Hearn did not of course have access to field collections of densetsu, and his own literary instinct and religious bent turned him to educated priestly informants and to poetic treatments. Nor did he intend any systematic description of Japanese folklore. Still, he provides a trustworthy guide into unfamiliar corridors of Japanese folk ideas, and those who dismiss Hearn as a dewy-eyed romancer should consider his grisly and macabre legends.
The present book is intended to bring a representative selection of Japanese folk legends to Western readers. During the ten months I spent in Japan, from October, 1956, to August, 1957, as a Fulbright lecturer at the University of Tokyo, I had the good fortune to live close by the Japanese Folklore Institute in Seijo-machi. There I met Professor Yanagita and his associates, and there I spent many hours with Miss Yasuyo Ishiwara, who made literal translations for most of the legends printed here. Miss Ishiwara had served as principal assistant to Mr. Yanagita in the work on his Nihon Densetsu Meii, and was admirably fitted to steer me through the unfamiliar bibliography and acquaint me with characteristic legends. The Institute closed in May, 1957, for lack of funds, a tragic blow indeed to Japanese folklore studies. Other translations were made by a talented student of mine at Tokyo University, Miss Kayoko Saito, who in addition obtained a number of densetsu directly from her grandmother. When I met the grandmother, a wholesome, rotund woman of surprising girth for Japan, she told me— through Kayoko—of hearing village tales from her own grandmother on the southerly island of Shikoku; she could even remember the exact year of her childhood when she first heard a particular story.
In making selections for this volume I have attempted to represent major themes, different geographical areas, and important collections of Japanese oral legends.
PART ONE
PRIESTS, TEMPLES, AND SHRINES
IN JAPAN the religion and lore of the folk merge in a common realm of popular beliefs. The development of Shintoism from primitive nature worship, and the sixth-century importation of Buddhism from China via Korea, merely increased the variety of religious legends circulating among the villagers. Shintoism contributed the veneration of departed spirits, particularly of angry ones, and Shinto shrines proliferated endlessly with each new passionate or noble death. Hence legendary traditions gathered about each shrine, no matter how tiny or humble, for each embalmed a story. Most of the hundred thousand shrines belong to the folk, in distinction to large famous shrines, which employ salaried priests and hold colorful festivals. Buddhism too, while introducing a subtle philosophy with complex ritual, at the folk level scattered miraculous tales about Buddhist priests and statues. The images of Buddha were said to whine and writhe if robbers carried them off. A mass of legends clustered around Kobo Daishi, or St. Kobo (774-835), founder of the Shingon sect of Buddhism, whose esoteric formulas appealed to the magic-minded common people. In the guise of a wandering beggar Kobo Daishi rewarded the generous and punished the greedy, much like St. Peter in Christian legend. Numerous, devoutly believed stories tell of Buddhist priests laying troubled spirits. East or West, the folk mind shuns abstract doctrine for the vivid, concrete tale dramatizing the supernatural power of gods and priests. In Japan, such legendary histories cling to shrine and temple, and are even dispensed by the priestly class, proud of the individual acts of faith and sacrifice connected with their particular sanctuaries.
SAINT KOBO'S WELL
This and the following four legends deal with the miracles of Koho Daishi. The present one, where he brings forth a well with his cane or staff, is widely told. See Japanese Folklore Dictionary, "Koboshimizu" (Kobo's well); Yanagita, Mountain Village Life, ch. 59, p. 420 (where the miracle is also credited to St. Rennyo). On pp. 432-33 a story is told of a man in Takaoka-mura who prayed at a temple to be cured of eye trouble, and was told by a god in a dream to dig under a certain Japanese cedar tree by the temple, where he would find a well dug by St. Kobo; he washed his eyes in the well water and was cured. Suzuki, pp. 16-17, "The Well that Kobo Daishi Dug," gives an extra twist to the usual form by having St. Kobo's bamboo stick fly three miles away and take root upside down.
For Christian counterparts of this legend see Motif F933.1, "Miraculous spring bursts forth for holy person." The Kobo Daishi legends belong under the general motif Q1.1, "Saints in disguise reward hospitality and punish in hospitality."
General accounts of Kobo Daishi can be found in Anesaki, pp. 251-53: U. A. Casal, "The Saintly Kobo Daishi in Popular Lore (A.D. 774-835)," Folklore Studies, XVIII (Tokyo, 1959), pp. 95-144; Hearn, V, ch. 2, "The Writings of Kobodaishi"; Ikeda, II, pp. 209-11; Joly, pp. 183-84, "Kobodaishi"; Mock Joya, IV, pp. 21-22, "Kobo Daishi"; de Visser, The Dragon in China and Japan, pp. 162-64, 202, 206; de Visser, "The Fox and Badger in Japanese Folklore," pp. 112-13,136-37.
Text from Kunio Yanagita, "Folk Talesfrom Hachinoe," in Mukashi-banashi Kenkyu, II (Tokyo, 1937), p. 288. Collected by Kimura, 1936.
THERE IS a spring by the name of St. Kobo's Well in the village of Muramatsu, Ninohe-gun. The following story concerning this well is told in this district. A girl was once weaving alone at her home. An old man, staggering, came by there and asked her for a cup of water. She walked over the hill more than a thousand yards away and brought back water for the visitor. The old man was pleased with her kindness and said that he would make her free from such painful labor. After saying this, he struck the ground with his cane. While he was striking, water sprang forth from the point struck by his cane. That spring was called St. Kobo's Welt.
The old man who could do such a miraculous deed was thought to be St. Kobo, however poor and weak he might look.
THE WILLOW WELL OF KOBO
A variant of the above. Text from Edo no Kohi to Densetsu, no. 17, p. 45.
Note: Kashima, a large shrine where warriors prayed before going into battle.
THERE IS a well in the compound of Zempuku-ji in Azabu. In ancient times while Kobo Daishi was staying in this temple, in order to get the water for offering to the Buddha, he put his staff into the ground, praying to the god of the Kashima Shrine. Then clear water gushed forth. Later Kobo Daishi planted a willow tree by the well to commemorate it forever. So it is called the Willow Well.
THE KOBO CHESTNUT TREES
Ikeda refers to this legend and assigns it Type 750 B, "Hospitality Rewarded."
Text from Aichi-ken Densetsu Shu, p. 223.
IN THE mountains around Fukiage Pass in Nagura-mura, Kita Shidaragun, grow chestnut trees called Kobo chestnuts. Those trees bear fruit very young, even when they are only three feet high.
Hundreds of years ago there was a big chestnut tree on this pass. Boys would rush to climb it to pick the chestnuts, but little children could not climb the tree. One day while they were weeping, a traveling priest passed by, saw the little children crying, and said: "Well, you shall be able to pick the chestnuts from next year on."
The next year every small young chestnut tree bore fruit so that the little children could pick them easily. The villagers thought that the traveling priest must have been St. Kobo, and since then they have called these the Kobo chestnut trees.
THE WATERLESS RIVER IN TAKIO
In some variants potatoes grow hard as stones after they are refused to Kobo. A story from Mimino-mura, in Yanagita, Mountain Village Life, p. 407 (in ch. 56, "Curses of the Gods"), tells of a river turning dry after a man refused a beggar a piece of radish he was washing. Elisseeff, pp. 287-88, reviewing Otari Kohishu by Naotaro Koike, summarizes a legend of greedy fishermen who refuse fish to a begging bonze; he throws a sheet of paper into the water, and thenceforth the fish disappear from the river. Ikeda, pp. 210-11, analyzes the tale under Type
