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

by Yanagita Kunio

  The family said that the daughter’s body should be taken to the “lord of the water pool” as his bride. That evening they secretly took her body and buried it beside the water pool. They had a separate formal funeral but with an empty casket. Two days later they went to look at where she was buried, and the daughter’s body was gone. Since this took place, on the day when the daughter died, it is said that even if a few drops of rain fall, the villagers refrain from bathing their children or using the water. The daughter was a bride to the third-generation lord of the Haradai water pool. The second-generation lord took his bride from the daughter of the Kagayo family of Katsushi village. (214-34)

  There was a large serpent that devoured villagers at a pond at Nakamura in Hashino. Since the villagers couldn’t do anything to stop the serpent, General Sakanoue no Tamuramaro (758–811) took pity on them and killed it. Later, afraid of being cursed, the villagers built a shrine to the serpent and offered their prayers.

  This shrine is the present-day Kumano Shrine, and it is the custom to hang a carved wooden mask of the serpent on the old cedar tree in front of the shrine. The river in front of the shrine is called Tachiarai (sword washing) River because General Sakanoue no Tamuramaro went there to wash the sword he used to kill the serpent. (215-32)

  There is a large rock on the side of Matsuzaki Pond. Legend has it that sometimes a woman appears on this rock or there is the sound of a weaving loom coming from the pond.

  It was around the Genroku era (1688–1703) that a local lord had a beautiful daughter called Princess Matsukawa. After she reached puberty, she was sick with a slight cough and became depressed. Suddenly one day, she said she wanted to go see the pond. Her attendants and maidservants tried over and over to stop her, but she wouldn’t listen. She got into her palanquin carriage and was carried to the edge of the pond. She stood smiling and then suddenly sank into the water. The story is that she left the scales of a serpent in the palanquin. There appear to be a few other ponds where the same Princess Matsukawa evidently sank into the water. (216-31)

  A father named Ichibei from Shimokumi-cho once went to gather chestnuts on Mt. Isagozawa. While energetically gathering nuts, he became exceedingly sleepy. He stretched out under a chestnut tree and glanced up, only to see a huge snake glaring down at him from a tree branch. Scared, he ran home. (217-179)

  In Otomo village there is a house called Kamiayukai. The following happened when the household was at the peak of its prosperity. There was a maidservant named Osen in the house, and every day she would go off to the mountain behind the house. But then one day she didn’t come back.

  She had a baby at home that she was still breastfeeding, and it cried out for its mother. The family took the baby to the base of the mountain, set it down, and occasionally the mother would come out to nurse it. But after a while the mother no longer came out.

  Then, from far away, the family heard her say, “Now that I have been transformed into a serpent, I have the desire to eat even my own child because it is a human being. Don’t bring the baby here again!” Even the nursing child didn’t want to go near her anymore.

  About twenty days later, strong winds and rain caused flooding. The area between the main building and the shed at the Kamiayukai household became a river. Then, Osen with her serpent body came floating down on the Otomo River. It is said that at the large water pool of Sugaguchi, she showed herself in her original human form and then sank to the bottom of the water.

  From then on, this pool of water has been called Osen Pool, and the mountain that Osen had gone off to is called the “Serpent’s Den.” The current head of the Kamiayukai house is Asakura Genjiro. In the Serpent’s Den, there is still a spot with a small pond. According to Matsuda Shingoro (1885–1974), a researcher on folk traditions in Tono, this story is not all that old. (218-30)

  A man named Suzuki from Sahinai-Kawahara went one morning to gather feed grass at Katazawa. Once he finished gathering grass, he went home. When he gave the grass to the horses, he saw a headless body of a snake wriggling in the grass. The next morning, he went back to Katazawa again and found a snake’s head. The head was about the size of the straw boots used to protect the horses’ hooves. The snake’s head was glaring at him with its eyes wide open. He realized that the snake’s body from the day before and this snake head were parts of the same snake.

