Pathway to Japanese Literature

I

Twenty years ago—at a time when I was particularly prone to youthful sentimentality—the school I attended stood near Yasukuni Shrine.
Thus during the Shōkonsai Festival, I would often steal moments between commitments to come and go.
As remains true today, even then monkey shows were staged on the north side of that riding ground.
One time when I slipped inside, they happened to be performing "Kuzunoha's Child Parting."
The monkey handler chanted the scene's lyrical narration without particular melodic artistry, while the monkey playing Kuzunoha the fox gestured by glancing left and right.

“Look over there—nothing but mountains.
“Look here—nothing but mountains.”
I believe it was some such lines as that.
I still remember how that ghastly voice unique to monkey handlers evoked youthful sentimentality.
Shinodayama—a hill lying in the plain.
For those of us accustomed to seeing it, we came to understand for the first time that when spread through mountainous region after mountainous region, such validity would naturally arise.
Even speaking from personal experience, it remains an undeniable fact that since then, the background of the Shinoda Wife legend has come to resemble a composite image layered with twofold validity.
The entirety of modern knowledge concerning the Shinoda Wife has come to be constituted by the central section of Takeda Izumo’s Jōruri puppet play titled *Ashiya Dōman Ōuchi Kagami*.

Abe no Yasuna—who had driven his lover to death and gone mad—regained his sanity in Shinoda Forest.
An old fox, driven out from a hunt, came fleeing.
Yasuna rescued it.
When Kuzunohime, the sister of his deceased lover, came and the two were immersed in happiness, a man called Ishikawa Akuemon appeared and abducted the princess.
When Yasuna, in the depths of despair, was about to commit seppuku, the fox from before transformed into Lady Kuzunoha and stopped him.
Being unable to return to the capital, Yasuna went to the village of Abeno in Settsu Province, where the two lived as husband and wife.
In time, a child was born, and nothing eventful occurred until he was about five years old.
The child was named Dōjimaru.
Shinoda Shōji, Kuzunohime’s parent, having learned of Yasuna’s whereabouts, brought the real Kuzunoha and came rushing to marry her off.
When he arrived, Yasuna was away, and a woman who resembled his daughter was weaving cloth.
When Abe no Yasuna met him and heard his account, nothing but inexplicable matters abounded.
That she had become his current wife seemed exceedingly suspicious.
Having heard such words, Kuzunoha the fox wrote a poem on the shōji screen and fled away.
It was a famous poem—a farewell that seemed both definitive and unresolved.

If you long for me, come seek me out.
The hidden truth of Kuzunoha in Shinoda Forest of Izumi.

Somehow the Teniha does not align—combined with that fox’s handwriting commonly found in the world—it is indeed a song so characteristic of a fox.
Afterward, because Dōjimaru yearned so intensely, when Yasuna took him to Shinoda Forest, Kuzunoha emerged and revealed herself to the child—such is the plot.

The Fox Child’s Parting is said to be modeled after Chikamatsu’s *Yuriwaka Daijin Nomori Kagami*, but I believe it was Chikamatsu himself who was instead influenced by the Sekkyōbushi versions of the Shinoda Wife legend.
When speaking of works influenced by Chikamatsu, *Sanjūsangendō Munagi Yurai* (The Origins of the Ridgepole at Sanjūsangendō) would be examples.
Besides Izumo, somewhat earlier, Ki no Kaion had also handled the same subject matter and created the Jōruri play titled *Shinoda Mori Onna Uranai*.
This one does not seem to have had much influence.

The Shinoda Wife legend coalesced into fixed form with the emergence of *Ōuchi Kagami*, thereafter having all subsequent tellings grounded in this dramatized version of the legend.
All older iterations of the legend that had been transmitted through divergent forms were ultimately incorporated into a singular variant.
Needless to say, the legend’s fluidity showed no stagnation whatsoever, steadily expanding over time.
Moreover, tales bearing resemblances became assimilated precisely through their points of similarity.
This merging progressed with complete freedom, yet elements unrelated to their interests were gradually shed in such fashion, evolving into something richly multifaceted.

Legends that had been flowing in such fluid transformation would, upon incorporating certain dramatizations at some point and coalescing into plays or novels, come to be regarded as those legends' definitive texts.
Moreover, people's knowledge concerning the legends had its boundaries delimited.
The more such works circulated through society, the more their influence came to define the legends themselves.
When we survey Japan's lengthy history of fiction, we find it commonplace that creative works which once fixed legends gradually crumbled and became legend through their own transformation.

When we examine the creative work immediately preceding *Ōuchi Kagami*, we find it in the authorized text of Kakudayū-bushi.
The title was *Shinoda Wife*.
However, even this work had yet another preceding archetype. Though the whereabouts of its authorized text remain unknown, there appears to have been a Sekkyōbushi authorized text by the same title: *Shinoda Wife*.
The designation “Shinoda Wife” could be interpreted either as a wife residing in Shinoda or as a wife who came from Shinoda.
Summarizing the plot of Kakudayū-bushi’s version—unlike in *Ōuchi Kagami*, where characters like Shinoda Shōji appear—the cause of the catastrophe was entirely natural, retaining a form closer to the original legend.

One day, as Kuzunoha stood on the veranda looking out at the garden—it being autumn—chrysanthemums were in bloom.
These were wild chrysanthemums—a flower that foxes particularly favored.
As she gazed, the fox’s true nature naturally emerged, and her face transformed into that of a fox.
The child Dōjimaru, who had been sleeping nearby, woke up and began crying in fear upon seeing his mother had turned into a fox; so Kuzunoha wrote the poem “If you long for me...” on the shōji screen and departed.
As the child yearned for her, Yasuna followed after her, and Kuzunoha showed herself, it is said.
In this part, things are generally the same, but the sections before and after are considerably altered.
It may have sounded as if Kaion and Izumo had reworked Kakudayū-bushi into an easier form, but in truth, the influence of Sekkyōbushi must have been direct.

