on popular Buddhism, and Mrs. Hori, the daughter of Professor Yanagita. Professor Hori has graciously read my introduction and given me helpful suggestions. To contributors of the forthcoming Studies in Japanese Folklore which I am editing for the Indiana University Folklore Series, I must express gratitude for a preview of their illuminating articles. My deep thanks go to Professor George K. Brady of the University of Kentucky, who has helped make available in English translation important Japanese folklore studies, and who has aided me in personal ways. Indiana University has bountifully provided me with research facilities.
Both Miss Ishiwara and Miss Saito, named above, and Meredith Weatherby of the Tuttle Company have been most helpful in checking my manuscript and straightening out certain perplexing points.
Finally, I must express my pleasure and good fortune to have as publisher an old friend and classmate, Charles E. Tuttle, who has been so active in the publication of "books to span the East and West."
| Bloomington, Indiana, June, 1961 | RICHARD M. DORSON |
FOLK LEGENDS OF JAPAN
INTRODUCTION
JAPAN POSSESSES more legends than any country in the Western world. So says Professor Kunio Yanagita, who founded the scientific study of folklore in Japan, and who remains today its venerable sage. We cannot say with certainty how many legends a people cherish, but we know that a vast number have been collected from every district in Japan. Even Yanagita-sensei is at a loss to explain just why his culture has produced so many legendary traditions. But volume after volume has appeared in the present century setting down village stories connected with mountains and trees and pools and hot springs, with kappa and tengu and other demonic creatures, with wealthy peasants and doughty samurai, and above all with the grieved and hateful spirits of those who died with anger in their hearts. Altogether some fifty such books of folk legends have been printed in Japan, not to mention the many hundreds of individual legends which have appeared in collections of general folk tales or in topographical and historical works. In the United States not a single book of legends spoken by the folk has ever been published.
The word legend has various meanings in modern usage, and even folklorists disagree on its precise significance. A legend is a particular kind of folk tale, and so belongs to the family of stories passed down by word of mouth over the generations. The best known and most frequently collected type of such stories is the fairy tale, and fairy tales have now been reprinted and rewritten so frequently that they belong to literary as much as to oral tradition. The key difference between fairy tale and legend is that narrator and audience accept the fairy tale as fiction, while they believe the legend describes an actual happening.
The legend is therefore a true story in the minds of the folk who retain it in their memory and pass it along to the next generation. There would be little point, however, in remembering the countless ordinary occurrences of daily life, so the legend is further distinguished by describing an extraordinary event. In some way the incident at its core contains noteworthy, remarkable, astonishing, or otherwise memorable aspects. The presence of a goblin or a giant, a ghost or an apparition, inevitably causes village talk. A strong man may perform some prodigious feat of strength, or a village wag perpetuate some ludicrous prank that endures in local memory. Legends range in length from brief outlines of a dimly recalled event, to a full narrative of strange experiences. Fairy tales, being composed of several adventures arranged in a set pattern and well fixed in the mind of the storyteller, run longer and contain more substance and detail than legends. When the fairy tale becomes anchored in a particular locality, is told as having occurred there, and incorporates the family- and place-names of the neighborhood, it has crossed the line into legendry. More rarely, when a myth of the gods, preserved in an ancient literary manuscript, takes on local coloring and the god is spoken of as having appeared in the vicinity, the myth assumes the form of living legend.
These considerations bring up another point. The legend is believed, it is remarkable, and also it is local. The scene of its action may be the village itself, or some special landmark in the environs. A stunted pine, an ominous cavern, a deep pool, a lofty peak are all customarily endowed with legendary associations. Geographical landmarks keep fresh the memory of events connected with them by power of association, sometimes fixed in the name itself, like "The Mountain of Abandoned Old People" or "The River of Human Sacrifice." Furthermore, since legends, like all other kinds of folklore, are carried from one place to another, they fasten easily onto a similar feature of the landscape in a different part of the country. Man-made structures as well as nature's handiwork become encrusted with traditionary incident over the course of time: bridges, dams, castles, derelict dwellings. In Japan especially, every shrine and temple seems to bear its burden of ancient story. Some dark tragedy of the long ago has caused the erection of yonder Shinto shrine, and the villagers who pass it daily or honor it annually know its message. As legends attach to particular places in the district, so they cling to unusual persons who have lived in or passed through the township. Individuals who stand out from the everyday throng in some peculiar way, because of their physical prowess or roguish humor or occult powers, are talked about by later generations until they take on legendary hues. Or a famous historical figure has traveled briefly through the district, and given rise to a host of apocryphal stories about his actions in the locality. A priest, a saint, a god has performed his miracles and left his traces here. In short, a legend needs anchorage, whether to a person, a place, or an event, or to all three in combination, if it is to persist in the unwritten annals of the community.
The "localness" of legends has a simple explanation. These believed episodes continue to be told by people who find in them a strong personal interest. If interest lags, the legend dies. What maintains interest is the intimate association with family or neighborhood history, or with familiar landmarks. The audience knows the names of the actors, whose descendants live in their midst, and who may indeed include their own ancestors, and they see regularly the sites of the bygone events. While the history of textbooks seems distant and impersonal, the remembered traditions of the community possess the fascination of immediate concern; they happened here, to us. To the appeal of the unusual and arresting incident is thus added the attraction of local interest. Legends represent the folk's-eye view of history.
As a consequence, local traditions flourish most vigorously in hamlets and villages that have endured with little social change for long reaches of time. In such a society one knows his neighbors and shares their sense of a common past; the community has roots, traditions, almost an independent corporate existence. Legends cannot persevere in the big city, save perhaps in local neighborhoods that manage for a space to preserve a sense of identity before the bulldozers desecrate the old landmarks and new swarms of migrants uproot the established dwellers. Nor will too sparse a settlement nourish the seeds of traditionary tales. Enough of a society must exist to set the stage for action, rumor, the play of fancy, and the bubbling currents of excited talk. It is no accident that in the United States New England, the oldest section of the country, and the one chiefly settled in compact townships, contributes the lion's share of American legends. Scarcely a New England town history but contains one chapter on local traditions: a case of witchcraft; a visit from the Devil, whose footprint remains in solid rock; foibles and antics of eccentric townsfolk; a sighting of the sea serpent off the shore: specters in a haunted house that bears an ineradicable bloodstain.
In closely knit communities a legend lives on through constant repetition. This repeated telling of the legend over the generations insures its folklore quality. For even if a story begins immediately after some remarkable happening, in a form fairly close to the facts, it will assume ever more fantastic hues over the years. The Icelandic sagas were first told in the eleventh century by professional saga-men as factual histories of the great chieftains, but when they were finally written down two centuries later, many floating folklore themes and tales had slipped into the narratives. There is indeed one group of scholars who contend that after 150 years of unbroken oral tradition not a vestige of historical truth remains. In more recent times some check is provided on the fanciful growth of oral legends through printed
