promoting faith in
Tenjin, similar to practices at the Ise and Kasuga Shrines where associated
gods were famous for their miracles (and drew many fee-paying suppli-
cants) (Nojiri 7). At the same time, the expansion of the Tenjin miracle
benefited Hase Temple (see Yokota, “Hasedera to Tenjin shinkō”). In
any case, Tenjin was certainly famous as a miraculous (and lucrative) deity
while at the same time still remembered as a figure of the antiestablish-
ment faction and the leader of “168,000 evil spirits” who could cause vari-
ous calamities, as attested above.
BeLief in Oni’s seCret reCiPe tO Create humans
A climax of A Tale of Haseo is undoubtedly the revelation that the stunning
beauty in the story turned out to be made from body parts of the dead. Was
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the oni’s ability to create humans out of inanimate material an authorial
invention, or were there beliefs about this in wider Japanese folklore?
from senjūshō
one of the early well-known narratives of the supernatural creation of
human beings appears in Senjūshō (Buddhist Tales of Renunciation, ca.
1250), which until the modern period was believed to have been authored
by Saigyō (1118–90), an itinerant Buddhist priest and a famous poet. The
scholarship from the Meiji period onward clarifies that the author is not
Saigyō but instead is unknown. Despite this shift, Senjūshō is an excellent
source by which to view life in the early medieval period (Wakimoto 413).
In the fifteenth tale of volume five of Senjūshō, titled “Kōya san ni oite
hitogata o tsukuru koto” (Making a Human Figure at Mt. Koya),22 the narra-
tor writes that Saigyō “heard a man whose knowledge he respected describe
how a demon [oni] can collect human bones and make them into a human
being.”23 Seeking a companion, Saigyō attempted to make a human out of
human bones. He went to a wild moor “where people left the dead, put
bones together, and made a man himself.” The resultant being, however,
was far from satisfactory because of his procedural mistakes; the being had
a voice but “had poor color and no heart or spark of life.” Saigyō “consid-
ered breaking it up again, but that might be a murder . . . he [therefore] left
it in a deserted spot” (Tyler, Japanese Tales 69; Nishio 199). What happened
to this creature is unclear, but Saigyō must have felt uncomfortable about
his failure because he did not attempt to make a human again, even after he
learned the correct method. Saigyō was celebrated as a nature-loving poet
after his death and perhaps had never again wanted to try to meddle with
life and death.
Although Saigyō was not successful, there were other stories of char-
acters who were able to create life, involving rites from the nether realm.
Again, a Senjūshō episode gives an interesting account: “When Morofusa
[Minamoto no Morofusa]24 made a human, an old man appeared in his
dream and introduced himself as a supervisor of all the dead. He looked
resentful and accused Morofusa that he took bones from him without
asking permission. Morofusa immediately burned his diary in which the
method of making humans was written because he thought that if he left
his diary, his descendants would create humans and would be cursed by
the spirits.”25
This story shows that it was believed that a person had to ask the head
of the nether realm’s permission before attempting to create life; other-
wise, the life of a human who made a human being would be threatened.
A Tale of Lord Haseo
121
Furthermore, this story tells us about the secrecy of such projects in medi-
eval Japan. In the story, the narrator relates that Minamoto no Moronaka
(1116–72), poet and aristocrat, says, “I’ve made people by the Shijō major
councilor’s method. But I’m afraid I can’t tell you the method because if I
did, the people and other things I’ve made would all vanish” (Tyler, Japanese
Tales 69; Nishio 201, original emphasis). This indicates that there were sev-
eral ways to create life, and the knowledge of creation was extremely clan-
destine and well protected. Anyone who breached this rule would be cursed
and risked death or banishment. Possession of such rare knowledge was
invaluable, and it invariably enhanced the status of the possessor—whether
as feared or awed.
from yin-yang scriptures
A resurrection of the yin-yang master Abe no Seimei (921?–1005) using
similar techniques is described in the preface of the book Sangoku sōden
onmyō kankatsu hoki naiden kin’u gyokuto-shū (an abridged translation of this
lengthy title would be Yin-yang Treatise Held in the Ritual Containers, compiled
in the early fourteenth century),26 an esoteric scripture that legitimizes
Abe’s power and lineage. The prefaces states that when Saint Hakudō, the
Chinese teacher who expounded the esoteric scripture to Seimei, learned
of Seimei’s death, he traveled to Japan, collected Seimei’s bones—12 big
bones and 360 small bones altogether—performed the rite of resurrection,
and restored him to life (Mashimo and Yamashita, “Hokinaiden” 106). The
difference here is that Saint Hakudō brings a previously existing person
back to life using his own remains rather than creating a new life from
unrelated elements. The text of Yin-yang Treatise Held in the Ritual Containers
does not say where H
akudō learned the art of resurrection, but he may
have acquired the knowledge when the text of this treatise was transferred
to him by the Majusri Bodhisattva. In that case, Hakudō would have used
knowledge from a Buddhist deity rather than an oni. In any event, this art
was performed by a special person who was engaged with the supernatural.
Yin-yang Treatise Held in the Ritual Containers tells us that creating life out of
death was a sacred art for the select few and always involved supernatural
assistance. Importantly, it was firmly believed to be true and sacred, at least
among those who followed Onmyōdō.
from Buddhist writings
other religious writings also reveal an established belief about oni creat-
ing humans. Although they were published much later than A Tale of Lord
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Haseo, some commentaries on Buddhist sutras provide descriptions of oni
creating a human from parts of the dead (see Hirota 159–69). According to
Hirota, among a group of Buddhist writings called jikidanmono (writings of
direct sermons) written by monks at regional temples,27 a number of texts
on the Lotus Sutra and the Sukhavati Sutra contain a section on Ribata
(known as Revata-khadiravaniya in Sanskrit, Shariputra’s younger brother
and a disciple of Shakyamuni Buddha). Part of this section describes how
Ribata’s other name, Kewagō (“false unity”), came about. The explanation
of the origin of his name refers to an episode of an oni (re)creating Ribata
from some parts taken from the dead (Hirota 159).
An example appears in Hokekyō jikidanshō (Direct Sermon and Annota-
tion about [the] Lotus Sutra) written by Eishin (1475–1546), a Tendai monk.
When Ribata was meditating on a deserted pavilion late at night, a small
oni brought a corpse to the pavilion and left. Then, a big oni entered the
pavilion; just as he was about to eat the dead body, the small oni returned
and claimed the corpse. The big oni asked Ribata, who had seen the entire
situation, to be the judge of the ownership of the corpse. Ribata sided with
the small oni, who then ate the corpse. The big oni, angered by this, pulled
Ribata’s limbs off one by one and ate them. Sympathizing with Ribata, the
small oni took parts from other corpses and attached them to Ribata’s limb-
less body. He then spat on their joints and made mystic incantations. Ribata
Seven Demon Stories from Medieval Japan Page 19