Although its content underwent several transformations, within Sekkyōbushi tradition practitioners would designate the principal narratives of each era as the "Five Sekkyō," counting them as five.
When viewed from how the Shinoda Wife was always incorporated into them, this Jōruri must have held significance even within Sekkyōbushi.
Should we then regard what predates Sekkyōbushi as belonging to legend's domain?
In essence, I believe the renowned Sekkyōbushi likely possessed two types of authorized texts—old and new.
It was likely these Sekkyō authorized texts that emerged from periods when old melodies were celebrated—texts published as printed editions after incorporating somewhat complex dramatizations.

II

Now, up to this point we had dealt with the realm of books—one might consider that knowledge from texts could be directly incorporated into legends—but from here onward careful consideration was required.
In the realm of legend one could not definitively state which book had served as the urtext.
The matters contained in these very books might have exerted influence even before being recorded.
Regarding these regional legends one could only say they seemed to possess relatively old seeds quite similar to this one.
As one gradually explored the value of those indistinct elements a hypothesis began to take shape—one that suggested an extremely small yet grand structure underlying our ancestors' lives.

We began by sorting through the peripheral details.
Overall, the type of story where two individuals taking the form of a wife appeared simultaneously, causing the husband to become bewildered, had existed since ancient times.
A striking example existed in *Konjaku Monogatari*: one tale told of a fox who saw another man’s wife standing by the roadside, assumed her form, and attempted to deceive her husband; another recounted how a fox transformed into a wet nurse, leading Masamichi Chūjō to become perplexed when judging a dispute between this imposter and the real wet nurse over a child—stories so alike they might be called mirror images, presented side by side.
Drawing gradually from that lineage of legends to become Chikamatsu’s *Twin Sumidagawa*, as a theatrical work it continued far into *Sumidagawa Zokutatoi*.
One of the pair consisted of the spirits of Nowaki-hime and Hōkaibō intertwined.
Izumo adopted only the plot devices through imitation, utilizing them up to two instances in *Ōuchi Kagami*.
Not only in the Abe no Mura scene but also in Shinoda Forest, three men appeared carrying Akuemon’s palanquin, leading to the famous “Am I me? [*ware ga ore ka*]” exchange.
It became a question-and-answer of "Am I me?"

It was not a story of two wives, but there existed a similar tale.
Likely created in Edo’s formative years, it appeared posthumously in Suzuki Shōsan’s *Tale of Cause and Effect*—a work linked to Izumo—narrating how a merchant from Mogami in Dewa Province took a Kyoto woman as his wife while working in the capital, only to have her follow him when he returned home on business.
The merchant expelled his Mogami wife and brought the Kyoto wife into his household to bear his child.
Later, when the man traveled again to the capital and stopped at a regular inn, the innkeeper said, “I grieve to tell you that the woman who accompanied you has fallen ill and died.”
“No—such a thing cannot be!”
With this account—since she had supposedly come to Mogami and even borne a child—the innkeeper informed the woman’s father, who then journeyed down to Mogami to meet his daughter.
Yet even when they attempted to arrange a meeting at the Mogami residence, the wife refused to appear.
When they entered the wife’s chamber and looked inside, the wooden memorial tablet (sotoba) that the father had erected in Kyoto stood there.
They called it a spiritual child—said to have been born from the sotoba—as witnessed by all.
Since this textual lineage evolved into *Ehon Shūshōgi* and then *Ugetsu Monogatari*, Ueda Akinari undoubtedly drew inspiration here for *Asaji ga Yado* (within *Ugetsu Monogatari*)—though only the sotoba episode bears resemblance, while the remainder directly copies *Konjaku Monogatari*’s tale of a low-ranking samurai who abandoned his Kyoto wife to serve a provincial official, then returned to the capital five years later to lie with her corpse.
The father who had gone to Mogami bore an uncanny resemblance to Shinoda Shōji, did he not?

If there was even a slight resemblance, people would happily conclude that this legend originated from a story in this book or that book, readily settling matters by attributing it to some textual source.
However, such conclusions amount to nothing more than arguments decided by those eager to decide; the actual lineage cannot be so plainly understood.
Regarding instances where a wife’s father arrives and her true identity risks exposure—it would be safer to first consider these as mere coincidental resemblances between unrelated individuals.
Yet to claim that Izumo never saw a manuscript copy of *Tale of Cause and Effect*—given his notorious habit of voracious reading—I believe even Izumo himself could never have made such an assertion.
The most plausible interpretation remains that since this was an era still permeated by the grim atmosphere inherited from Muromachi times, such elements—even if not directly from *Tale of Cause and Effect*—must be viewed as having been abundantly infused through both oral tradition and visual culture.

That being said, the narrative pattern where a child's innocent astonishment leads to a loving mother's downfall is undoubtedly older and uncontrived.

III

Did foxes other than Kuzunoha have absolutely no interaction with our ancestors?
Let us begin our investigation from this perspective.
Speaking again of dramatic works, Kawatake Mokuami’s play *The Fox-Woman Inari on a Moonlit Night* wove together the legend of Onnabakehara—located along the Mito Highway near Ushiku Marsh—though its plot construction remained overly constrained by *Ōuchi Kagami*.
This incident was transmitted as having occurred after Kuzunoha became consolidated into the Gidayū authorized texts.
At the very least, it was believed by people of the late Tokugawa period to be a true story that had occurred in the very recent past.

