Folk Legends of Japan (13 page)

The next morning Fukuji went to see the place where he had set his gun. He found the string rolled up and hung on a branch of the tree. Thinking it very strange, he fastened the string again in the same way, but this time he tied two strings together. He spent the night again in the hut. At midnight he heard a sharp report of a gun which echoed back with a terrible sound.

Fukuji arose early the next morning and went up the mountain. On the summit he saw blood drops. Wishing to find out where they led, he followed the drops, on and on, passing through hills and valleys, until he came to the depths of Mt. Mitsubushi. A little valley lies there, on one side of which rests a great rock. He saw a queerly formed cave in the rock, and at the mouth of the cave he beheld a creature about six feet in length lying dead, facing south and with hands folded. It was a mountain man with long, thick whiskers, half human and half animal.

Fukuji was astonished at the sight of this mountain man. He made apologies saying: "Please excuse me. If I had known that it was you, I would not have shot you." He offered his gun before the dead body of the mountain man and went down the mountain, when suddenly a terrible storm overtook him. He reached his home after barely escaping with his life. But he suffered from fever from that night on and died not long afterwards.

THE FLUTE PLAYER AND THE SHOJO

Anesaki writes, pp. 273-74: "Anotherfairy-like being of marine origin is the Shojo; though he does not actually belong to the sea but is believed to come across it to Japan. Probably he is an idealized personification of the orang-outang.... The Shojo is a merry embodiment of Epicureanism, who, deriving his chief pleasure from perpetual drinking, is therefore regarded as the genius of sake-beer. His face is red or scarlet and boyish in appearance. His long red hair hangs down nearly to his feet; he has a dipper for ladling
sake,
wears gaudy dresses of red and gold, and dances a sort of bacchanalian dance."

Text from
Muro Kohi Shu,
p. 78.

O
NCE THERE WAS
a young man whose parents had died and who had neither wife nor child. He had a special skill in playing the flute and used to take much pleasure in this.

One day when he was playing his flute on the beach at Tenjin-saki, Motomachi, in Tanabe-machi, a pretty young woman appeared beside him, listening to his flute in ecstasy. The young man, however, did not notice her and continued playing. When he had finished several melodies, the woman said to him: "Please play one more tune for me." But as the young man seemed suspicious of the strange woman, she added: "I am a female
shojo
who lives in the sea. Charmed by the tune of your flute, I have come here in the form of a woman." Thereupon the young man played a tune as he was requested. The
shojo
was very much pleased with it and said: "I shall offer you fishing implements in return for your kindness. With this you can catch any fish you want, without bait."

She pulled out a hair from her own head and gave it, together with a fishhook, to the young man. Then she disappeared. Although the young man was suspicious of what she had told him, he tried fishing with that hook and line from the beach. And he was able to catch whatever kind of fish he wanted, such as mackerel and sea-bream and bonito.

Nowadays at Tenjin Point there is a fishing site called Shojo. This is said to be the place where the young man fished for the first time. Afterwards he moved to Katada Inlet at Nishi Tomita-mura, and he offered his fishing tithes to Hachiman Shrine in the village there. So there is also a place called Shojo Point at Katada Inlet. A house called Shojo Hut is at Hosono in Nishi Tomita-mura.

According to the tradition, a
shojo
came up from the sea in olden times. By the order of the feudal lord, the villagers caught him in this house through making him drunk with three pints of strong
sake
made by boiling down three times that much ordinary
sake.
The
shojo's
hair that they use in the festival rituals at Hachiman Shrine there is said to be the hair of this same
shojo.

SPIDER POOL

The spider is a prominent demon figure in Japanese
densetsu.
Yanagita discusses spider legends in his
Nippon Mukashi-banashi Meii
(tr. Mayer, vol. 2, pp. 385-87). Hearn speaks of the common belief that spiders turn into goblins after dark (VI, pp. 40-41). Yanagita-Mayer in
Japanese Folk Tales,
no. 23, p. 77, "The Water Spider," follows the present tale in having the fisherman tie the spider's thread to a tree, but adds that the fish in his basket jumped out when a voice called from the pond. In Murai typescript, p. 4, "Spectre Spider," a Shinto priest helps an old woman and her son kill a tormenting spider.

Text from
Zoku Kai Mukashi-banashi Shu,
p. 124.

Z
ENEMON,
who lived at Yasaka, Shimo Kuisshiki-mura, was an old woodcutter. One day he was working by a stream up in the mountains. There the stream flowed evenly from far within the mountains, forming itself into a deep pool on both sides of which trees grew so thickly that it was quite dark there even in the daytime. The old man, after working a while, grew tired and sleepy, leaned against a tree on the bank, and took a nap. Then a big spider came out of the pool, wound its thread around the old man's foot, and then went back into the pool. Thus did the spider rise up again and again, repeating the same action. Then the old man woke up and noticed the spider.

