Introduction

Borders loomed large in the imagination of the medieval Japanese—borders of the country, the capital, and the rural village; the gate of a home; the foot of a mountain; and the edge of the sea—for it is at borders where one might encounter demons, monsters, serpents, dragons, gods, and the spirits of the dead, as well as anthropomorphized animals, birds, and plants. Border crossings form a critical element of a large body of Japanese vernacular fiction called otogizōshi, or Muromachi tales (named after the Muromachi period, 1337–1573), a genre of four to five hundred relatively short stories that were written from the fourteenth through the seventeenth century. The term otogi (companion; zōshi or sōshi means “booklets”) comes from Otogi bunko (The Companion Library), a box set of twenty-three Muromachi tales printed by the Osaka publisher Shibukawa Seiemon in the Kyōhō era (1716–1736). These otogizōshi, while coming to the fore in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, continued to be written, illustrated, and printed well into the early modern period (Edo period, 1600–1867) and have even made a lasting mark on contemporary Japanese popular culture in the form of animation, films, and manga.

Early otogizōshi were for the most part written by aristocrats (many of whom had fallen on hard times) and Buddhist priests, the scholars and educated elite of the day. Otogizōshi differed from aristocratic court tales (monogatari) of the tenth through thirteenth centuries in that many of their subgenres derived from the culture of the roadside and of itinerant storytellers. For example, the honji-mono (stories of the human lives of gods and buddhas before they became deities), a number of which are translated in Monsters, Animals, and Other Worlds—including The Origins of Hashidate (Hashidate no honji) and The Origins of the Suwa Deity (Suwa no honji)—probably began as stories about the origins of gods and buddhas narrated by itinerant performers, likely for the purpose of temple or shrine fund-raising. Similarly, the many accounts of the warrior hero Minamoto no Yoshitsune (1159–1189)—such as The Palace of the Tengu (Tengu no dairi) and Yoshitsune’s Island-Hopping (Onzōshi shima-watari), both translated here—show the impact of semi-oral circulation: the wide range of textual variants, the use of contemporary vernacular, the storytelling conventions (repetition of set phrases, familiar motifs, and established plot patterns), and the content, much of which derives from either folk literature or short anecdotal stories.

Journeys to other worlds in these vernacular stories must be understood, at least partly, in the wider Buddhist context of belief in karmic rebirth in the Six Realms (rokudō)—the realms of hell (jigoku), hungry ghosts (gaki), animals (chikushō), warriors (ashura), humans (ningen), and gods/devas (ten)—into which humans were believed to be born and through which their spirits would wander until they could be enlightened or saved, hopefully to be reborn into the Pure Land (Jōdo). After death, during a forty-nine-day “interim time-space” (chūu), the spirit of the deceased was thought to be judged by the Ten Kings (jūō), or judges of hell, particularly King Enma, who, looking into a mirror that reflects all past actions, determines the person’s fate, sending those who had sinned to appropriate realms of punishment. The medieval period (1185–1600) also saw the emergence of a “Tengu (Goblin) Path” (Tengudō), a dark wandering into which a person could fall while still alive.

As would be expected of literature frequently written by Buddhist priests, the narratives are often religious and pedagogical, describing the nature of the Six Realms and the various hells that await sinners. An otogizōshi such as Isozaki, which probably was written by a Buddhist priest and is translated here, was likely aimed at female audiences, to teach them the dangers of jealousy, excessive attachment, and the fate of women who do not abide by Buddhist laws. Many of the otogizōshi, which include “tales of spiritual awakening,” were written or recited orally to guide the audience to a higher moral path or to a monastic order. For example, the author of Little Atsumori (Ko-Atsumori) took an earlier narrative found in The Tale of the Heike (about the slaying of a young and cultivated Heike warrior/aristocrat by a Minamoto warrior) and transformed it into a kind of Buddhist parable.

Otogizōshi and Media

These border-crossing stories are often richly illustrated in a painted-scroll format that foreshadows today’s world of manga, anime, and science fiction. At the end of The Tale of the Fuji Cave (Fuji no hitoana sōshi), which is translated in this book, the protagonist, after his visit to various hells and the Pure Land, is asked to relate his experiences so that people can learn about what they cannot see. As this passage suggests, one of the key functions of Muromachi tales was to enable readers to experience what could not be directly accessed in everyday life. The images in the painted scrolls and illustrated books were a vital means in that process, functioning as a kind of virtual reality, and increasingly these tales came to portray other worlds, including those of anthropomorphized animals, plants, and monsters.