In the factual records, Chūshichi—a peasant from a certain village in Hitachi Inashiki District—on his way back from Edo, passed through Onnabakehara and encountered a woman.
He brought the woman home and made her his wife, whereupon she bore two boys and one girl.
One day, while nursing her child and sleeping, her tail emerged.
Because the child made a commotion, she had no choice but to leave behind a poem and flee.

To dismiss this act—leaving behind a final lyric poem as a memento by one who lived a life close to humans—as merely a manifestation of our national psychology cannot be explained through simplistic psychological reasoning.
Even those with non-human qualities left poems behind.

Regarding Onnabakehara, there are those engaged in another dispute over its main lineage.
Kakuzaeimon of Kuriyama in Hitachi Province (Shokusan refers to him as Daitoku), after taking in a woman who had been traveling until dusk (Shokusan calls her "the woman he encountered"), lived with her as husband and wife. During this time, she revealed her true form through the same sequence of events, abandoned the child, and fled back.
This incident too was recorded as one where she left behind a poem.
Here, they do not say 'Onnabakehara,'

If Midoriko asks after my traces, answer that I lie weeping in Unabakagahara Plain.

The poem had woven the plain's name into itself.
Shokusanjin wrote that successive masters of that house possessed elongated faces and tapered mouths across generations.
By the time this tale came to be recorded, while the place name had shifted to Onnabakehara, the poem alone appeared preserved in its ancient form.
Why would oral tales passed whispering among peasants require tanka insertions?
One may reason this served to demonstrate their existence within realms far transcending mere storytellers.

In *Tōen Shōsetsu* (Rabbit Garden Stories), which recorded discussion meetings held by Kyokutei Bakin and his associates, there appears an account from neighboring Shimōsa Province about children of foxes—moreover, a written record based on oral testimony from a person who claimed to be a genuine fox descendant.
Mine, the mother of Yorobei of Yorozuya in Edo’s Shitaya Chōjamachi, was the daughter of someone from Magohachimon’s household in Shimōsa Akabusshō Village.
Magohachimon from six generations prior, on his way back from Edo, met a woman in a certain plain and brought her home, whereupon his mother took a liking to her diligence and made her his bride.
After giving birth to a child, while nursing, her tail became visible.
Because the child cried and made a fuss, the woman fled somewhere.
When they searched thoroughly, on the small hill beyond, they found child’s toys—a clay pipe and a clay teakettle—left there.
They concluded she must still be nearby, but when this child came of age and succeeded Magohachimon, the locals called him “Old Fox Grandpa.”
Later, he took religious vows and embarked on a pilgrimage around the provinces, but it was said he never returned.
Mine had gone to that house in her childhood, and there was an instance where she saw the toys left by her fox mother.
This instance had already omitted the poem.
Bringing clay toys to the child and leaving them behind—one might call this modern.
Rather than leaving some half-hearted poem, does not the pathos seep deeper into one’s very being?
These three stories, owing to the close geographical proximity of their settings, largely adhered to the same narrative structure.

When the story progressed this far, a certain reverence began to show on your faces—you who initially had worn expressions that seemed to say, “Such foolish matters.” One could surmise you had perhaps begun to consider that such facts might have existed—there would likely be no objection. Starting with “Old Fox Grandpa,” while neither version of the Onnabakehara legend particularly states the child was intelligent, children born of fox mothers are generally rather clever. However, just because they are fox children does not mean one can conclude they inherit their maternal cunning—another legend still awaits hereafter.

In rural living, wisdom was not questioned.
In legends of rural households formed through accumulated ordinary lives, there existed not the slightest need for heroes or prodigies to appear.
For that household at least, it must have sufficed if they could explain that blood other than that of common humans had mingled in their lineage since ancestral times.
Villagers seemingly found it more expedient to normalize all aspects of life—even this tale appeared to have been transmitted in solemn form until not long ago.
A child born between a peasant from Nemoto Village in Inashiki District and a fox served the Okami family of Kawachi Manor under the name Kuribayashi Shimotsukami Yoshinaga—a man excelling in wisdom and strategy while surpassing others in courage and strength.
Though one might doubt its claimed origin during the Tenshō era, this story may still be trusted as preserving an older form than the preceding three accounts.

IV

To provide another example of similar thinking, the form in which the renowned Monogusatarō was transmitted in Edo-period Shinano became an utterly commonplace one.
The protagonist who appeared in the Muromachi-period chapbook *Monogusatarō no Sōshi* with the opening line "Though this is a matter of the middle past" became in legend a figure of the Edo period.
Monogusatarō is a honji-mono (Deity Incarnation Tale) of Hotaka Shrine, located near Hotaka Station on what might more appropriately be called the Japan Alps Mountain Railway—the Shinano Railway.
Therefore, this tale too could be considered to have taken root in the region northwest of Matsumoto City.
In other words, it was a commonplace version of Monogusatarō’s success story.

A man called Monogusatarō was working in his rice field one day when an unfamiliar woman came to help.
Thinking that such a hard worker would make a good wife, he brought her into his household.
She worked extremely well.
After giving birth to a child, while nursing her child and dozing, she had let her tail show.
Monogusatarō—now her husband—who had returned from elsewhere, discovered this.
This was something he should never have seen.
But feigning ignorance, he went out once more to the front, then returned this time with clattering footsteps, wearing an innocent face.

When day broke, the child began to fuss.
The mother had hidden herself.
Though she had said she would stay until weaning out of compassion for the pitiful child, in the end she never returned.
In exchange, it was said that household gradually prospered and became wealthy.

