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

by Yanagita Kunio

  Rice is central to Japanese agriculture and culture. Special rice (omi-dama) is prepared and offered to the spirit of the New Year in January. The wood used to cook the rice is freshly cut down on the mountain on November 15. The trees cut down on this day are placed upright in front of the house entrance in the evening. A bow and arrow made from small branches are placed at the top of the tree, which faces south. Trees are said to face south because the wood is sacred and birds should not pollute it. November 15 is also when children pray for good health at Shinto shrines. (271-273)

  Azuki (red beans or red bean paste) is often used as an offering in religious ceremonies. There is a location called Azukidaira on Mt. Monomi. Once a warrior retainer of the Tono Nambu clan named Nakadate went there to shoot rifles. While there, he came across an unknown creature with azuki bean paste covering its body. He took a shot at it but missed. Then he lost sight of the creature. Hunters say that in this area, if you shoot a rifle, you will never hit anything. (272-123)

  On the twenty-third of the eleventh month, villagers eat “great Buddhist teacher” (Daishi-sama) rice gruel with red beans in it. They eat it using chopsticks made from bush clover (hagi) wood that is considered to have spiritual powers. They use the same chopsticks to improve their writing style by drawing Chinese characters in the ashes that are spread on the food serving tray. On this day, one rice cake is made for each family member, and a coin is hidden in one of the cakes. The one who gets the coin is happy because it means they will have good luck in the year ahead. The connection of this with “the great Buddhist teacher” (perhaps the priest Kobo Daishi, 774–835) is unclear, but he is said to have had twenty-four children, and raising them was difficult. So he fed them red bean rice gruel. He is said to have died in a snowstorm on the twenty-third of November. This is also the date when there is the first frost or the first snow of the winter falls. (273-274)

  If someone from Tsukumoushi village heads out on a pilgrimage to the Ise Grand Shrine (the supreme Shinto shrine in Japan), it is said there will be a bad rice harvest that year. People find this intensely unsettling. A pilgrimage took place in 1927 and, as expected, there was a bad harvest. Also, it is said that there will be a famine if the New Year’s rice-planting performers of Matsuzaki village dance. (274-148)

  The first thirty days of December are said to be a time for showing appreciation for what happened during the past year (nentori) and to set the course for the coming year. December is a busy month, and only the itako (blind female shaman) has enough time to participate in all of the festivities that are taking place. The most common end-of-year observances would include the following:

  December 5

  Worship spirits that protect the fields and crops

  December 8

  Worship the Buddha of Healing

  December 9

  Pray to the fox deity to bring wealth

  December 10

  Pay respects to the deity of grain production (Daikoku-sama)

  December 12

  Worship the most important (yama-no-kami) mountain deities

  December 14

  Pay respect to the Amida Buddha of Light

  December 15

  Pay respect to Ebisu, the deity of fortune and fishing

  December 17

  Worship the (Kannon) Goddess of Mercy

  December 20

  Show respect to the land deity

  December 23

  Offer respect to the spirit of carpenters (Shotoku Taishi)

  December 24

  Respect to Jizo Bosatsu, patron of children and travelers

  December 25

  Worship Monju Bosatsu, the spirit of wisdom

  December 28

  Respect to Fudo-sama, protector of living things

  December 29

  Respect to the protector of horses

  December 30

  Make time for family-centered activities (275-275)

  Daikokuten, one of the seven gods of fortune, is the god of wealth and the protector of the household. Daikoku-sama evolved from the Hindu deity Shiva and became intertwined with the Shinto god Okuninushi. On the evening of the tenth day of the twelfth month, when taking stock of the past year and looking ahead to the new year, a large Japanese white radish (daikon) with a two-section, forked-root shape is offered to Daikoku-sama.

  Legend has it that once when Daikoku-sama ate too many rice cakes and thought he might die, a mythological mother deity said that he should eat fresh daikon radish. But since he had no daikon, he went looking for some. By the river he found a servant girl washing daikon. When Daikoku-sama asked her to give him one, she replied that she could not do that because her master had counted them before giving them to her. Daikoku-sama was disappointed, but then the girl servant added, “Don’t worry. I have a two-section, forked-root daikon that I can split in half and give you one half.” In this way, Daikoku-sama’s life was saved. (276-276)

  Activities to do in March are shooting arrows at a target in an archery contest or flying decorative kites. Before a festival, the shops in the marketplace are filled with beautiful red and white bows and arrows decorated with pheasant feathers and kites with the images of ancient warriors painted on them. (277-294)

  The third of January is the first unlucky day of the New Year. For this reason, worshipping at shrines, visiting friends, and other activities are done on the first or second of January. On the third day of the first month, people just relax at home.