The otogizōshi represents a major turning point in the history of Japanese literature, bringing together many narrative types from the earlier traditions—court tales, military tales, anecdotal literature, and stories about the divine origins of shrines or temples (engi-mono). These various genres, most of which had existed independently of one another, intersected in the Muromachi period. The bundling effect is apparent in the wide assortment of subgenres of otogizōshi: tales of aristocrats, of warriors, of commoners, of Buddhist priests, and of relations with other species—to name only the most prominent.

There was also an unprecedented degree of interaction among different media and performance genres—fictional texts, painting, picture-telling (etoki), storytelling, preaching, and theater (such as kōwakamai and noh). For example, the interspecies tale Lady Tamamo (Tamamo no mae sōshi), which is translated here, focuses on a beautiful imperial consort who turns out to be a bewitching old fox and is hunted down and killed. The same story appears as a noh play, Sesshōseki (Killing Stone), and, as with Killing Stone, otogizōshi probably were the sources for many noh plays.

INTERACTING MEDIA

The otogizōshi, like many Muromachi genres, stands at the intersection of the book, the parlor, and the roadside. The book genres range from the court tale (monogatari) and the literary diary (nikki) to the scroll painting (emaki), the book with hand-painted illustrations (nara ehon), and various illustrated print genres in the Edo period. The parlor, by contrast, is highlighted by the screen painting (byōbu-e), the wall and sliding-door painting (fusuma-e), and later, in the medieval period, the hanging scroll (kakejiku). The culture of the roadside begins with itinerant storytellers, traveling preachers, and street performers, who often carried portable scroll paintings or hanging scrolls and who were frequently loosely associated with temples and shrines. In the late medieval period, the culture of the book and of the parlor, both of aristocratic origin, directly interacted with the culture of the roadside, which had more popular roots.

The increased presence of visual, oral, and corporeal media—specifically, the large rise in the use of scroll paintings and the spread of oral-performance genres—was a response to the needs of a broader audience, which expanded beyond aristocrats and priests to include elite warrior leaders, provincial daimyo families, wealthy townspeople, and even farmers. This new audience, unlike the educated aristocrats of previous eras, needed education; the otogizōshi became an important means of learning, providing both practical knowledge and moral education as well as delivering, particularly to women (who made up a large percentage of the audience), the essentials of cultural literacy (such as poetic composition), often with visual aids.

TEXT–PICTURE DYNAMICS

Most of the tales translated in Monsters, Animals, and Other Worlds appear as painted scrolls, and the best examples from the scroll paintings (and, in a few cases, printed illustrations) have been chosen to accompany the texts. The emaki is viewed not open fully, as in a museum exhibition, but between the hands of the viewer, who unrolls the scroll with the left hand while rolling it up with the right—a process that also creates a sense of suspense. The horizontal format is ideal for the narrative form; the eye moves from right to left, following the unfolding action and creating a sense of passing time. For example, in an image in Ōeyama ekotoba (Mount Ōe in Pictures and Words, late fourteenth century [Itsuō Art Museum]), a narrative emaki of the legend of Shuten Dōji, the drunken demon is shown lying asleep on the right and then being decapitated on the left, both in the same scene.

The first and most traditional emaki format, such as that found in most, if not all, extant versions of the scrolls of The Tale of Tawara Tōda (Tawara Tōda monogatari) and The Tale of the Mouse (Nezumi no sōshi [Harvard Art Museums]), is a sectional, horizontal scroll in which the text and the paintings alternate. A section of text is followed by a painting, allowing the viewer to understand the painting based on his or her knowledge of the text, and vice versa.

The second type of emaki, which became prominent in the otogizōshi genre, is sectional, with alternating text and paintings, but also has text embedded inside the paintings (see figure on pages 330–31). These so-called words in the painting (gachūshi) appear briefly in setsuwa scrolls of the Kamakura period (1185–1333), but they do not make a full appearance until the advent of illustrated otogizōshi. The “words in the painting” have various functions:

The dialogue inscribed in these paintings does not function simply to mirror the written text. The versions of The Tale of the Mouse in the Suntory Museum of Art, which is translated here, and the Spencer Collection in the New York Public Library, for example, have extensive dialogue among the mice that does not appear anywhere in the main text (see figure on page 281). The added dialogue and painted scenes often appear to have educational or humorous value. The kitchen painting in The Tale of the Mouse, for example, taught the viewer about cooking and preparing for a wedding; the painted scenes, which include the figure of the great tea master Sen no Rikyū, provide visual knowledge about various arts, from tea ceremony to noh theater, musical performance of The Tale of the Heike, and kyōgen (comic drama). The gachūshi also include a number of waka (classical Japanese poems), a staple of women’s education, that do not appear in the main text. The paintings thus created a space for play in which the artist could improvise and add elements outside the narrative.