  Quite scared, he promised that he would never go to Katazawa again. He built a small shrine to worship the snake, prayed for forgiveness, and went home. Doing this, he avoided being cursed, but several generations later a man named Kiyoto ignored this tradition and went to cut grass at Katazawa. He found the head of a snake about the size of a fifteen-centimeter wooden mallet used to pound straw. It is said that after this, Kiyoto went home, became ill, and died. Even today nobody gathers grass at Katazawa. (219-182)

  In Osawa there is a marsh called Sunazawa. In front of the marsh there is a house. At one time, the old man in the house went to do some work at Sunazawa and was attacked by a large snake. Fortunately, the man had a sickle tucked in his belt, and as the snake swallowed him, the sickle slashed the snake’s jaw, killing it. The old man was able to crawl out of the snake’s stomach. When he returned home and told about what had happened, many villagers gathered around. They went off to Sunazawa to see for themselves, and sure enough, there was a large dead snake.

  Several years later, a tasty mushroom resembling the gray-capped sooty head mushroom grew in one section of a marsh. Thinking he would like to cook them, the old man went and gathered them up. Somewhere from within a nearby cave, a voice said, “Pour oil, pour oil!” He thought it meant to pour oil on the mushrooms when he put them into a pot to cook them. He did that, and they were good. Just then, there were a number of young men gathered at a drinking place. They also thought the mushrooms looked good, gathered some up, cooked them, and ate them. Of the ten men, nine died of poisoning that night, and the one man who only ate a few mushrooms was sick for three days. This was said to have happened when Mr. Iwaki was in his prime. That was perhaps forty years ago. (220-228)

  A twenty-two-year-old man and an eighteen-year-old youth from Oguni village went to the mountains to fish for river trout (iwana). There was a small hut in a rocky area near a cow pasture that they intended to stay in overnight while they took their time fishing. In the evening, they arrived at the hut, but the caretaker had gone into town. The men at the hut joked that the caretaker had probably gone into town because recently a nasty fox had been coming to the hut making trouble. Foxes are intelligent and possess magical skills, especially the ability to assume other forms.

  The men started a fire and were sitting off to the side eating when they heard the cute meow of a cat across from them. They called out to the cat since it is said that when a fox is about, even a cat can be a source of strength. The cat came closer and closer and finally stuck its head into the entrance to the hut. It was a small striped cat. They fed it some fish and petted it. The cat purred. The man said, “So that you don’t run off in the night, I am going to put this straw rope on you.” They put the rope on the cat’s neck and tied it to a pole in the hut.

  Once it had eaten, the cat wanted to go out and jumped around trying to get loose. The older man said the cat was ungrateful for what they had given it, so he took the hatchet from his waist and slashed at the top of the cat’s shoulder, also severing the straw rope tied to it. The cat ran off into the bushes. The younger man said, “Leaving the cat half-dead might bring on a curse. We should finish it off.” So they went into the brush and killed it with a bamboo spear and the hatchet. They hung the cat by the entrance to the hut and went to sleep.

  The next morning, they got up, looked at the dead cat, and were joking around in the hut when the hut’s caretaker returned and said, “Thanks for killing the fox. You don’t know how much trouble it caused me. It was a really big fox.” The fisherman said, “What fox are you talking about? We killed a small cat!”
The young man went out of the hut and saw that the cat had transformed into a big fox. This story was heard by a young man named Tetsuzo from Tsuchibuchi village. (221-208)

  There was once a very prosperous woman choja (wealthy farmer) living in Sasakubo. Near the deep pond of the Inari (fox) shrine in front of Sasakubo, there is a large stone called “karuto-ishi,” and it is still there. It was the stone that the choja house put on top of the mortar as a weight when they were grinding grain. (222-132)

  In Muika-machi there was a male named Usuke Kappa. Because he was better than others at doing things in the river, he was given the nickname Kappa, which compared him to the legendary kappa water spirit. One summer evening when he went fishing at the base of Mt. Atago, he caught a considerable number of fish. It was very hot, and he didn’t want the fish to spoil. So he grilled them on a fire while he continued fishing. Suddenly, a woman with an open umbrella came out of the river. Usuke saw this and laughed with scorn. “Are you a fox trying to trick me?” He threw a stone at her, and she disappeared. Then, after a bit, a man appeared on the bank of the river and began cutting the grass. “Trying to trick me again, are you?” He threw a rock at the man, and he also disappeared. Feeling good, he laughed.