Even considering how unclear the reason for calling this person “Monogusatarō” remains, it likely stemmed from rural people’s indolence toward such matters—merely grafting onto an old tale’s “certain person” the name of that region’s most eminent success story.
This appears to be a case where tales of noble princesses aiding mountain folk’s social advancement—charcoal burners and potato diggers—became interwoven with narratives of fox-descended households.
The Matsumoto Plain area, being home to long-lived foxes like Genbanojo of old, abounds in fox tales of every variety.

At the foot of Hōfukuji Pass, Sakai in Chiisagata District was the stronghold of the Urano clan.
The daughter of Urano Danjō Naomune (alternatively described as Masatada’s daughter and Nagatoki’s wife) married into the Ogasawara family and gave birth to Nagatoki.
The birth mother of this lady was also a fox.
In the Urano clan, it was said that from that time onward, all members came to have four nipples.
The Ogasawara lady and her children bore no such reputation, yet the fox alone persisted in haunting the family.
After the Ogasawara family was transferred to Buzen Kokura domain, the fox abruptly manifested itself.
The incident known as the Ogasawara Disturbance—which migrated from lending-library tales to theatrical plays and still surfaces occasionally today, centering on Ogasawara Hayato—has roots stretching far into the past.
Nagatoki was an essential figure for the Ogasawara family.

There is a legend that Gamō Ujisato was also a child of a fox.
It is a story found in what is denounced as a forged text called the *Gengen Bukkan*; at least when the *Gengen Bukkan* was produced, it can be believed that such a legend existed in some written work or folk tradition.

The wife of Gamō Ujisada of Hino in Ōmi Province suddenly ran away.
In truth, it is said that a fox—which had devoured the real wife three years prior—installed itself as her replacement and gave birth to Tadashirō (Ujisato’s childhood name).
Thus, since Ujisato was a fox’s child, one can understand the sentiment of those who saw that he possessed outstanding qualities.
As for the Gamō family, no physical characteristics attributed to being fox-born appear to have been passed down.

Having come this far, through the forged text—said to have been created by Abe no Seimei (though it already existed in the early Edo period)—the *Fukibinaidenshō*, Kuzunoha’s story begins to take on clearer features.
To demonstrate how unappealing this haste-prizing attitude is, let us tentatively construct a conclusion.

This is a renowned tale that has been treated as the sole prototype of Kuzunoha’s story, yet it appears this narrative had already coalesced by at least the Muromachi period—long before Edo.
Seimei’s mother was not human.
Having transformed into a fox spirit, she became a courtesan wandering through various provinces; during her travels, she reached Nekojima, where a certain person took her in and with whom she lived for three years.
During that time, she bore a child and left behind that poem before departing.
The child grew to adulthood and became an onmyōji.
When summoned to the capital, yearning for his mother, he journeyed to Shinoda Shrine in Izumi Province to worship. There, an aged fox appeared.
This was said to be the true form of Seimei’s mother.

If one were to construct a rational argument, it would posit that since she was a wandering woman incapable of integrating with human society, people saw her as a beast—transforming into a fox and departing. Especially since there still exists a village near Shinoda Shrine that had been isolated from society, people might say things like, “She must have been a woman from that place.” Such trivial knowledge too may in later ages become the legend of that village. Even if we accept that this account gave birth to the authorized text of *Kakutayū-bushi* and developed into Takemoto-za’s authorized text—thereby providing a basic explanation—it would be deeply regrettable if this alone were considered to have exhaustively explained the matter.

V

The fact that the authors of works like *Ōuchi Kagami* and *Shinoda Wife* are not thought to have merely embellished these narrative seeds suggests that the matter contains various elements requiring deeper consideration.
For instance, why have the names Dōji or Dōjimaru been bestowed upon Kuzunoha’s child?
In the Fukibinaidenshō, this point remains unaddressed.

There may indeed be conscious facts at play, but for the most part, they unconsciously drew out various memories—containing those that occasionally resurface in an individual’s heart—in their construction.
In the same vein as *The Picture Book of Monogusatarō*, when examining what is called *The Fox Picture Book* contained within so-called storybook picture books, we find that when a certain archbishop was at home, someone arrived with a palanquin to fetch him.
When he boarded it, he entered a splendid house.
The archbishop formed a deep bond with the mistress of that household.
After living there for some time, one day two or three young monks came forth brandishing their staffs.
When they saw this, the women made a great commotion and scattered in flight.
When he suddenly awoke, he found himself sleeping beneath the veranda of a temple.
It was a tale of mistaking torn rush matting for tatami—the so-called firsthand accounts of farmers bewitched by foxes still lingering in our ears, presented exactly as they were.
The tales we have heard generally feature foxes of rather simple nature; save for those notorious ones known for their deep resentment, most required no Buddhist divine intervention—a mere thump on the back sufficed to make them reveal themselves.
In this regard, it is thought to show an era when foxes had ceased to play a principal role in sorcery.
This is considered a matter that subsequent narratives will address.

Works thought to be the original illustrations for those very storybook picture books exist from as early as the Heian period.
This was something heard when Miyoshi Kiyoyuki served as governor of Bizen.
Yet it was written as though personally familiar with the man himself.
Around the time when Bizen Kome no Kaya Yoshifuji had grown despondent after his wife abandoned him, a woman came bearing a letter tied to a chrysanthemum flower.
It stated that a woman of high status cherished Yoshifuji.
Yoshifuji began visiting her residence, eventually leaving his home to live at her house for three years.
During that time, a child was conceived.
Yoshifuji even contemplated disinheriting his previous wife's child to make this child his heir.
One day, a monk appeared wielding a staff and struck Yoshifuji's back.
The moment the woman saw this, she fled.
Yoshifuji had been beneath his own storehouse floor—a space where no ordinary person could crawl.
The woman was naturally a fox.
Yoshifuji crawled out deathly pale.
After Yoshifuji vanished, his family raised an uproar and were saved through the spiritual merit of summoning a monk to perform prayers.