The gachūshi in these otogizōshi often are written in spoken vernacular (as opposed to the classical Japanese of the story), which creates a sense of performative immediacy. As one scholar has indicated, the main text in the picture scroll Chigo ima mairi monogatari (The New Lady-in-Waiting Is a Chigo) uses the literary auxiliary verb haberi, which indicates politeness, while the same speech in the gachūshi uses the auxiliary verb sōrō, which is common in spoken Japanese.1 In other words, the same story is presented simultaneously from three perspectives: as narrative text, as visual representation, and as spoken drama.

The third type of scroll painting consists of paintings with only embedded text, or “words in the painting,” without alternating sections of text. A prominent example is Fukutomi zōshi (The King of Farts). The combination of painting and embedded dialogue rapidly moves the action forward like an illustrated film script.

In the fourth type of otogizōshi emaki (such as the Little Atsumori picture scroll in the Spencer Collection, which has no alternating text and paintings, and The Chrysanthemum Spirit [Kiku no sei monogatari] picture scroll in the collection of the Harvard Art Museums), the text is sprinkled with painted figures, objects, or parts of landscape, usually below or above the lines (see figure on page 302).

The fifth type of monogatari emaki contains no text at all—only paintings—as in the Hyakki yagyō emaki (Night Parade of a Hundred Demons) and Urashima myōjin engi emaki (Origins of the Urashima Deity, first half of the fourteenth century [Urashima Shrine]). Origins of the Urashima Deity, a horizontal scroll that depicts the story of the fisherman Urashima and his visit to the Dragon Palace as well as the activities of the shrine dedicated to the deity, is thought to be missing a separate text that was used for storytelling and preaching by picture-tellers (etoki) related to the shrine. A vertical hanging scroll (kakejiku; 168 cm [66 in.] × 140 cm [55 in.] [Ura Shrine, Kyoto]), with the same title and similar content, also exists. Separated into four horizontal panels, this hanging scroll allows the audience to see the entire painting at one time. In contrast to the small horizontal hand scrolls, which can be shared by only a handful of viewers, usually kneeling and leaning over the scrolls, the large emaki and the hanging scrolls can be seen by a larger number of people and were employed by picture-tellers, who narrated the stories depicted in the paintings using a feathered stick as a pointer. The etoki also enacted the speech of the figures in the paintings, much like the benshi (oral storyteller) did with early silent films. The picture-teller tradition survived in the form of the kami-shibai (literally, “paper drama”) practiced in the first half of the twentieth century, in which an itinerant storyteller used rectangular pictures on a portable screen.

We thus have two fundamental paradigms of reading/viewing/listening: one in which an audience views a painting (usually a large hanging scroll or a large horizontal scroll) while being told about the content (as in the etoki performance), and the other in which an audience reads or hears the text while viewing the painted scroll. The otogizōshi were closely linked to both of these practices.

In the late Muromachi period, otogizōshi also took the form of the hand-painted book, or nara ehon (“Nara picture books,” although the connection to the city of Nara is tenuous at best). In some nara ehon, the text appears inside or on top of the paintings, but generally speaking, like the narrative picture scrolls from which they are largely derived, the nara ehon alternate text and paintings, with the paintings occupying less space than the text. The nara ehon normally had one painting filling a whole page (or filling facing pages [see figure on page 238) for every six to ten pages of text. The picture books were constructed in three basic formats: the large vertical format (30 cm [12 in.] × 22 cm [8.6 in.]), the standard vertical format (23 cm [9 in.] × 17 cm [6.6 in.]), and the horizontal format (18 cm [7 in.] × 24 cm [9 in.]). The large vertical format, a kind of luxury book with color paintings, appeared from the late Muromachi to the early Edo period, and then again in the Kanbun era (1661–1673).

The typical nara ehon painting is in the style of the Tosa school, with open-roof perspective (fukinuki yatai), but the visual focus tends to shift to the figures and action rather than to the landscape, which the emaki excelled in. In a convention inherited from the emaki, the nara ehon paintings are almost always blocked off on the top and bottom by clouds (see figure on page 222), which became a highly decorative feature, and were often sprinkled with gold flake (similar to the gold decoration in Momoyama paintings). The nara ehon were bought or commissioned by either daimyo or wealthy urban commoners from illustrated-book stores (ezōshiya) in Kyoto, and the deluxe editions seem to have been sometimes commissioned by daimyo families as wedding gifts for their daughters.