"That is strange," he thought. Pretending to be asleep, he opened his eyes slightly and watched the spider. In the meantime, the spider repeatedly came out of the pool, wound the thread around the old man's foot, and returned to the pool. At last the threads made a rope. When the spider had gone back once again into the pool, the old man took the thread off his foot and quickly wound it around the root of a big tree nearby. Just at that moment the thread was pulled toward the pool with a loud shout: "Yo-o-i sho!" from the bottom of the pool. The old man was astonished to see the big tree trembling and shaking and at last being uprooted. It was pulled harder and harder until at last it toppled into the pool. The frightened old man said to himself: "Oh, I have escaped from a great danger!"

From that time on that pool has been called Kumo-buchi [Spider Pool].

THE BODYLESS HORSE

"Revenant as headless horse," Motif E423.1.3.3, is indicated here. This is another reminiscence from her childhood days told by Mrs. Hitoshi K. Saito to her granddaughter, my student Kayoko Saito, in Tokyo, May 8, 1957.

I
N ORDER TO GO
to Doi Village from the town where I lived [Aki-machi, Aki-gun, Kochi-ken], we had to pass across an open field. In the midst of the field was a spring which was dammed up for irrigation. When we would pass by the dam, we were told that since olden days something there came after people with the noise "Chan-chara, chan-chara." That's the bodyless horse with small tinklers around its neck, making the sound with those tinklers. If you hear the sound, don't walk straight ahead, but clear the way for the horse. Then you will hear the sound no more. If you do not leave the way open, the bodyless horse will lean over you.

One day, a man turned round when he heard that sound and saw a horse's head, just like one you might see in a toy store in those days, coming after him, shaking up and down as if it were walking, and making the sound with the tinklers around its neck.

I myself have never seen that horse. But when I was walking by there in my childhood I was very scared from anticipation that the bodyless horse might come after me, "Chan-chara, chan-chara." I was especially frightened in the evening when it was getting dark.

TALES OF ZASHIKI-BOKKO

The
Minzokugaku Jiten
describes the
zashiki-warashi
as a house spirit.
Zashiki
is a room with
tatami
mats used for a parlor;
warashi
is a term for "boy," and
bokko
is its dialect equivalent in northeastern Japan. Yanagita,
Mountain Village Life,
p. 58, no. 12, says that in the northeastern parts of Japan a spirit in the form of a boyish figure is believed to dwell with oldfamilies and to indulge in much harmless mischief, such as upsetting a bed with someone lying in it. The same work reports a tradition from Yamagata-mura, Iwate-ken, that the decline of a family inevitably follows when the
zashiki-warashi
leaves the house.

Texts from
Miyazawa Kenji Meisaku Sen,
7th ed., pp. 43-48. Translated by Kayoko Saito, whose grandfather came from the northeast and knew of the
zashikibokko;
she said her grandfather knew there were many Saitos living in the Saraki of the last story. One sees here the deft handling of folk traditions by a professional writer.

Note:
Hakama,
a man's divided skirt for formal wear over kimono.

T
HE FOLLOWING
are tales about
zashiki-bokko
that are told in our district [northeastern Japan]:

1. One bright day everyone had gone to the mountain to work, leaving behind only two children, who were playing in the yard. As there was nobody in the big house, a deep silence reigned all around them.

Suddenly, from somewhere inside the house, there came the sound of a broom sweeping the mats: "Zawatt, zawatt."

Throwing their arms around each other's shoulders, the children tiptoed inside to see who had made the sound. But they found not a soul in any room. They noticed only that the sword-box in one room was lying there silently and that, outside, the hedge of ground cypress looked greener than ever. Not another soul was to be seen anywhere, neither inside nor outside.

"Zawatt, zawatt" came the sound of the broom again.

Was it the voice of some distant shrike; was it the murmur of the Kitakami River; or was it the sound of beans being sifted? The two children wondered and wondered while they listened quietly to the sound. But they could think of no explanation for it.

They were sure that, from somewhere, they had heard the sound of a broom going "Zawatt, zawatt."

Once again, stealthily, they peeped inside, but still there was no one in any of the rooms. There was nothing to be seen but the bright sunshine filling the air.

Such is the story of the
zashiki-bokko.

2. "Here we go along the highway! Here we go along the highway!" Shouting these words at the tops of their voices, ten children had made a circle with their hands and were going round and round in the
zashiki.
They had been invited to the house for a feast.

Round and round they went in a circle. And then suddenly, without anyone's knowing when or how, there were eleven children in the circle.

There was no unfamiliar face among them, nor was any face repeated twice. And still, no matter how they counted themselves, there were always eleven of them.

A man came in and said: "The extra person must surely be the
zashikibokko."

But which one of them was it? Each child sat there looking innocent as though declaring that the
zashiki-bokko
was anyone but himself.

Such is the story of the
zashiki-bokko.

3. There is another story.

The main household of a certain family made it a custom to invite the children of its cadet branches to celebrate the festival of Nyorai Buddha at the main house during the beginning of each old-calendar August. One year, one of the cadet children had the measles and was confined to bed.