  Other New Year’s activities, like making wild vegetable porridge, are generally the same as in other areas. In early January, villagers gather budding wild vegetables and grasses (nana-kusa, or seven grasses) beneath the snow and chop them up for making porridge. While chopping up the greens, they chant a tune. The tune, which usually mentions birds, also mentions tigers in Tono. It goes like this:

  Birds from foreign lands

  Birds from our countryside

  Before they visit

  What kind of greens should we chop up?

  The greens we have will do! (278-277)

  In the past, on the eleventh of January each household would buy some salt, which in Tono was called Yosaku salt. One year, on the eleventh day of the first month, a salt merchant named Yosaku walked around selling salt. Some of the homes that bought the salt found gold in it. This is how it became a tradition to buy salt on the eleventh day of the first month. (279-278)

  On the fifteenth of January, women show their appreciation for the benefits of the past year and attempt to set the course for the coming year. On this day, items in the house (utensils, furniture) become a year older, and items that had been borrowed or rented are returned. Rice cakes are offered. The offering to the pot hanger (the fire spirit) above the hearth is called the “hook-nosed rice cake.” If a member of the family eats this rice cake at night, it is said that they will be strong and healthy. In addition, rice cakes (wife-child rice cakes) are offered to rats in the warehouse and the barn. “Wolf rice cakes” are strips of rice cakes wrapped in straw. They are placed at the foot of the mountain or tied to tree branches. These rice cakes are for wolves (or the Mitsumine deity), and there is another offering called “fox rice cakes” (to the Inari deity). (280-279)

  On the evening of the full moon on January 15, villagers who are called namomi-takuri or hikata-takuri (spot scrapers) go from house to house making noise
by shaking a gourd with a small knife in it. Takuri means “to tear or scrape off” in the local dialect. This is a variation of the namahage (blister peeler) demon festival which criticizes lazy people and spoiled children.

  It is said that someone who is lazy and only warms himself by the hearth fire all year will get purple spots (hikata) on his legs and elsewhere from their exposure to the hearth fire. These spots can be scraped off with the small knife in the gourd. When a family hears the villagers call out “hikata-takuri, hikata-takuri” (spot scraper) from the gate entrance, they say that namomi-takuri (the leg spot scraper) has come. The parents have their daughters serve the villagers rice cakes and make apologies. They say that a daughter who is spoiled sometimes has spots removed by the hikata-takuri. (281-271)

  Calling crows (karasu-yobari) that can damage crops is something also done on January 15. Rice cakes are cut up into small pieces and put into a measuring box. While it is still light, children call the crows from here and there in the village, saying, “Crow, come! I will give you some red bean rice cake. Come!” When the crows hear the children’s voices, they know what day it is, and suddenly flocks of crows come flying from all directions. (282-280)

  One of the New Year activities on January 15 is called yugano-date, or praying for a good harvest of gourds and pumpkins. Young branches of a walnut tree are attached to a large chestnut tree branch to look like a small tree. Straw boots for the horses and other things are hung from the tree branches. (283-285)

  Besides fukuno-kami (the god of luck), there are a number of other activities that take place around the middle of January. These include the simulation of rice planting (taue) in the snow with pine needles, the symbolic tending to the fields (hatamaki) by making furrows in the snow using a hoe while singing a song, and the going from house to house (harukoma) ringing bells and handing out paintings of horses on white paper. In each case, young girls do this, and they receive rice cakes in return. (284-286)

  The Nariki-zeme (warning to fruit trees to deliver a good harvest) event is also on a certain day. In this area, this event is referred to as mochi-kiri. Someone taps on the trunk of a tree with a hatchet, saying, “If you don’t give good fruit, I will cut you down.” Another person says, “I will bear good fruit. Please forgive me!” (285-284)

  One day is called yatsu-kakashi, which means to block the entrances to the house. Doing this, the family is protected against illness and evil entering the home. This is done by cutting twigs about fifteen centimeters long from a young chestnut tree and then putting small pieces of rice cake, fish, and kelp seaweed on the twigs. The twigs are placed in the house doorways and on the windows. (286-282)

  There are also rice-planting dances that are prayers for a good harvest. Village rules say all households should participate. In the evening, men and women dance and prepare for the festivities. (287-288)

  The sixteenth day of January is the day for yondori or yodori—driving off all the birds that cause crop damage. Villagers get up in the early dawn and go around the house three times beating a wooden board, singing,

  Away, birds of night!

  Away, birds of morning!

  During a good time at night,

  There should be no birds.

  Or they go around tapping the back of a serving tray with a piece of wood, singing,

  Away, birds of night!

  Away, birds of morning!

  Bad birds,

  I’ll split your head and pickle you!

  Pack you in a cage

  And drive you off to Ezo Island (Hokkaido).