In the early Edo period, with the rise of print culture, some otogizōshi took the form of tanrokubon (red-green books), with black-and-white printed line drawings enhanced with hand-daubed washes of color. Hand-painted nara ehon continued to be produced until at least the middle of the eighteenth century, but the tanrokubon allowed for greater reproduction and distribution and foreshadowed the printed, illustrated books of the mid-Edo period. Edo-period prose fiction can be divided into two fundamental types by their text–picture formats: (1) genres in which the text and picture are juxtaposed either horizontally or vertically (as in illustrated ko-jōruri playbooks, ukiyozōshi, hanashibon, dangibon, sharebon, and ninjōbon), and (2) genres in which the text is placed in the image or the image in the text (as in the broad genre of kusazōshi, which includes akahon, kurohon, aobon, kibyōshi, and gōkan). The illustrated otogizōshi and nara ehon provided the foundation for both of these book formats, and the use of the gachūshi foreshadowed the integration of text and dialogue in the kusazōshi genre as well as in modern manga.

Exploring Hells

Buddhist paintings of hell and the Pure Land, influenced by Ōjōyōshū (Essentials of Salvation, 985) by Genshin (942–1017), became extremely popular in the medieval period, particularly as a result of the spread of Pure Land Buddhism. These paintings played a crucial role in showing audiences the underworld (meido), where the spirits of the dead, during the forty-nine-day “interim time-space” (chūu), were judged by the Ten Kings of hell. Audiences looked at these paintings and were reminded to pray for their deceased family members and to think about their own futures. At temples and shrines and on the streets, itinerant performers used scroll paintings and portable hanging scrolls that illustrated the lives of Shakyamuni and various Buddhist saints as well as stories of miraculous occurrences of gods and buddhas.

Many illustrated otogizōshi, often written by Buddhist priests or commissioned by temples, had a similar function, showing readers worlds that they could not normally view. A good example is Chōhōji yomigaeri no sōshi (Back from the Dead at Chōhōji Temple, fifteenth–early sixteenth century), which depicts diverse aspects of hell in especially gruesome detail. Sometimes the Buddhist worlds, particularly that of the Land of the Dead (Yomi) and hell (jigoku), are relativized, are tempered, and even become a source of entertainment. In The Tale of the Fuji Cave, the warrior Nitta, in the year 1201, is sent down to the caves beneath Mount Fuji, where he meets a serpent (the god of Mount Fuji), visits the Six Realms, talks to King Enma, and then finally goes to the Pure Land. The story, which became very popular in the early Edo period, suggests that hell had become a place to visit on the way to paradise.

In The Palace of the Tengu, the young Yoshitsune, wishing to meet his father, Yoshitomo, in the Pure Land, travels beyond the human realm with the guidance of a tengu goblin (normally regarded as an enemy of Buddhism); he visits 136 different hells, as well as the realm of hungry ghosts and the ashura realm (a place of never-ending combat), before arriving at the Pure Land, where he discovers that his father has become the Cosmic Buddha (Dainichi Nyorai). In Yoshitsune jigoku yaburi (Yoshitsune’s Wreaking of Hell), an otogizōshi that appeared in the early Edo period, Yoshitsune and his retainers go even further by destroying the demons and occupying hell, suggesting that hell is no longer a place to be feared.

The Three Countries

Various foreign countries appear in court tales of the Heian period (794–1185), including Hashi, or Persia, during the Sassanian period (third–seventh centuries). In Utsuho monogatari (The Tale of the Hollow Tree, tenth century), for example, the protagonist Toshikage makes a visit to Hashi. However, in almost all Heian vernacular tales, the main foreign country is Tang China, which is the setting for such works as Hamamatsu chūnagon monogatari (The Tale of the Hamamatsu Middle Counselor, eleventh century) and Matsura no miya monogatari (The Tale of Matsura), both examples of late-Heian court fiction. This binary worldview of China and Japan expanded into a Three-Country (Sangoku) worldview of India, China, and Japan, which first appears in full form in Konjaku monogatari shū (Tales of Times Now Past, early twelfth century) and which became the topographic foundation for late-medieval discourse.