Having come this far, the connection to Kuzunoha had grown considerably distant; yet the foxes' human relationships must have become far more intricate. Even when examining the "national sins" enumerated in the Ōharae purification ritual's incantations, one could infer that among our ancestors there existed—to their shame—instances of employing various animals as objects of carnal desire. However, violating a beast as wary as a fox did not seem plausible. While tales of sexual relations with wild boars appearing in the Konjaku Monogatari might paradoxically be explained by boars having been domesticated into pigs, such a notion remained utterly inconceivable for creatures like foxes. Therefore, I believe all romantic tales involving descendants of beasts or beast transformations must be considered by severing them entirely from human sexual relations.

The story of Yoshifuji appears in the *Konjaku Monogatari* as well, so one might think *The Fox Picture Book* was merely a direct transcription of it—but making the deceived party a monk does not align with expectations.
As for its origins—wherever they may lie—I believe the authors took folk tales circulating among the people and wrote them with slight embellishment.

The relationship between foxes and humans can be traced back even further.
Though created during Emperor Saga’s reign at the dawn of the Heian period, its content largely retains the atmosphere of the Nara era. Within the *Nihon Ryōiki*—which preserves legends predating Nara—lies a recorded tale concerning the Kitsune clan (also called Mino Fox) of Mino Province.
During Emperor Kinmei’s reign, an ancestral man of that household encountered a beautiful woman during his travels, brought her home, and made her his wife.
This woman bore a child.
Almost simultaneously with this birth, the family dog also whelped.
The following spring, as the wife walked through the garden, one of the dog’s pups bit her.
Startled beyond measure, she reverted to her true form, scaled the fence, and tried to flee the house.
When her husband—lamenting their parting—said, “Come sleep with me nightly hereafter,” she agreed to visit each night.
Thus it came to pass that both the child came to be named “Fox,” and even that beast became known by that name.
Not only did this child surpass humans in strength, but among his fourth-generation descendants there appeared a woman who could run with extraordinary swiftness and possessed formidable power.

If we trace back as far as this "Kitsune clan," we can now outline the contours of interactions between foxes and humans in Japan.

VI

Japanese foxes were spoken of with a gentle impression in antiquity and the early modern period, but I imagine their having become fearsome and deeply resentful entities from the Heian period onward for so long stemmed from being employed as objects in Dakini esoteric rituals. Now, among Japan’s animals, the one creature that could rival foxes in this regard would first and foremost be snakes. Interactions with snakes appear frequently in ancient contexts, while relations with foxes seem to have proliferated in relatively recent times.

The stories famous for romances with snakes are those involving the Miwa deity of Yamato and generally take two main forms.
It would come at night but never reveal its form.
In one version, since they could not discern where the man came from, the daughter placed a needle in his garment; when she did so, he went out through the window and was said to have entered Mount Miwa. In another variant, when Momoso-hime entreated the man to reveal his form, he replied that he would enter her comb box the following day.
When she opened the box and looked inside, she let out a cry of surprise at finding a snake.
Then, it is said that he declared, "You have shamed me," and departed.
Momoso-hime was in fact a shrine maiden of imperial lineage.
A deity had visited her.
In earlier versions there is no mention of snakes, but it remains a fact that the Miwa deity was conceived as having a serpent form.

Within this lineage of tales, the legend of the Ogata clan in Kyushu warrants particular attention due to their family’s origins as Ōmiwata and their ancestral connection to Miwa Shrine (Ōmiwa Shrine).
The Ogata clan’s ancestor was a snake.
To ascertain where the man who visited her lived, she inserted a needle threaded with silk into his collar; when she followed the thread the next morning, it ended at Ubogatake’s cave.
From within came a terrible moaning voice—the needle had pierced his neck. “I am going to die now. However, since the child dwells within you, raise it,” he said.
When she entreated, “Please show yourself just once,” a large snake thrust its head out from within.
They called a person who was his grandson “Akagari Daita,” and it is said that his skin split like scales.
From this, it is said that all those who become heads of the Ogata clan grow scales on their backs.
Throughout Japan, there seem to be quite a few families that consider scales or double teeth as clan characteristics.
This is one and the same as the previously mentioned breast characteristic of the Urano clan.

The Miwa Deity, though regarded as male in ancient times, came to be considered female from the medieval period onward.
This belief appears in Noh plays like *Miwa*, but seems to have been held since far earlier times; by at least the end of the Heian period, it became clearly evident.
In Toshiyori’s *Mumyōshō*, the Miwa Deity was the wife of the Sumiyoshi Deity but, having been abandoned by him, composed a poem and presented it to the Sumiyoshi Deity.
That poem reads:

“If you long for me, come visit.
At the foot of god-dwelling Miwa Mountain—
the gate where cedars stand.”

It states as follows:
This corresponds to the *Kokinshū*’s

“My hermitage lies at Miwa Mountain’s foot.
If you long for me, come visit.
the gate where cedars stand”

—these fragments being nothing more than a distorted version of the original poem.

However, Kenshō Hōkyō’s *Kenchū Mikkan* transmits the same verse within this narrative:
In Ise Province’s Amagi District lived a hunter.
One night while waiting for deer in the mountains, no deer came—instead appeared a creature with large eyes glinting in the dark.
When the hunter shot an arrow, it fled.
Tracking its path led him to an old mound’s cavity where it seemed to have entered.

Outside the hole stood a shrine maiden who declared: “That is a supernatural creature.”
“I was captured by that being and brought here from Yamato,” she continued.
“Burn it to death,” she implored.

