Seven Demon Stories from Medieval Japan
Page 32
Meanwhile, in Moritaka’s village, everyone from the most noble to the
lowliest person came out to welcome the party home. “The princess is res-
urrected and returns with her husband,” they cried. “There is nothing more
auspicious than this.” Moritaka’s joy was without equal. Not only people in
the household but also those outside came to visit with saké to celebrate.
Moritaka continually held celebrations and banquets without comparison
from morning to night. As Lord Moriie excelled in learning, martial arts,
and various other accomplishments, people in Moritaka’s clan considered
Moriie their worthy leader.
Later the princess wondered, “Don’t I owe my present prosperity solely
to my mother? She revered Kannon so deeply that the Kannon’s protection
has been profound.” So believing, she held memorial services for her late
mother all the more frequently. She had a temple built and conducted ser-
vices for the benefit of suffering spirits. On behalf of her mother, she gave
treasures to needy people. As she was always compassionate, her family
prospered all the more with Kannon’s protection. Further, she summoned
Akino and her husband, built a good house in which the couple could live,
and sent rice and paid other expenses monthly so the couple became rich
and lived luxuriously. The princess gave birth to a prince and a princess
one after another. The appropriate wet nurses and nurses were chosen for
each child. Akashi, the princess’s nurse, and Saishō’s nurse named Shii got
along as if they were two halves of a whole, and everyone revered them.
As Moritaka was too young to remain a widower, he married the middle
councilor’s twenty-year-old niece. There was a breach in the niece’s previous
engagement, and she had been single for three years. Moritaka considered
her to be like his late wife, and they lived happily together. They both took
to the moon and flowers and enjoyed dance performances and music.
If one is honest and compassionate and believes in Buddhas and gods,
one’s life in both this transitory world and the next will be good. For those
who read this tale, be kind and compassionate to people. Akino and her
husband prospered because she was compassionate and sympathetic to
others. Further, if you rely on the grateful Kannon single-mindedly, your
desire will materialize in the end and your life in this world will be peaceful.
Further, you will be born into a good place in your next life. Repeatedly
think of compassion from morning till night.
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Part III: Women
nOtes
1. See the introduction for a brief explanation of otogizōshi.
2. For an English translation of Hachikazuki and Ubakawa, see Steven 315–31; Mulhern,
“Analysis of Cinderella Motifs” 31–36.
3. See, for example, Ichiko, Chūsei shōsetsu no kenkyū; Matsumoto, “Minkan setsuwa kei
no Muromachi jidai monogatari”; Takahashi, “Otogi zōshi ‘Hanayo no hime’ to minkan
shinkō”; Matsumoto, “Chūsei ni okeru mamakotan no ichi kōsatsu”; Ōchi, “Ubakawagata
setsuwa to Muromachi jidai monogatari”; Okada, “Otogi zōshi no bukkyō shisō to minkan
denshō”; Okada, “ ‘Hanayo no hime’ to minkan denshō.” According to Toelken, “Folklore
is made up of informal expressions passed around long enough to have become recur-
rent in form and content, but changeable in performance” (Toelken 37). Further, “Its pri-
mary characteristic is that its ingredients seem to come directly from dynamic interactions
among human beings in vernacular performance contexts rather than through the more rigid
channels and fossilized structures of technical instruction or bureaucratized education, or
through the relatively stable channels of the formally taught classical traditions” (Toelken
32). In this chapter “folklore,” as in “their strong association with ‘folklore,’ ” a phrase fre-
quently used when discussing Cinderella-type stories, specifically means minkan (folk) setsuwa (see Ichiko, Chūsei shōsetsu no kenkyū; Matsumoto, “Minkan setsuwa kei no Muromachi jidai monogatari”; Takahashi, “Otogi zōshi ‘Hanayo no hime’ to minkan shinkō”; Matsumoto,
“Chūsei ni okeru mamakotan no ichi kōsatsu”; Ōchi, “Ubakawagata setsuwa to Muroma-
chi jidai monogatari”; Okada, “Otogi zōshi no bukkyō shisō to minkan denshō”; Okada,
“ ‘Hanayo no hime’ to minkan denshō”). For an explanation of setsuwa, see chapter 1, note 8.