Buddhism celebrated India as the birthplace of Shakyamuni and the home of deities such as the Cosmic Buddha (Dainichi Nyorai). A number of the stories in this anthology take place in India. The Tale of the Clam (Hamaguri no sōshi), an interspecies Buddhist tale, is set in the Indian kingdom of Magadha, where the historical Buddha lived and taught for many years. The center of the Buddhist cosmology was Shumisen (Mount Sumeru), a tall mountain surrounded by four great landmasses, the southernmost of which was Nansenbu-shū (Senbu, also Nan’enbudai or Jambudvipa), where India, China, and Japan were located. In the large hanging scroll Gotenjiku-zu (Map of Five Regions of India, 1364; 170 cm [67 in.] × 166.5 cm [65.5 in.] [Hōryūji Temple, Nara]), India is divided into five regions—east, south, west, north, and central—while China exists in a small corner in the northeast and Japan appears as a small island in the sea. When viewed from India, China seems to be as small a country as Japan. Both existed on the “far edge” (hendo), on the east side of Nansenbushū. The islands of Japan are often described as resembling “scattered millet” (zokusan).

The Japanese view of the world had always come from China, which regarded itself as the Central Kingdom (Chūka), placing Japan in a low peripheral position. The introduction of India as the homeland of Buddhism, however, had the unexpected benefit of placing Japan and China in the position of equals. Part of the “three world” cosmology was the association of each of the three countries with a specific set of beliefs: Buddhism (India), Confucianism and Daoism (China), and Shinto (Japan). Even more important was the notion that all three worlds—Buddhist, Confucian and Daoist, and Shinto—were one at base. The belief in honji-suijaku (original ground and trace), according to which Indian Buddhist deities manifested themselves as native Japanese gods, and the idea of shinbutsu shūgō (the unity of Buddhist and Shinto gods) united India and Japan, even as Japan was connected to China, the center of Confucianism and Daoism. Japan and India thus coexisted in the same Buddhistic cosmology, with Shumisen at the center. The Buddhist notion of mappō (Latter Days of the Law) and the spatial notion of hendo (the far edge) placed Japan on the periphery, but as a result of honji-suijaku belief, Japan became bonded to the center.

Otogizōshi such as Kumano no honji (The Origins of the Kumano Deity), based on the “Avatars of Kumano” story in Shintōshū (The Collection of the Way of the Gods, ca. 1360);2 The Origins of Hashidate; and The Origins of the Suwa Deity take place in different parts of India and Japan. These tales lean heavily on the genre of honji-mono (origin tales), which describe in detail a Japanese deity’s earlier life as a human being in this world (often in India), dwelling on the suffering that motivated the protagonist to become a merciful, benevolent deity of Japan. The protagonist usually undergoes terrible experiences, having his or her mother and father killed, being torn away from a husband or wife, or being tortured by a jealous stepmother. Having understood human pain, the protagonist then emerges as a deity, vowing to save humans from similar distress. Popular narratives such as these brought India and Japan onto the same stage, spanning vast distances and time.

Other Worlds

The late medieval period also witnessed the expansion of “other worlds” (ikai). From the ancient period (to 784), the Japanese believed in Tokoyo (Everlasting Land), a realm of immortality somewhere in the sea, and in Hōrai (Penglai), a Chinese-derived, Daoist-inspired island of the immortals. There was also a belief in other worlds at the bottom of the sea, the most powerful and recurrent symbol of which was the Dragon Palace (Ryūgū), which appears from the ancient period in Nihon shoki (The Chronicles of Japan, 720) and Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters, 712) and blossoms in the late-medieval imagination. In The Tale of Tawara Tōda, the Dragon Palace is said to lie at the bottom of Lake Biwa and overflow with jewels.

In these otogizōshi, other worlds also frequently exist beneath the surface of the earth, much as they do in the legends, paintings, and proselytizing traditions of Mount Tateyama and other sacred sites.3 In The Tale of the Mouse, for example, a mouse dwells inside a wide burrow that closely resembles the Pure Land. In The Origins of the Suwa Deity, a vast other world appears underground, accessible through a deep hole. This place was sometimes associated with Yomi, the Land of the Dead, thus combining Buddhist and ancient Japanese cosmologies. Likewise, The Tale of the Fuji Cave describes a dangerous and mysterious cavern that links the human and non-human realms. A similar subterranean world appears in Mokuren no sōshi (The Tale of Mokuren).4 In short, the underground becomes an alternate imaginary space connected to our own world by dark caves and chasms.

