Folk Legends From Tono: Japan's Spirits, Deities, and Phantastic Creatures

by Yanagita Kunio

  She asked, “Is so-and-so from such-and-such a district still healthy? I am his wife. I was carried off by a mountain man (yama-otoko) and have been living here in this way. When you go home,” she said, “please tell them that you saw this old woman in this place. I would like to see my husband and children once again, even from a distance, before I die.”

  On hearing about this, her son asked a large number of people to go with him and visit his “mountain mother” on Mt. Senban-ga-take, but for some reason or other, she never showed herself. (197-109)

  There was a doctor named Mr. Koan, who lived on the other side of Tono. He had a very beautiful daughter. One night, she went out under the eaves of the house and was looking out at the front street when she was suddenly spirited away (kamikakushi). It was not known what happened to her. Then, several years later, a salmon jumped into the house through the kitchen sink. They thought that the fish was the transformed body of their daughter who had been spirited away. Since then, they have not eaten salmon. This happened in the 1850s. (198-140)

  The ancestors of Shinzo from Nakazawa in Aozasa village once had a lovely daughter. Suddenly, she mysteriously disappeared (kamikakushi) for three years. The family set the day she had disappeared as the date for her Buddhist death anniversary.

  Then, unexpectedly, she came home. Everyone gathered around and asked her where she had been. She said, “I went and married the lord (deity) of Mt. Rokkoushi. I told my husband, however, that I loved my family and would go back to see them. But now, I have to go back to him. I received some treasures from him that I can use in any way I wish. So, I want to make my family prosperous.” From then on the household was very fortunate. The person who told this story didn’t hear how the woman returned to the mountains. (199-135)

  In the Murahyo household, they never grow cucumbers. The reason is that, some time ago, there was a beautiful wife in a related Mayabekke family. One day, she went into the fields behind the house to gather some cucumbers and disappeared.

  Sometime later, the famous hunter, Hataya-no-Nui of Kamigo village, went hunting on Mt. Rokkoushi. He climbed down into a swampy area and found a woman washing clothes in a stream. He looked at her carefully, and sure enough, it was the wife of the Mayabekke family who had disappeared the year before. He approached her and spoke. She said, “Back then, I was carried off by a mountain man (yama-otoko) and have been living here since then. My husband is a fine, caring man but very jealous, and that worries me. He has gone off to the port in Kesen-numa on the coast to buy some fish. It only takes about a half hour to go there, and he could be back at any minute. So please leave while you can.” She asked the hunter, when he returned home, to tell her parents that she was safe in the mountains. Since this happened, it is said that the family has not planted cucumbers. (200-110)

  6

  Tracking Nature’s Trickster Animals

  We left the village, we engaged the mountain people, and now deep in the mountains we are exposed to the natural habitat of the animal kingdom. But psychologically there is only a short distance between the semi-monster mountain people in the last chapter and the semi-human wild animals in these tales. Semi-humans and semi-animals both inhabit the same scary terrain that villagers must crisscross for work and survival. The problem is that these semi-human, shape-shifting trickster animals—wolves, snakes, foxes, deer, cats, bears, and the like—play by their own rules and are often seen as a greater threat than mountain people. In particular, these creatures can wreak havoc on rice fields and farm crops. A continuous source of concern, in the end they must be hunted down.

  Among the ancestors of the Kinsuke family in Shinden, there was a famous matagi hunter. Matagi are groups of wild game hunters in northern Japan who spend months in the winter and spring in the mountains hunting the Asiatic black bear and other big game. This is how they supplement their meager income from hillside farming. Matagi culture has its own customs, beliefs, and rituals. Their beliefs are built around yama-no-kami (the mountain deity) and mountain worship. Yanagita Kunio thought the term matagi might have derived from the walking staff (matatsubo) the hunters carried.

  One day a family member went hunting near a wealthy farmer’s (choja) house in Mt. Shiromi and met an old man (or monster). The old man, attempting to protect the animals, said, “You are a matagi hunter, and that is disturbing to the animals. How about you stop hunting? If you do stop, in exchange, I will provide you with something of great value.” From then on he stopped hunting. Even now, the people in this family don’t own guns anymore. This area is all mountains with few fields for planting food. Since people survive mainly by hunting, he needed a really good reason to give up hunting. (201-222)

  The grandfather of Kikuchi Kisuke of Asukada once came across a wolf in his trips to the mountains. When the wolf tried to bite Kisuke, he got angry, drove it back into a tight spot, and gouged out its eyes with his fingers. Then he tied a rope around the wolf and dragged it home. This took place about fifty or sixty years ago. He was so strong that he and an old man neighbor would toss a 225-kilogram stone tablet back and forth across the road. The stone tablet was on the side of the road in Asukada. (202-223)

  A man named Okutaro from Makkaku was on his way home from the town of Tono. The sun went down just as he came to Tatemaru Pass and, because the road that went through the trees was so dark, he could hardly walk. Then something came from the opposite direction and struck him with a thump. It was so sudden that he stumbled. He recovered himself and took a few more steps. Then he was struck again, but this time he grabbed “whatever this thing was” in his arms and carried it to the small remote village called Shinden. He woke up the people in a friend’s house, and in the light of a lantern, he saw that “the thing” was a big wolf (oinu). He beat it to death. This happened around 1887. (203-214)

  In this area, the wolf spirit (kami) is referred to as Mitsumine-sama. Mitsumine Shrine in Chichibu is the most famous wolf shrine in Japan. Wolf shrines offer protection from a number of dangers. This particular wolf kami was enshrined in Koromogawa village in the district of Higashiiwai, not far from Tono. Whenever something bad happens or there is a disaster, and there is some suspicion about what caused it, the villagers rely on the power of this wolf deity to identify the source of the problem.