4. Although the word has the same characters as yamauba, it is pronounced yamamba.
5. See NKBT 41: 279. For the Japanese text of the Noh play Yamaba, see NKBT 41: 275–87. An English translation is found in Bethe and Brazell 207–25. In Noh, there are five
types of plays categorized according to the role of shite (the lead actor). These categories are plays that focus on gods, warriors, women, mad persons, and demons. The play Yamamba is
categorized as a demon play. For the study of yamauba in English, see K awai; Reider (chapter 4 of Japanese Demon Lore).
6. This is the fifteenth story of volume 27. For the Japanese text, see SNKBZ 38: 54–58.
An English translation is found in Ury, Tales of Times Now Past 161–63.
7. As Ōshima Tatehiko (“Yamauba to Kintarō” 51) writes, many legends and associated
sites tell of yamauba giving birth to children and raising them.
8. Yanagita (“Yama no jinsei” 240) recounts a story of a family living on a mountain that
finds a yamauba’s tsukune (a ball of hemp yarn [dialect word]), which produces infinite yarn.
The tsukune makes the family rich, but soon thereafter the young wife gives birth to an oni’s child with two horns.
9. Franz (104) interprets the witch in two of the Grimm fairy tales, The Two Brothers and The Golden Children, as an archetypal figure of the Great Mother and an archetype of the
“unconscious.” See also Jacoby, Kast, and Diedel 205–6.
10. I could find only one article (Takahashi, “Otogi zōshi ‘Hanayo no hime’ to minkan
shinkō”) that studies Blossom Princess in relation to the “obasute” legends.
11. For the “obasute” stories of mukashibanashi and legends, see Yanagita, Nihon
mukashibanashi meii 173–75; for English translations, see Mayer 168–71 and Seki, Folktales of Japan 183–86; see also Seki, Nihon mukashibanashi shūsei 6: 530–49; Dorson 222–25. Regarding the legend of “obasute,” scholars conjecture that the elders were abandoned because
in the village where food was scarce, people who consumed precious food without labor-
ing were considered burdens and useless and redundant to the family and to village life
Blossom Princess
203
(Nishizawa 29, 65; Keene, “Songs of Oak Mountain” xii–xiii). Ōshima Tatehiko, however,
writes that although scholars have long considered the lore and legends of “obasute” as
a reflection of some customs, including the abandoning of old parents/caretakers, there
is no confirmation of the actual custom of abandoning elders in the mountains of Japan.
The “Obasute” lore is grasped as a reflection of some customs of yakudoshi (an unlucky
year), retirement, and funerals (Ōshima, “Obasute no denshō” 3–4; Seki, Mukashibanashi to
waraibanashi 1–7). Similarly, Yoshikawa Yūko writes that “Obasute” stories are not tales of actually abandoning old people; rather, they are textualizations of the rituals of disposing
of taiyaku (great misfortune) held at age sixty ( kanreki, when one returns to the first year of the sexagenary cycle) and of the benefit of such rituals. In folktales, the age of old
people is generally between sixty and sixty-two. Yoshikawa notes that the two commonali-
ties of mukashibanashi about “obasute” are the age at which old folks are deserted—either sixty or sixty-two—and the end of the custom of desertion at the story’s conclusion.
The age of sixty or sixty-two is one’s yakudoshi, and a celebration or ritual of kanreki is held to exorcise or dispose of one’s accumulated defilement and crimes. This celebration
or ritual becomes both a commemoration of one’s life and a prayer for longevity. She
concludes that the folklore reflects the rituals and their benefit rather than the actual cus-
tom of abandoning the old (Yoshikawa). Indeed, after examining the population registers
( shūmon aratamechō ) of the early modern period, Laurel L. Cornell concludes that “female geronticide does not seem to have existed” (84). Cornell reasons that the “obasute” stories “appear so prominently in the portrayal of the Japanese elderly in traditional times”
because “given what ethnographers report about tension between mothers-in-law and
daughters-in-law, the peasant husband and his wife must have wished, often, that they
could abandon grandmother on the mountain” (87).