From as early as the Heian period, the sky above the earth (tenkai) intrigued the Japanese cultural imagination, but in the Muromachi period, it became a vast highway that connected this world to other worlds. In The Tale of Amewakahiko (Amewakahiko sōshi, also Tanabata or Tanabata no honji), which appears in multiple painted-scroll versions and is translated here, a serpent demands that he be allowed to marry one of the daughters of a rich man. When the serpent’s head is chopped off, a handsome young man appears, and he and the daughter live happily until the man (Amewakahiko [Young Man of Heaven]) has to return to the sky. The lady climbs to the heavens in search of her husband, and she learns of his whereabouts from various stars, constellations, and other celestial bodies (see figure on page 170). In the end, the man and the woman are turned into stars that can meet only once a year, on the seventh day of the seventh month (Tanabata).

Many of these other worlds are marked by a four-seasons-in-four directions (shiki-shihō) garden, a symbol of utopian space and time. Japanese court poetry (waka) and Heian classical tales frequently revolve around the four seasons. In Muromachi tales, when the protagonist arrives at a utopian world, the four seasons appear simultaneously, in the four cardinal directions, indicating the transcendence of time. When the lady visits the underground residence of the mouse in many versions of The Tale of the Mouse, for example, she comes across a four-seasons-in-four-directions garden.

This explosion of other worlds can be attributed to a combination of factors: the continued growth of China in the popular imagination, the prominence of India as a new cultural topography, and the increasing popularity of Buddhist underworlds and hells. These other worlds existed primarily in the cultural imagination. India, for example, is depicted as if it were China, with residences that feature crossed tile floors and tile roofs (the visual code for “foreign”). While there was contact with the continent (such as the failed Mongol invasions of Japan in the thirteenth century and Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s aborted invasion of Korea in the sixteenth), the limited information about these foreign lands meant that there was no limit to the writer’s imagination when it came to describing them, leading to a vast and complex cosmology of other worlds.

Interspecies Affairs

Many of the stories translated in this book—The Tale of the Mouse, The Chrysanthemum Spirit, The Tale of Tamamizu, The Tale of a Wild Goose, The Stingfish, Lady Tamamo, The Tale of the Clam, The War of the Twelve Animals, and The Sparrow’s Buddhist Awakening—focus on anthropomorphized animals (mouse and fox), birds (goose and sparrow), plants (chrysanthemum), and creatures of the sea (stingfish and clam) who become involved with human beings, sometimes bearing their children and usually having to separate from their human partners. The proliferation of the spirits of plants and animals in Muromachi popular literature can be traced, at least in part, to the increasingly widespread Buddhist belief that trees, grasses, and earth are all inherently enlightened. Instead of simply regarding plants and animals as occupying lower tiers of existence, much as they do in early setsuwa anthologies such as Nihon ryōiki (Record of Miraculous Events in Japan, ca. 822), advocates of this new Buddhist view maintained that according to the Tendai doctrine of “original enlightenment,” plants and animals, like humans, were inherently imbued with the buddha-nature.

This idea overlapped with long-held indigenous folk beliefs in the spirits of trees, plants, and animals, many of which were locally worshipped or feared as gods (kami) and often served as intermediaries between the human and the spirit world. The capital-centered, waka-based, highly codified view of nature also transformed animals, birds, and plants into elegant figures, as in The Chrysanthemum Spirit and The Tale of a Wild Goose (Kari no sōshi). Similarly, continental beliefs in the ability of foxes to take human form, deceiving humans, are also evident in The Tale of Tamamizu (Tamamizu monogatari) and Lady Tamamo.

Farmers had to kill insects and other animals that harmed their rice fields, which led to the widespread ritual of praying for the spirits of slaughtered animals and insects. In order to eradicate insects that damaged the harvest, farm villagers lit pine torches and rang bells. This was followed by mushi-kuyō (offerings to the spirits of deceased insects). Similar offerings were made to whales, fish, boar, deer, and other hunted animals. Numerous Muromachi popular tales and noh plays reveal this fundamental conflict between the need to control nature—particularly the pressure to hunt, kill harmful animals, and clear forests for agriculture—and the desire to appease and worship nature, which was believed to be a realm filled with spirits. The sin of killing could be ameliorated, at least in part, by praying for the spirits of dead animals or by releasing captured animals, which are frequent motifs in early and medieval anecdotal literature. The awareness of the Buddhist sin of killing enhanced the sense of sympathy for the hunted animal or bird, an attitude evident in this anthology in The Tale of a Wild Goose. Following a prominent pattern in Buddhist tales, the killing of an animal results in religious awakening and conversion (hosshin), as we see in The Sparrow’s Buddhist Awakening (Suzume no hosshin).