So he threw brushwood into the hole and burned the supernatural creature to death.
That mound came to be called Nonaka-zuka.
The shrine maiden became husband and wife with the hunter and even bore a child.
After some time passed, she vanished.
While the hunter grieved, the child who yearned for his mother also disappeared without trace.
Guided by the poem fragment—“At Miwa Mountain’s foot, the gate where cedars stand”—left behind by the shrine maiden, the hunter journeyed to Yamato to seek answers. As he worshiped at Miwa Shrine, the figures of his wife and child emerged from the sanctuary.
Afterward, the hunter too became a god.
This became the origin story explaining why people from Amagi make special efforts to participate in the Miwa Festival—a tradition passed down through generations.
The term “divine woman” here does not denote a goddess but likely refers to a shrine maiden.

This story takes but one turn to become the Hagoromo Legend.
In mainland Hagoromo legends, the celestial maiden's child remains unaddressed, yet in Okinawa, children assume crucial roles.
The origin tale of Nariamizu Utaki—a sacred site on Miyako Island—tells of a serpent who visited a woman, sired three daughters with her, then revealed his lineage before departing.
When brought to Nariamizu three years later as promised and confronted by their father—the great serpent—the mother abandoned her children and fled. Unperturbed, each child climbed upon his head, waist, and tail before plunging with him into the sacred utaki.
Not only does this mirror the tale of the Miwa deity and her child becoming gods, but it even incorporates the motif of tracing a man's dwelling using a threaded needle.

A man named Mekaru-ko hid the "flying robe" of a celestial maiden while she was bathing, took her back to make her his wife at his lodging, and had her bear two children.
One day, when the mother celestial maiden was listening, the older sister sang a lullaby to soothe her younger brother: “Don’t cry, don’t cry.
If you don’t cry, I’ll give you Mother’s flying robe.
Hearing [her] sing innocently, “The flying robe is hidden beneath the elevated storehouse,” [the mother celestial maiden] discerned its whereabouts, donned it, and ascended to heaven, it is said.

The fact that a child's innocent act leads parents to ruin runs through all the fox tales mentioned thus far.
The secret of ancient communal life had to be guarded with particular strictness from children.
This was because informing those who had not undergone the coming-of-age ceremony about the primary principles of communal life risked leakage, and bitter experiences from such occurrences had been repeatedly accumulated.
Another factor was the belief that divine will manifested through innocent children.
It appears the combination of these two elements formed the foundation for legends of this type.

VII

Regarding the role children play in uncovering the secret lying between father and mother, I shall now boldly present a more conjectural perspective.
When marriages occurred between villages possessing vastly different living conditions—or at minimum, between villages that mutually perceived one another as such—there must have frequently arisen situations where children were in fact compelled to serve as unwitting spies.

However, on the other hand, there are also cases where secrets separately held by husband and wife become harmonized through their child.
This was one path through which social consciousness expanded.
Even before the child’s revelation, the cause behind such marriages inevitably meeting ruin lay in the impressions of former lifestyles concealed within each tale.
This lay in the secret lifestyle that the mother had brought from the village of a different tribe.

In discussing Okinawan narratives, let me add another point: throughout the Sakishima region (Yaeyama and Miyako Islands), it was common for nearly every household to observe at least one dietary prohibition—such as a specific fish forbidden to that clan or a particular beast prohibited to this lineage group—with each restriction limited to certain family lines.
For example, strict prohibitions were maintained against creatures such as sharks, sea turtles, tuna, dugongs, dogs, and Erabu eels.
And they gave as reasons that their ancestors had been saved by those animals or that they were the ancestors themselves.

Among those who regard animals as ancestors, the most prominent examples are the Yaeyama people who claim to be descendants of bats and the Miyako people who proclaim themselves descendants of black dogs.
The people of these two islands traded such insults with one another.
Therefore, in these islands, not only did households have cherished animals, but there were also creatures of no small significance to the islands themselves.

Viewed broadly, a village becomes an island; seen on a smaller scale, it becomes households and a clan. In other words, one may consider that there existed animals which shaped the clan's livelihood and held their trust. On Tsuken Island (Nakagami District), they called the island's June festival "Ufuana no Ugan," during which they ritually slaughtered approaching dugongs to offer at the utaki shrines. The surplus meat and broth were distributed as shares among the island's men and women to consume. People from beyond the island claimed there existed a sacred mountain called Jugon Utaki within it where this mermaid-like creature was enshrined, but islanders would invariably deny this with strained expressions when asked. They maintained that in former times they had used sea turtles rather than dugongs. However, while it was true they now employed sharks instead of dugongs since the latter no longer approached, one could not accept that sea turtles—which remained plentiful—had been substituted for creatures that ceased to come. In any event, it stood evident that they cherished particular sentiments toward this marine being.

Furthermore, in a certain land near what might be called "this island," there existed terms—majishieeka and butsubutsueeka—that expressed the depth or shallowness of blood relations.
Eeeka referred to relatives; majishi to red meat; butsubutsu to the white part—that is, the fatty tissue.
They explained that close relatives ate the red flesh of the deceased, while distant relatives ate the white flesh.

What becomes apparent when connecting these two narratives—the idea of preserving a deceased’s life within their kin’s bodies, and the tradition of gods and villagers jointly consuming sacrificial offerings—is as follows.

Even on Tsuken Island, which does not speak of animal ancestors, it seems they once held a special affinity for dugongs.
Gradually, this developed into a sense of kinship with marine creatures—ancestors retaining their original form after diverging from a single progenitor—and thus during ancestral deity festivals, they likely sacrificed the aforementioned dugongs as offerings for communal consumption by gods and villagers alike.