12. These reasons are very bleak, even if fictitious, but there are several advantages in
being an old woman: “Ethnographic interviews with women in today’s Japan find that many
look forward to old age. What a relief to ‘no longer keep a low profile and display feminine
reserve.’ Instead they can be bold, drink, and speak their mind, regardless of the company”
(Walthall 156). From a viewpoint of gender studies, Mizuta Noriko considers yamauba as
gender transcendent. She contrasts yamauba with the women of the village ( sato). The sato was considered a safe place where people were protected and insulated from the various
dangers of the mountains. According to Mizuta, the women of the sato are idealized and standardized—they are good mothers, good wives, chaste, humble, and obedient to their
fathers and husbands (10–12). Conversely, a yamauba is someone who falls distinctly outside the norm. Although she often had excessive fertility, she lacked the feminine traits ascribed
to the women of the sato, namely, chastity, obedience, and compassion. Mizuta notes that the norm for the sato’s women cannot be applied to yamauba, for her essential qualities are so nebulous and polysemous that she nullifies it. In other words, the yamauba exists outside the sato’s gender system (12–15). She refuses to be assigned a household role, such as mother or daughter, and will not be confined. Mizuta emphasizes that while the women of the
sato stay in one place, yamauba are comparatively nomadic, moving constantly through the mountains, appearing in an array of locales, often outside or away from a town’s territorial
boundary (10).
13. Yanagita Kunio first made this division of four in his article “Oyasute-yama,” pub-
lished in 1945. In the article he notes that the first two types have foreign origins, whereas
the third and fourth types are native Japanese stories. In Yanagita ( Nihon mukashibanashi meii ), however, he divides the stories into two categories: the first is about “a land of abandoned
old people. The wisdom of an old person, hidden and cared for, helps solve problems and
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Part III: Women
they became happy . . . The second type is where children who take their parents to the
mountains to abandon them are moved by the love of their parents and try to live with
them again” (Mayer 168). Many scholars follow the division of four. Ōshima Tatehiko calls
them four types independent of each other (Ōshima, “Ubasute-yama no mukashibanashi
to densetsu” 513), and Mihara Yukihisa calls these four categories sub-types (Mihara, “Uba-
sute-yama” 110).
14. Yanagita Kunio writes that the mukashibanashi of this type is perhaps born out of similar stories like “obasute-yama” of Sarashina in Shinano Province, best known as the 156th
episode of Yamato monogatari (Tales of Yamato, ca. mid-tenth century) (Yanagita, “oyasuteyama” 300–302).
15. It sounds fantastic to modern readers how easily Blossom Princess is snatched away
from a veranda of her own house, but it was probably relatively common during the ancient
and medieval periods. There are many examples in literature where a young lady is kidnapped
from her house. Among them, an episode in Konjaku monogatarishū that immediately precedes the episode of “obasute” is noteworthy. It is a story in which a daughter of the major councilor is kidnapped by a guard from the veranda of her house and carried away to a remote
place, just like Blossom Princess ( SNKBZ 38: 457–62). It is conceivable that the author(s) took the idea of kidnapping the princess from the veranda from this episode.
16. The task of taking something from the head is familiar from ancient times. For exam-
ple, in Kojiki (712), Susanoo no mikoto commands Ōkuninushi no mikoto to take centipedes
off his head.
17. Hanayone can mean two things: the first refers to rice grains wrapped in paper that
is tied to a branch to be offered to a god. The second refers to sacred rice grains scattered
before an altar to cast away evil.
18. Shō Kannon, who can be male or female, is the basic form of Kannon with one face
and two arms and is in charge of the realm of hell.
19. Kimbrough describes in his insightful book the significant roles itinerant and temple-
based preacher-entertainers played in the formation and dissemination of otogizōshi texts (Kimbrough, Preachers, Poets, Women, and the Way).