  To investigate, they first send two close relatives to Koromogawa to get the sacred symbol that represents or contains the spirit and power of the kami. This is often a small box or some white Shinto pendant paper cuttings. When bringing this back to the village from Koromogawa, they must guard against defiling the sacred object because it is said that if there is the slightest violation of the rules, they will be cursed. For example, if one person transporting the divine object has to urinate, he must give the object to someone else to hold. If someone makes a mistake and falls down on the road, it is believed that they will be bitten by a wolf.

  Last year, in the house of Sasaki Yoshitaro of Wano, someone stole a cotton-spinning reel. They suspected that someone in the village had done it, so Mitsumine-sama was summoned and prayers were offered in the village. The rites lasted into the evening. Then all the lights in the house were turned off, and the kami sacred symbol was placed in an inner room of the house. Each person had to go through the dark rooms to present their prayers and offerings to the deity.

  There was one woman among those gathered who from the beginning looked pale, had her hands clasped, and her face trembled. When her time to offer prayers came, she was the only one who was afraid and refused to enter the inner room. Forced against her will and criticized by everyone, she rose as if to go into the inner room, but her knees just shook. She fell and coughed up blood. The rice cake she was going to offer to the kami was also drenched in fresh blood.

  It was said the judgment was complete, and she was the one who was guilty. Because they didn’t want anyone outside of the village to know about what she had done, they told her to return the cotton-spinning
reel if she still had it. That night, she brought what she had stolen and presented it in front of the villagers. (204-71)

  Somewhat earlier, when Segawa Harusuke of Yamaguchi went to the coast and had a large amount of cash stolen, they asked the deity Mitsumine-sama to help out, and the thief was quickly caught. This issue was also resolved quietly. In 1910, when a house of Tomeba in Motojuku burned down, it was suspected that someone in a neighboring village had set the fire. They asked the deity Mitsumine to come, they got everyone from the two villages together, and they held a prayer session. This time, because the fire might have happened by accident, no guilty person was identified. (205-72)

  After the wolf kami (spirit) ceremony is finished, the symbolic object representing Mitsumine-sama must be immediately returned to Koromogawa. One house neglected to follow this rule, and when they didn’t return it, it is said that in one night all of the horses in this household were devoured by wolves. In Tono, the homes are the magariya (L-shaped) style with a stable for horses built into one end of the house. (206-73)

  A person from Tochinai-Kotohata went fishing in a river. He would cast his fishing line into a pond far back in the Kogarase River, and every now and then some spiderweb would get on his face. The spider is a spirit of the water world. Each time this happened, he would remove the web and stick it on a wooden tree stump beside him. Legend has it that by removing the web, a fisherman is protected from being pulled into the water.

  This time he caught an exceptionally large number of iwana river trout. It was getting dark, and reluctantly he decided to go home. Suddenly, he was shocked to see the tree stump beside him uprooted and sink into the pond. After he returned home, he looked into his bamboo fish basket, and what he had earlier thought were fish had become willow tree leaves. (207-183)

  Old Sagosuke, a neighbor of Mr. Sasaki, went fishing in Omada Pond, and a small green (water) spider would occasionally spin a web on his face. Annoyed, he would remove it and put it on the root of a nearby tree stump. Suddenly, it is said, the tree stump fell over and sank into the pond.

  This was one pond of the so-called forty-eight waterfalls of Otomo village. A person from Tsuchibuchi village who had gone fishing had the same mysterious spiderweb experience. One hears of this often. It is remarkable how strongly the villagers believe in these things. (208-184)

  Hataya-no-Nui, an experienced hunter, went hunting on Mt. Hayachine and stayed overnight. A spider monster (aonyudo) showed up and challenged him to see who was smarter. Because Nui was a brave soul, he said, “Fine. Let’s see how small you can become.”