Speaking of which, even on Miyako Island—slandered as descendants of black dogs—there were rumors that, as Yaeyama people would tell it, a Dog Utaki existed where they revered it as an ancestral deity.

Such facts and ways of thinking may not actually have been practiced on the islands themselves. But at the very least, within the perspectives of those other islands' and regions' inhabitants who spread such rumors, the roots from which they originated were rather present in the hearts of those very people themselves. They did nothing more than project their considerations onto the ancient life of each of their own villages. One need not view this as a direct vestige of *toute mizumu*. However, at the outset of this discussion, let us briefly touch upon this aspect as well.

VIII

Indeed, it seems the truest view is to regard the Okinawan islands as remnants left along the migration path of what formed the core of the Japanese people.
A great many elements of ancient life that once existed in mainland Japan are preserved in the Ryukyu Islands.
If so, one cannot dismiss the possibility that the shadow of folk traditions found in these southern islands had once also fallen across the lives of our ancestors.

Ryukyu women still carry incense burners when embarking on long journeys or weddings.
The incense burner represents a deity.
In most cases, they are considered ancestral deities of such considerable antiquity that they are transferred from the Buddhist altar to the household shrine in the original home.
However, the incense burner carried by this woman appears to hold a significantly different meaning.

A woman’s incense burner was passed down from her mother.
The incense burners of ancestral deities called root deities remained solely in the main household at the root residence; they were not permitted to arbitrarily increase their number or be carried about.
This incense burner constituted a deity worshipped exclusively by women.
Even men—including children and husbands—were prohibited from worshipping it or receiving its offerings.
In Okinawa Main Island, where the significance had gradually been forgotten—with some people considering it equivalent to casually removing a mortuary tablet from a Buddhist altar—the form of faith surrounding this incense burner still resisted full modernization.
In Ishigaki Island of the Yaeyama region, this belief persisted with particular prominence.
On this island, women’s incense burners were called *konjin* (archaically pronounced *kanjin*).
If one called it an ancestor, it was not an ancestor; if one considered it a village deity, it was not a village deity.
All that was known was that it represented a deity transmitted successively from mother to daughter.
It was likely regarded as a deity passed down through endless generations of mothers.
Thus emerged within Okinawan households a god served exclusively by women—one forbidden to be worshipped by either husbands or sons.
Though all Ryukyuan deities were female, men naturally participated in worship.
Nevertheless, what did the existence of this male-excluded deity signify?

The principles governing life in each village differed entirely.
At the very least, they had considered them to exist under mutually different driving forces.
In such an era, if inter-village marriages were conducted between these villages, a woman brought to the man’s village would end up introducing her differing lifestyle into his household.
Even if they compromised on other points, the lifestyle of the side with differing faith would not easily find harmony.
Moreover, when a faith—one that cannot be named as either god or spirit yet forms the fundamental tone—coexists within a single household, the wife’s religious life would always have been viewed as problematic by the husband’s side.
The facts likely were not so extreme, but the stories that convey their semblance are grounded in this respect for secrecy.
When we incorporate the mindset of an era in which faith underwent gradual purification, explanation becomes more straightforward.

During the period when the wife served her "native land" deity through ritual abstinence, she did not allow even her husband to observe it.
If the husband broke this oath, the bond between husband and wife would be instantly destroyed.
Stories where a husband’s forbidden glimpse—breaking the promise of "do not look"—led to unexpected ruin were as countless as tales of children shattering family life.

It was said that when Prince Homuchiwake, son of Emperor Suinin, first stayed at the residence of Hina-hime, daughter of the Izumo Kuni no Miyatsuko, and glimpsed her state, she had transformed into a serpent, causing him to flee; then Hime’s serpent illuminated the expanse of the sea as it came pursuing him.
The story that incorporated the tribulations of childbirth into this narrative was that of Toyotama-hime, daughter of the sea god, who became an eight-fathom crocodile or a dragon.
The notion that this had been solemnly regarded as relating to childbirth was rather an explanation appended afterward.

The same can be said of the tale of Izanagi-no-Mikoto and Izanami-no-Mikoto's separation.
Though told not to look, when he looked, the Eight Thunders—which according to ancient belief were serpents—had swarmed upon the corpse.
That she relentlessly pursued her husband who fled upon seeing this—is this not precisely identical to the story of Hina-hime?
To claim he grew wrathful for having exposed the corpse and caused humiliation was ultimately an explanation appended afterward.

The fact that reptilian creatures are entwined in these tales is no arbitrary matter.
This is because they conceptualized the very essence of the faith governing other clans' villages in natural objects.
Furthermore, could it not be that this shadow cast by an aversion to serpents arose from a mentality inclined to view alien lifestyles with bitter resentment?

In later ages, they came to view it as an entity of blood relation stemming from a single ancestor, projected ancestral forms onto that being, and even elevated it to divine status—yet does not a far more primal form of faith lurk behind these tales?

Even if the villages that held *toute mizumu* in our ancient past did not exist upon this land, one cannot definitively state that such principles of life were absent in their ancestral homelands even further back in time. If one considers the form of *konjin* from before the existence of gods came to be represented through translation into incense burners, it may have been a dugong, a pig, a sea turtle, a tuna, or a dog. Even if not so, this alone explains why faith objects brought by wives from villages of different clans remain today as guest deities (maraudo-gami) that cannot be served except by women.

Professor Freiza, who links *toutemizumu* with exogamy in his considerations, cites examples where women taken by force and brought to villages of different clans would be expelled once they bore a set number of children.
It seems plausible from this perspective that tragic tales of “spousal separation” developed endlessly as vestiges of exogamy.

