suicide, about a man captured by and forced to live with kappa. Another distinguished writer, Ashihei Hino, launched his career by winning the Akutagawa Prize and has published a voluminous miscellany of kappa stories, Kappa Mandara, grafting modern personalities onto the goblin. A comic cartoon series by Kon Shimizu in the Asahi Weekly depicts a nuked kangaroo type kappa of lecherous and unseemly behavior. Coffeehouses portray kappa on their checks, and craftsmen shape him into wooden dolls. Almost equally infamous is the flying tengu, a beaked and winged old man, haunting the mountains as kappa infest the rivers, and abducting humans in the Noh and Kabuki of dramatists and monogatari of story-writers, as well as in the legends of the people. Kappa and tengu are not all bad and can teach healing and swordplay to human benefactors.
The oni is an ogre of Chinese origin, usually pictured with horns and fangs and a loincloth of tiger's fur. But to the primitive Japanese he was a friendly mountain giant who requited hospitality with faggots and stamped his footprints in mountain hollows. Other eerie monsters are found all over Japan, wild men of the mountains, apes in the sea, mischievous imps in the house, garden spiders that grow gigantic at night. And they are really seen, for the demons of Japan have not yet escaped from the folk to the pages of nursery books.
THE KAPPA OF FUKIURA
"The kappa is a fabulous creature of the rivers, ponds, lakes, and the sea," writes Shiojiri in his introduction to his translation of Akutagawas Kappa. Shiojiri goes on to quote from dictionaries and travel books of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries which describe the kappa as an ugly child with greenish-yellow skin, webbed fingers and toes, resembling a monkey with his long nose and round eyes, wearing a shell like a tortoise, fishy smelling, naked. He is said to live in the water and come out evenings to steal melons and cucumbers. He likes to wrestle, will rape women, sucks the blood of cows and horses through their anuses, and drags men and women into the water to pluck out their livers through their anuses. The trick on meeting a kappa is to make him spill the water in his concave head, whereupon he loses his strength.
Typical kappa legends, like the present one, deal with the creature's attempt to drag a cow or horse into a river. A comparative ethnological study of this theme showing similar accounts of water monsters in Asia and Europe, by Eiichiro Ishida, has been translated into English as "The Kappa Legend," Folklore Studies (Peking, 1950), IX, pp. 1-152. The Minzokugaku Jiten, Joly (p. 161) and Mockjoya (I, pp. 196-98), all discuss kappa. Joly writes (p. 22) that kappa are usually propitiated by throwing cucumbers bearing the names and ages of one's family into the river. The contemporary vogue of kappa was described briery by Lewis Bush in the Asahi Evening News, Tokyo, May 29,1957, "The 'Kappa' — Japan's Goblin."
Ikeda,p. 43, suggests Type 47-C, "Water-monster captured, dragged by a horse" for the kappa traditions, and on the basis of her index Thompson has added Motif K1022.2.1, "Water-monster, trying to pull horse into water, is dragged to house where he begs for his life and is spared." Ikeda says that the affidavit given by the kappa, promising to do no more mischief, is treasured in some families.
Text from Bungo Densetsu Shu, pp. 76-77. Collected by Shizuka Otome.
IN FORMER DAYS a kappa often appeared to trouble the villagers of Fukiura in Nishi Nakaura-mura. One time the kappa came out of the river to the beach where a cow was tied to a tree. The kappa tried to insert his hand into the cow's anus and draw out its tongue. This startled the cow, which started to run round and round the tree, and in so doing caused its rope to wind round and round the kappa's arm. A farmer working in a nearby rice field noticed the kappa's plight and came running to the spot. Afraid of being caught by the farmer, the kappa tried to escape in such desperate haste that his arm, around which the rope was tightly wound, was pulled from his shoulder and fell to the ground. The farmer picked it up and carried it home.
That night the kappa called at the farmer's house and said: "Please give me back my arm that you took today. If you do not let me have it within the next three days, I cannot join it again to my shoulder." After imploring the farmer in this fashion he went away. The next night he came again, and the third night he appeared once more and repeated the same petition so piteously, with tears in his eyes, that the farmer felt sorry for him. He said: "Will you promise us that you will never do harm to the villagers, either the children or the adults? I will give you back your arm if you will keep your promise until the buttocks of the stone Jizo over there rot away."
The kappa made this promise to the farmer, and in consequence was able to depart with his arm. After that he went to the stone Jizo every night and examined its buttocks to see if they were rotted, but they showed no sign of going bad. He sprinkled excrement on the Jizo, but still it failed to rot, and the kappa at last grew disappointed and gave up all further attempts.
Even today people in summertime sometimes hear the voice of the kappa from the sea, saying: "Don't let the children go out to the beach, for the guest is coming." By the guest he means the kappa from Kawajiri. As the kappa from this other village is not bound by the promise of the kappa who lost his arm in Fukiura, the latter warns against the coming of the former.
So it is said that children have never been injured in the river or at the seashore of this village.
THE KAPPA OF KODA POND
The legend of the wooden-bowl lender is described in the Minzokugaku Jiten under "Wankashi densetsu" as extending all over Japan from southern Kyushu to northern Tohoku. Some families even claim descent from the dishonest man who refused to return the bowls to the kappa and say they still have those bowls (zenwan). The article cites a Chinese legend of borrowing bowls from a mountain fox, and a French story of borrowing a pan from a mound. Kitami Toshio has analyzed 150 such legends in Japan, finding them concentrated near important rivers (Folklore Studies, XIV, Tokyo, 1955, pp. 258-59).
In Murai, pp. 11-12, "Kappa Who Repaid Kindness," the story begins like the present one but the kappa leaves his liberator fish rather than bowls. In Yanagita-Mayer, Japanese Folk Tales, no. 54, pp. 155-57, "Mototori (Clearing-the-Old-Score) Mountain," a greedy farmer keeps tray sets borrowed from a mountain cave; his six-year-old son cannot walk, until one day he stands up and carries two rice bags back to the cave as compensation.
Text from Chiisagata-gun Mintah Shu, pp. 61-62.
THERE WAS a kappa in Koda Pond in Junin-mura. Saito Bunji of that village tied his horse to a tree by that pond. The kappa came out of the pond and took the reins and began to pull the horse into the pond. The frightened horse jumped up and ran back home and entered the stable. As the water in the kappa's head had been spilled, the kappa lost his strength and was dragged by the horse into the stable. When Bunji came to see the horse, the kappa made apologies to him and said: "Please forgive me. If you prepare a feast in your home, I will certainly lend you necessary bowls." So Bunji forgave him.
From then on, any time he held a feast, the bowls were prepared in the yard the night before. After he had used them, he put them in the yard and they disappeared during the night. However, one time a neighbor hid a set of the bowls when the rest were being returned to the kappa. The kappa took them during the night, but he never again lent bowls to Bunji.
THE KAPPA WHO PLAYED "PULL-FINGER"
The kappa is seen here in two more of his favorite roles, an evil water creature who devours humans, and a helpful one who sets their broken bones.
Text from Chiisagata-gun Mintan Shu, pp. 10-11.
THERE IS a pond called Akanuma-ike at the foot of Mt. Tateshina, and near the pond there is a big stone called Kagihiki-ishi [Pull-Finger Stone]. Once a child used to stand on that stone and called to the passers-by: "Let's play Pull-finger." The passers-by would stop and play Pull-finger for fun. Then the child would pull them into the pond and eat them up. Many people were