20. For example, a high-ranking aristocrat, Ōgimachisanjō Sanemochi (1463–1530), who
married Imagawa Ujichika’s sister, spent twenty-one years in Sunpu. His son, Ōgimachisanjō
Kin’e (1494–1578), spent a little over twenty years, between 1521 and 1544, living there
(owada 215).
21. After carefully examining the history of Christian activities and Christian daimyo
(Japanese feudal lords) of the sixteenth century, Mulhern suggests that Blossom Princess’s
model is Hosokawa Gracia Tama (1563–1600) and that the heroine’s father is modeled after
two samurai, Ōtomo Sōrin and Francisco Yoshishige, and the yamauba may represent a Japa-
nese Jesuit brother (Mulhern, “Cinderella and the Jesuits” 416–17; Mulhern, “Analysis of
Cinderella Motifs” 15). Blossom Princess thus reflects contemporary thoughts and customs.
22. “Bungo no kami” means a governor of Bungo Province, located in present-day Ōita
prefecture.
23. According to yin-yang theory, “right” symbolizes female. Hence, the flower that is
stored in the right sleeve represents a female child.
24. This should actually be twelve years old because three years had passed since Blossom
Princess was nine.
25. Genji monogatari [Tale of Genji] (ca. 1010) was written by Lady Murasaki. Lady Akashi is one of Genji’s mistresses who bore Genji his (and her) only daughter. Her daughter later
becomes an empress (Empress Akashi) and has five children, including the crown prince.
Blossom Princess
205
26. Miko is generally translated as a priestess or shaman who is, “according to the Kōjien dictionary, a divinely inspired person who transmits the divine will while in a state of inspiration . . . the fact that they [Japanese miko] are generally used for persons who are able to contact spirits by incorporating them further
suggests that here possession is thought to be the
main form of contact” (Knecht, “Aspects of Shamanism” 4). Miko appears in such otogizōshi stories as Kachō Fūgetsu (Kachō and Fūgetsu, or Beauties of Nature). In this text, however, I translated a miko as a diviner rather than a priestess or shaman because the miko in the text is not possessed for divine inspiration; rather, she uses paper devices for predicting Blossom
Princess’s well-being. Interestingly, the picture of the diviner in Blossom Princess owned by the Hiroshima University Library is male. See Hiroshima University Library, http://opac.lib
.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/portal/dc/kyodo/naraehon/research/01/.
27. In the Shimazu version, this is haru (spring) instead of hana.
28. The wheel, one of the most important symbols of Buddhism, represents the teach-
ings of the Buddha and Dharma. The poem reveals the assurance of the Kannon; it suggests
that a blossom, in other words, Blossom Princess, is protected by Kannon. Just as water
running on the wheel is never exhausted—like Kannon’s compassion—and goes around,
Moritaka will meet his daughter again.
29. Shaguma, or fur of a yak’s tail that is colored crimson, was used as a decoration for helmets, Buddhist priests’ flappers, and wigs.
30. Hanayone can mean two things: one is rice grains wrapped in paper—the wrapped
paper is tied to a branch to be offered to a god. The second refers to the sacred rice grains
scattered before an altar to cast away evil.
31. The same expression appears in otogizōshi’s Shuten Dōji and the Noh play titled Ōeyama.
The idea that demons are honest and not manipulative is not novel. For example, in the
tale “Miyoshi no Kiyotsura no saishō no ie-watari no koto” (The Eviction) from Konjaku
monogatarishū, Minister Miyoshi no Kiyotsura (847–918) says, “Real demons know right from wrong and are perfectly straight about it. That’s what makes them frightening” (Tyler 123).
The original Japanese text is found in SNKBZ 38: 97–101.
32. This is chapter 12 of the Lotus Sutra. The chapter includes a famous story of the
Dragon Princess instantly transforming into a Buddha.
Part IV
It
7
The Record of Tool Specters ( Tsukumogami Ki )