  Then, in the distance across the river, something lit up. He watched as a large number of paper lanterns were moving to and fro in a line. “Ha, ha,” he thought. “Now the fox has gone over there with the intention of doing something stupid.” But it was strange, and he thought it might be the celebration of a fox taking a wife. Then he realized his attention had drifted, and he turned to look at the fish on the fire. They had all been taken, not one remaining. He often told people later that he had been tricked on the third try by the fox. (223-195)

  The following took place during the politically unstable Ansei era (1854–1860). There was a doctor named Kinoshita Hoseki, who had studied in Tokyo and was living on the other side of Tono. One evening, he was talking about a recent earthquake with a family member when, at a late hour, a man came, saying he had been sent by the Yuda family. Someone had suddenly fallen ill, and they wanted the doctor to come.

  He went to see the patient right away, gave him some medicine, and was about to leave when an elder family member said, “This is for your assistance,” and handed him an envelope with money in it. The next morning, Hoseki visited the sick person at the Yudas’ again. The family seemed surprised to see the doctor and said they didn’t remember anything about a sick person. The person who was supposed to have been sick was actually fine. Thinking it strange, the doctor went home and opened the envelope with the payment. He found two silver coins. People decided that the sick person must have been the fox deity. (224-188)

  This story was told by an old woman in the Sasaki family in Sabinai. A person named Jinemon, formerly of Hitoichi in Tono, was a supervisor at a mine on the hill above the village. One day, when he was in the hills directly behind his house, the sun suddenly went dark, even though it was fine weather. It was too dark to walk even one step. Jinemon knelt down on the ground and closed his eyes. Thinking this must be the work of the Inari fox deity Makinotsu, he prayed, “Please let it be light again. If you do, I will have an Inari official rank conferred on you and worship you.” He opened his eyes, and it was bright and clear again. As he promised, he obtained a special Inari fox ranking from the main fox shrine and prayed there. This became the current Makinotsu Inari shrine. (225-189)

  A long time ago, in the Atsuraku family of Tajiri, almost every night after the head of the family had died, he would appear outside the room his wife was sleeping in. He would tell his wife, “I can’t attain Buddhahood if I leave you behind. Come with me.”

  Family members were suspicious and quietly went around to the back of the house. They saw a big fox pressed up against the window. They approached from behind and killed it with an ax. It is said that from then on, the head of the household didn’t show up anymore. (226-190)

  After a daughter died in a certain house in Haruyama, she would appear back in her living quarters every night. At first, a shadow appeared on the paper screen door in the living quarters, and then people sleeping in the room would have nightmares. Since this continued night after night, it was thought to be the doings of a fox.

  Young people in the village came to keep an eye on what was happening, but they found it spooky and left before the time when the shadow would appear. The girl’s brother, who lived next door, was suspicious and wanted to encounter the dead girl’s ghost (yurei) to see if it was really her. So he hid in the shadows at night to see if he could find out what was going on.

  Sure enough, a shadow appeared on the paper sliding door in an alcove of the living quarters. He looked carefully, and there was a large fox standing behind the paper sliding door peeking inside. He grabbed the wooden mallet used to crush straw, crawled into the space under the floor, and hit the fox on the back. He thought he killed it, but the fox managed to run off. Even so, it was badly injured, limping away slowly. He went after it, but it disappeared into the hills behind the house. It was dark, so he returned home. After that, the girl’s spirit didn’t show up anymore, and the man had no misfortune. (227-191)

  After dark, rocks from somewhere would come rumbling down onto the house of the blacksmith Matsumoto Sanemon of Muika-machi. This became well known, and people from all over town would come to see it. But when people were watching, the rocks wouldn’t fall. Once they left, the rocks would fall again. Every morning, to show how many rocks had fallen during the previous night, they would line the rocks up.