In the medieval popular imagination, two worlds coexisted: this world of human beings and the other world of the dead, gods, buddhas, demons, and monsters. The natural realm, with its animal and plant life, was linked to the other world, which could not only bestow great fortune, protection, and long life (with animals and birds being bearers of gifts), but also bring plague, natural disasters, and death. In the military tales, brave warriors protect humans from demons and monsters who invade this world. In the interspecies stories, by contrast, humans make harmonious links to the other world through marriage to an animal, a bird, a sea creature, or even a plant (as in The Chrysanthemum Spirit). However, the interspecies marriage is inevitably doomed, with the spouses parting sorrowfully, a reflection of the belief that the two worlds ultimately have to exist separately.

The animals in these interspecies stories are often cute, act like human beings, and become objects of sympathy, empathy, and humor. These tales frequently function as literary parody or as satire on social conventions and the foibles of human beings. Jūnirui kassen, translated here as The War of the Twelve Animals, can be taken as a parody of a military chronicle such as The Tale of the Heike. The Stingfish (Okoze), which depicts the relationship between a mountain god and a remarkably unattractive fish, can be appreciated as a spoof on the conventions of the love romance. These stories could also serve a pedagogical function, as in The Tale of the Mouse, which provides lessons in poetry composition. The interspecies tales were the most heavily illustrated of the various subgenres of otogizōshi. The portrayal of animals—particularly such appealingly depicted animals as birds, turtles, and mice—was no doubt attractive to a wide range of audiences and constituted an important selling point, as do children’s books and folktales today.

Warriors, Monsters, and Peripheries

The cultural topography of Japan began to widen radically in the medieval period, resulting in three concentric circles. In the middle were the so-called Western Provinces (Saikoku), centered in Kyoto. On the eastern border were the “Eastern Provinces” (Azuma, present-day Kanto region), and on the western border lay southern Kyushu. (Azuma and southern Kyushu had been under the jurisdiction of the Ritsuryō state, established in the ancient period, but they were distant from the capital.) A second periphery emerged in the medieval period: the farthermost borders of Japan, marked by Sotogahama (Outside Beach) on the northern tip of Honshū and by Kikaigashima (Island of Demons) in a nebulous zone to the south of Kyushu. Even farther out, beyond the country’s borders, were Ezogashima (Island of the Ezo, present-day Hokkaido) to the north and Ryūkyū (Okinawa) to the south.

In otogizōshi, legendary warriors like Minamoto no Yorimitsu (Raikō; 948–1021) defended the inner circle (marked by mountains such as Ōeyama and Ibukiyama, which suggested the borders of the greater capital), while others like Minamoto no Yoshitsune (to the north) and Minamoto no Tametomo (1139–1170) (to the south) defended the second, outer circle. The third periphery appears in stories such as Yoshitsune’s Island-Hopping, which centers on Ezo. In contrast to earlier military stories, such as The Tale of the Heike, which were created soon after the wars described, these demon-quelling warrior narratives take place hundreds of years earlier, often in the mid-Heian period. At least two major types appear: those that depict figures such as Yoshitsune from the Genpei (Genji–Heike) War in the late twelfth century, and those that center on warriors from the ninth and tenth centuries, such as Fujiwara no Hidesato, Minamoto no Raikō, and Fujiwara no Toshihito, who engaged in conquering barbarians or rebels to the northeast. Yoshitsune fought in the Genpei War, but he differed from his counterparts in that he led the last and most crucial stage of his life in Michinoku (present-day Tōhoku region), which had been the location of the Chinjufu, the military headquarters for subjugating the northern barbarians.

Mythic histories of different warrior lineages also emerged. The Tale of Tawara Tōda, for example, fuses various legends associated with Fujiwara no Hidesato (tenth century), one of the founders of the Fujiwara line. Hidesato meets a beautiful woman—a manifestation of a great snake—who asks him to kill the centipede that is terrorizing the area around Lake Biwa. Hidesato also defeats Taira no Masakado (903–940), a powerful warrior rebel whose exploits are recorded in Shōmonki (940s?). Here the warrior hero does more than fight rival clans; he vanquishes a monster or demon who brings chaos to the land. The same is true of the Shuten Dōji stories—The Demon Shuten Dōji (Shuten Dōji) and The Demon of Ibuki (Ibuki Dōji)—the former of which focuses on Minamoto no Raikō and his retainers and implicitly celebrates the military power of the Seiwa Genji (a branch of the Minamoto to which the Kamakura, Ashikaga, and Tokugawa shoguns traced their origins) and their ability to eradicate any threat to the state. The word tsuchigumo (dirt spider) appears in The Chronicles of Japan and one or more fudoki (gazetteers) as a general term for rebels against the imperial court. In The Tale of the Dirt Spider (Tsuchigumo zōshi), which is translated here, the tsuchigumo myth emerges in a new form: as a legend about the demon-quelling warrior Minamoto no Raikō, who conquers the tsuchigumo and brings peace to the land.