  He watched while the monster became smaller and smaller. Nui then put the spider monster into the tinderbox he had on his waist for making a fire. The next morning, Nui opened the tinderbox, and there was said to be a small green spider inside. It is common for spiders to transform into women. Sometimes they appear as a blind musician with a musical instrument or simply as a monster. (209-185)

  This happened in the winter of 1926. A thirty-two-year-old man named Wada Kojiro from Nakamura went hunting around the base of Mt. Katahayama, which was close to his village. Three large bears came walking slowly toward him. Knowing that he was in trouble if he were seen, he hid in the shadow of some objects. The two largest bears passed by, but the smaller one lingered looking for food. He decided to take a shot at the bear with his rifle but missed. The bear turned immediately and headed for him. There was no time to reload his musket, so he rolled over on the ground and pretended to be dead. The bear sniffed him up and down and then, for some reason, grabbed his leg and threw him into the valley below. He didn’t know how far he had been thrown, but he got up and immediately reloaded his rifle. As the bear slowly headed off in the opposite direction, he shot it. He evidently sold the bear’s gall bladder for a high price in Kamaishi. This was reported in the December 28, 1926, Iwate Nippo newspaper. (210-210)

  The wife of a man named Tsuru from the local area was still a young woman. A few days ago, she went to the hills and was walking through some grass that was taller than she was when suddenly she encountered a large bear. The bear was equally surprised and rose up on its hind legs. It charged toward her. It was larger than any human’s body. Since she had no choice, she fell down and didn’t move. The bear came up to her and ran its paw over her chest, stomach, and other parts of her body. It then grasped her wrists and ankles and listened to her breathing. She thought the bear would rip her apart, and she felt more dead than alive. Then, for some reason, the bear picked her up and threw her into the swamp. Even so, she didn’t make a sound, and the bear finally went off. This was on September 15, 1928, supposedly only two or three days ago. (211-209)

  The following story was heard directly from Tanohama Fukujiro. When he was young, he went to the hills to prepare new fields for growing beans and vegetables. Around that time, there was a dangerous bear in the hills. The bear became more and more ferocious because people were cruel to it. Then, one day, the bear suddenly appeared out of the brush and attacked Fukujiro. Frightened by its power, his instinct was to climb up a good-sized tree. The bear followed him. The higher he climbed, branch by branch, the closer the bear got. Finally, with no other option, he got up his nerve, found a branch to support himself on, pulled out his hatchet, and tried to hit the bear in the head as it came up the tree.

  But he missed the bear and instead cut off a tree branch beside it. Fortunately, at that moment, the bear fell from the tree. Now, the bear sat at the base of the tree motionless, keeping watch. There was nothing Fukujiro could do. He worried, as night was approaching quickly. It got dark, and he felt more dead than alive. Then he thought it was rather strange that, no matter how vengeful the beast felt, it didn’t move from morning till evening. He thought there must be some explanation for its behavior.

  As a test, he broke off a small branch and threw it down at the bear, but the bear still didn’t move. Relieved, he cut off a rather large branch and threw it at the bear’s head. The result was the same. Thinking it odd, he tried to stir the bear by screaming out loud, “Idiot Bear!” But it had no impact. He gathered his courage and, trembling, went down the tree. The bear was dead. Curious about what had happened, he pushed the bear over and found that a sharp piece of wood had pierced its body from its bottom up into its stomach. This must have happened when it fell from the tree. This story sounds like it was made up, but it was really true. (212-211)

  This is something that Kasuke of Kuribashi village actually encountered. When he was a youth, he and his older brother went to cultivate some fields for grains and vegetables in the hills. After they had cut down the dead plants and burned them, they noticed that there was a large rotten tree trunk in the middle of one field. The outside bark was charred, and they could see a large hole in the side of the trunk. Then, a short distance from the tree, they noticed a large bear using its paws to gather grain seeds on the ground.

  They immediately drew back and hid themselves. They watched the bear gather seeds, eat them, and then go into the hole in the trunk of the tree. They watched to see what it was doing, but it didn’t come out. It was quite a large bear, and if they could kill it, they could sell it at a high price. They cautiously approached the tree and put a fence over the hole so the bear couldn’t get away. The older brother was to keep an eye on the bear while Kasuke went home to get a rifle and a spear. They agreed to keep this a secret. The older brother kept careful watch, and before long Kasuke was back with the rifle and spear.

  They went up to the tree trunk and, just as they were about to attack the bear, there was an earthquake and the ground shook violently. The tree trunk was uprooted and thrown over. They backed off until the shaking stopped. Thinking the bear might try to run off, they put their weapons near the hole in the tree. But the bear never came out. Impatient, the younger brother, who was anxious to get the prize beast, entered the hole. But the bear wasn’t anywhere to be found. He accused his brother of not keeping a careful watch on
the bear when he had gone home to get the weapons, allowing it to escape. His brother rejected the story, and they argued about it for a while. Then they noticed the bear stretched out on some rocks on a hill across the field. They yelled to agitate it, but the bear didn’t move. When they got closer, they saw that it was dead. It seems that when the earthquake shook and uprooted the tree trunk, the bear was catapulted out and died when it landed on the rocks. This story seems exaggerated, but it is likely true. They say it really happened. (213-212)

  There is a deep pool of water in the Hei River called Haradai. One day, at a household near the water pool, three people suddenly got sick. An old woman appeared and said that the people were sick because a few days earlier a small snake had been killed in the garden. They recalled this and asked her for more detail. She said that the snake was a messenger sent by the lord of the water pool to ask for their third daughter as his wife. He wanted to take her as a water spirit.

  When the daughter heard this, she was shocked and fell sick. Strangely, at the same moment, the three sick people in the family were cured. The daughter interpreted these events as a sign of her commitment to become the water spirit. The medicine from the doctor for her sickness didn’t help, and she died.