  Just at that time, a reddish-brown dog of the Ogasawara family in Moto-machi caught a very large fox. It was an old fox, and its tail, over half white, was split in two at the end. It is said that after the fox was caught, the rocks stopped falling on the Matsumoto house. But because of what happened, the house is still referred to as ishikokaji, or “the rock blacksmith.” (228-192)

  The fox in Taga Shrine at the base of Castle Hill tricks people out of their fish as they head home on market days. A man from Ayaori village, who always gets tricked, put salt in one hand as he walked. Then an old woman, who should have been at home minding the house, approached him and said that she had come to meet him because he was late getting home. She put out her hand and said, “Give me your fish. I will carry it for you.” The man grabbed her hand firmly and forcibly shoved the salt into her mouth and left. The next time the man walked by that same spot, the fox at Castle Hill cried out, “Salt stuffer! Salt stuffer!” (229-193)

  The grandfather of Mr. Sotokawa of Muika-machi was a famous Tono painter who used the pen name Tagawa Shiko (1811–1891). He liked to take a walk every morning. Early one morning when he was passing in front of Taga Shrine, there was a pair of large wooden clogs (geta) on the path. Since he knew about the evil fox in the shrine, he realized what was going on. He said he didn’t need a pair of ugly geta, but wished instead to have a large paintbrush. The clogs suddenly transformed into a fine paintbrush. The old man said this was excellent, and he was anxious to paint a picture with the brush. He promptly left. It is said that one morning, when he was passing the spot again, an old pine tree in front of the shrine transformed into a fine large paintbrush. The pine tree was there until recently. Near the shrine entrance (torii) gate, there was another kind of old pine tree, and it is said that from time to time it transformed into a beautiful princess. (230-194)

  A fox made a den under the flooring of the Daijiji (Soto Zen Sect) Buddhist temple. Keiemon of Ayaori village passed by a spot that had a serving tray with an offering of food and rice wine (sake) on it. A fox was taking a wife. It was interesting, so he stood and watched. Just as the ceremony ended and he was about to leave, he noticed that the food on the offering tray was gone. (231-196)

  When a friend of Sasaki Kizen was a middle school student, he went into town one spring afternoon. He bought some beef and was carrying it wrapped in a bamboo leaf. On a narrow path behind the
middle school, at the base of Mt. Nabekura, a cute baby rabbit was hopping alongside the path. He thought it unusual and stopped to look. The rabbit reached out several times to touch the package he was carrying, but he clutched the package tightly and watched the rabbit. Then the rabbit raised up on its hind legs, and before he knew it, it was dancing like a young girl wearing a red apron with a white towel on its head. Then the rabbit seemed to be on a branch of a nearby tree, and then suddenly it appeared right before his eyes. Then finally it became a cat and went off, eventually disappearing. He said it must have been the doings of a fox. (232-197)

  This happened a year or two ago. Chozaemon of Tsuchibuchi village went fishing in the Kotohata River when a woman he knew passed by on the bank of the river. She was from Kotohata and was now married living in Shimomura.

  When Chozaemon spoke to her, she smiled, and he was encouraged and put his hand out to her. She smiled and stepped back. Then she smiled again and went off. It is said that he went off into the mountains in pursuit of her for three days and three nights.

  It was when he got to the top of Mt. Sazumi, the highest point in the village area, and had a full view of the village below that he came to his senses. With this, the woman gradually transformed into a fox and ran off in the direction of the mountain where they had hardy kaya grasses. He said that after this he was exhausted, went home, and was ill for a while. (233-199)

  In the Wada household of Moto-machi, there was a servant named Yukichi. One day, he was returning to his parents’ home, and he came to Uguisusaki on the edge of town. There was a fox on the dirt bridge looking down intently into the river. Yukichi tiptoed up quietly beside the fox and surprised it with a yell. The fox was startled, leapt into the river, and ran off. Yukichi walked off laughing to himself.