The demons and other monsters vanquished by these warriors represent a variety of evils:

All these evils appear on one of the many borders of Japan, which were, in turn, linked topographically to “other worlds” (ikai), which could also be the source of treasures or power. The demon usually lives on the outskirts of the capital, deep in a mountain (as in The Demon Shuten Dōji), or on a distant island such as Hokkaido (as does the demon king in Yoshitsune’s Island-Hopping). This other world is often both a dangerous place and a utopian space. The residence of the demon king in Yoshitsune’s Island-Hopping, the home of the Dragon King under Lake Biwa in The Tale of Tawara Tōda, and the mountain hideout in Shuten Dōji are beautiful palatial residences, often depicted in Chinese style. As we see in a picture scroll of Shuten Dōji (sixteenth century [Suntory Museum of Art]) (in the Ibukiyama textual line), the monster lives in an opulent mansion with a four-seasons-in-four-directions garden. Demons were regarded as a part of the wilderness, with a stress on the baser parts of the body associated with eating and procreation. At the same time, they were only a single step away from the divine. Ritually, the triumph over the demon restores order to the state (exorcising danger) and reinvigorates the state (bringing treasures from the other world). The ferocious warrior, however, is usually able to do this only with the aid of the gods or buddhas, who are the higher protectors of the state.

These otogizōshi derive in part from the tradition of the Heian monogatari (court tales), with their focus on love rather than battle. Even when there is a fight, it tends to be a display of the martial arts (gei) rather than a physical conflict. Heian warrior leaders were simultaneously aristocrats, which gave them access to the “arts” (gei) that later warrior elites so admired and that often play a major role in these warrior stories. The narratives of the demon-quelling warrior thus combine warrior culture and court culture, as suggested by Yoshitsune’s prowess with the elegant flute, which helps him overcome the demon king of Hokkaido.

Last but not least, the tales of demon-vanquishing warriors had great entertainment value, particularly in visual and dramatic media, so that in the Edo period, these superhuman figures and their dramatic encounters with the Other continued to be popular in an age of peace. In the early eighteenth century, when Shibukawa Seiemon printed Otogi bunko (the box set of twenty-three Muromachi tales), The Demon Shuten Dōji was added, with illustrations, to the other non-military tales, such as Issun bōshi (The One-Inch Boy), Monokusa Tarō (Lazybones Tarō), and Urashima Tarō. At this point, the tale of Shuten Dōji had become a part of urban popular culture, was enjoyed as an entertaining and felicitous story, and had spread into theater and ukiyo-e warrior prints (musha-e). In other words, a legend appropriated by the ruling military clan in the late medieval and early Edo period had been absorbed by the mid-Edo period into popular culture. In the Edo period, the ferocious warriors of medieval fiction became the rough equivalents of the pop icons of comic book and film culture in modern America, similar to Superman, Batman, and Spiderman.

The Translations in and Organization of This Anthology

Almost all the texts translated in Monsters, Animals, and Other Worlds appear in multiple variants, often differing widely in detail. The variants that appear in this book were selected not just for their content but because of the illustrations or paintings that accompanied them and that played a major role in the reception of these tales. The two editors take full responsibility for the accuracy of the translations.

For the convenience of the reader who wants to browse, the translations have been divided into three broad categories (“Monsters, Warriors, and Journeys to Other Worlds”; “Buddhist Tales”; and “Interspecies Affairs”) that overlap to a great extent. The introduction to each translation provides historical context and indicates thematic interrelationships with other stories in the anthology.

HARUO SHIRANE

 

 

  1. Minobe Shigekatsu, “Otogizōshi hyōgen no shikumi,” in Chūsei denshō bungaku no shosō (Tokyo: Izumi Shoin, 1988), 214–15.

  2. Anne Commons, trans., “The Avatars of Kumano,” in Traditional Japanese Literature: An Anthology, Beginnings to 1600, ed. Haruo Shirane (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 887–900.

  3. Caroline Hirasawa, Hell-bent for Heaven in Tateyama Mandara: Painting and Religious Practice at a Japanese Mountain (Leiden: Brill, 2012).

  4. For a translation of Mokuren no sōshi, see Hank Glassman, “The Tale of Mokuren: A Translation of Mokuren-no-soshi,” Buddhist Literature 1, no. 1 (1999): 120–61.