  Away, away! (288-289)

  The twentieth of January is yaito-yaki or yogaka-yubushi—warding off bugs and insects day. Villagers wrap pine needles into bundles and carry them around the village. They set the needles on fire and blow the smoke onto each other to fumigate themselves. This is done so they will be free of mosquitoes and insects in the summer. They walk around saying, “Don’t be daunted by mosquitoes or centipedes.” The villagers are also free to enter homes to fumigate them. It is said they even fumigate key locks. (289-290)

  On the last day of January, anything regarding horses is resolved. A rice cake is cut into forty-eight pieces, and each one is wrapped in straw. The cakes are hung in the house until the ninth day of the second month, when they are eaten.

  The ninth of February is when the bow and arrow (yumiya-hiraki) decoration is taken down and the bamboo hat used in the rice-planting dance is smashed. With this, all New Year’s ceremonies are completed. The third of February is also the last day of winter. (290-292)

  After New Year’s, there are a number of seasonal events. Children are the focus of things in March. One thing children do is get together and cook food outside in big pots (kama-koyaki). They think this is more fun than celebrating the Doll Festival (hina matsuri). By March, when the New Year’s events are over, all that the children talk about as they go back and forth to school is this kama-koyaki cooking event. To start, they select a good spot on the river bank and make a fire pit to put the large pots in. On the third day of the third month early in the morning, they bring the food (rice, bean paste soup, eggs, fish, and clams) and utensils from home. Usually one pot of food will serve between five and eighteen kids. Girls thirteen to fourteen years old take the lead for cooking, and the boys gather firewood and water.

  The feast goes on continuously from early morning into early afternoon. Sometimes, a group will not be satisfied with the food that they have, and they will try to take over the cooking area of another group, which leads to a fight. But this doesn’t happen very often now. Once they have eaten all they can, even with taking over another location, they have to stop.

  When Mr. Sasaki was young, Chokuro Tenbo of Tajiri, the strongest kid in the group and sometimes a bully, broke into the fire pit of a nearby hamlet and ate thirteen fish, drank lots of soup, and consumed a pot of rice. People still laugh about the fact that after eating, he could barely move and crawled to the river edge, where he threw up everything he had eaten. People in the area have fond memories of these cookouts. (291-293)

  The way to calm the wind down in the spring or autumn when it blows violently is by tying a gourd and sickle on the end of long pole and mounting it on the eaves of the house. The sickle chops up the wind, and the gourd protects against misfortune. (292-272)

  The cakes offered up at the Doll Festival on the third of March are made from mugwort-flavored rice or green-, red-, and yellow-colored rice flour balls. They have red beans inside. The cakes come in many shapes: rabbits, pinecones, fruit, eggplants, red peppers, and so on. They are made by mothers, aunts, and soon-to-be-married girls all working together. (293-295)

  Japanese pampas grass rice cakes are made on Children’s Day, the fifth day of the fifth month. The cakes are made by cutting off young leaves of the susuki (pampas grass bush) and wrapping them around freshly pounded rice cakes. These should be eaten while the rice is still moist to get the flavor of the grass, which is quite delicious.

  The origin of pampas grass cakes goes back to when there was a very happy couple. One day, the husband went away to sell the cloth that his wife had woven, and he didn’t come back for a number of days. While he was away, some young men from the neighborhood looked in on the wife while she was weaving cloth. They pestered her, and it got so bad that she couldn’t endure it. She threw herself into the river in front of her house. Finally, the husband returned from his trip and found out what had happened. He held her body and cried with grief day and night. Then he wrapped her flesh in pampas grass leaves and took it home. He made the grass and her flesh into cakes and ate them. This is said to be how the custom of making and eating pampas grass rice cakes in May came into being. This story was recited by Mr. Sasaki’s old mother to her grandchildren on the fifth of May last year (1924). Mr. Sasaki remembers the story. (294-296)

  It is said that on the first day of the sixth month, if s
omeone is under a mulberry tree, their skin will peel off in the same way that a snake sheds its skin. On this day, children never eat mulberries. (295-297)

  On the first day of the sixth month, there is also a makko-tsunagi ceremony, which is about checking on all important things for rice cultivation. At one time, villagers made two straw horse images, one for riding and the other for use as a pack animal. The mouth of the horse had some symbolic food made from wet rice powder. In the early morning, the straw horses were first moved around to branches of a tree by the stream and then to the intake control for watering the fields. They were then offered to the guardian deity (ubusuna-sama) of the household. Nowadays, instead of making straw horses, they take rice paper, cut it into six strips, and stamp the strips with woodblock images of two horses. Wet rice is put on the paper horse’s mouth, and the strips of paper are sent around to the same places mentioned earlier for the straw horses. (296-298)

  The Sawa-no-Fudo (Takisawa Shrine) festival in Hashino is held around the twenty-eighth day of the sixth month of the lunar calendar. Depending on the year, this popular festival lasts two or three days. Since olden times, on festival days, it is said that at least a few drops of rain will fall. The reason is that on the day before the shrine festival, a shark swims up the Hashino River from the ocean to worship at the pond at the base of the Fudo waterfalls.