The objects of *toutemizumu* are not limited to animals.
Plants, minerals, air, wind, and light—as elements governing life in their respective villages—compelled religious life’s first steps.
I had until now kept separate the concepts of ancestors and *toutemu*.
The reason lay in my reluctance to hastily regard tales from our own land—of plants and minerals marrying humans and bearing children—as traces of *toutemizumu*.

When we observe that the names of Konohana Sakuyahime and Iwanagahime were not merely names but connected to life rituals, traces of regarding tree blossoms and boulders as *toutemu* do not entirely escape our notice.
The development of rhetorical methods in norito ritual prayers—using plants and minerals to auspiciously foretell longevity—may not be mere simple metaphors, but rather could have arisen from magical rites involving *toutemu*, akin to those practiced by Ōyamatsumi-no-kami.

Within Shinto, the conceptualization of the sun as an ancestral deity did not arise from one or two causes alone.
However, even accounts stating that the group which conquered Yamato treated matters such as facing sunlight (i.e., resisting it) or bearing it as major issues—though their emphasis lies in being ancestral deities—still seem far more convincingly explained from this perspective.

In *toutemu*, there existed not only hereditarily transmitted forms but also those lasting only a single generation. The circumstances surrounding the births of Ohosazaki no Mikoto and Kagu Sukune were perhaps best explained from this perspective, while names such as Hono Suseri, Hoteri, Howori, and Homuchiwake could also be considered to fall within the same category. In this "Tale of Kuzunoha," we could not fully trace the presence of *toutemizumu*. It merely formed the basis of the preceding narrative—yet if it served to explain that the mother alone, being a wife from a village of a different clan, maintained a distinct object of worship for her child’s sake, then that sufficed.

IX

The period of the wife’s secret life was when she entered into a way of living proximate to the very essence of faith. That this peeking led to catastrophe—this fact alone remained in memory across generations, and in later ages became interpreted most naturally as a tale akin to that of Hina-hime. The animal that formed the very essence of faith in villages of different clans—divorced from its religious context—was regarded as having directly manifested in that person’s form during those times.

If we trust written records, within our nation’s marital history, instances where mothers were taken from villages of different clans appear to carry far greater antiquity than anecdotal accounts of fathers visiting mothers at their residences.
Rather than children growing up with the maternal side and being woven into matrilineal structures, it appears that patrilineal organizations where they reached adulthood with the paternal side existed earlier.
Of course, it is conceivable that differing systems coexisted in different villages, but by and large, contrary to common assumption, patrilineal organizations appear to have been the older form.

Matrilineal systems must have existed since ancient times as well.
However, their memory remained until considerably later.
The meaning of "parent" became differentiated, and the ancient terms "oya" and "mioya"—used to mean "mother"—persisted even into the Kamakura period.
Yet while such words remained in use, this did not mean the system itself was still practiced.
It is said that even when newer patrilineal systems were implemented, the practice of fathers retrieving children who had come of age in their maternal homes—with only the terminology enduring—persisted for a long time.

It was a matter of speculation, but within the scope of our considerations, the oldest form would be one in which the mother who bore the child returned to her native land due to certain circumstances.
The three previously discussed narratives of "oaths of severance" revealed a more ancient form than the aforementioned tale of Miwa Mountain.
Stories of wives from villages of different clans still left traces in regional legends.
More often than not, they instead came to take on the form of the land into which they had married.
The daughter who had been taken by the master of the pond returned.
And then, if one were to see her figure returning to the pond, it was said that she transformed into a great serpent and plunged into the water—stories of this sort.

I stated this to begin the story.

In the spring of Taishō 9, I wrote a short essay titled “To the Land of Maternal Ancestors and Tokoyo” in *Kokugakuin Zasshi* magazine.
That way of thinking represented an attitude so rationalistic that it now seems embarrassing.
In the following year or so, I had asked that you read Dr. Torii Ryūzō’s paper titled “The Land of Maternal Ancestors” published in *Tōa no Hikari* alongside [my work], and I wrote here with the intent to correct only the erroneous parts of my previous paper.

The term “Land of Maternal Ancestors” has been transmitted entwined with the circumstances of Susanoo-no-Mikoto and Inahi-no-Mikoto.
Susanoo-no-Mikoto, yearning for Ne no Kuni where his deceased mother Izanami-no-Mikoto resided, wept wishing to go to the Land of Maternal Ancestors.
Inahi-no-Mikoto encountered a shipwreck in the Kumano Sea and declared he would go to the Land of Maternal Ancestors before plunging into the waters.
This “mother” refers to Tamayorihime, daughter of Watatsumi.
At a glance, these might appear as random utterances of their eras.
Yet this must have stemmed from circumstances requiring the historical sorrow shared by our ancestors—borne upon the rhythmic recitations of *kataribe*—to be reiterated across generations.

The Kojiki and Nihon Shoki had simply recorded these conventional phrases that were being used in a rationalistic and unreflective manner.
In my earlier interpretation, I had posited that communities who left their ancestral lands and undertook repeated migrations had encapsulated within this term ["Land of Maternal Ancestors"] their sorrowful recollections of the birthplace where they became human under matrilineal systems—until eventually its content became transformed.
However, such ideas were likely unconsciously influenced by the prevailing matrilineal theories of the time and thus emerged unknowingly.
Indeed, our prehistorical ancestors had circumstances that necessitated parting from their mothers when they were on the cusp of developing self-awareness.

I think the reason why primary terms that should signify “mother” came to be used predominantly to mean “wet nurse” also lies here.
In any case, the heart’s longing for the mother who abandoned her own-born child and returned must have manifested as the shadowed term “Land of Maternal Ancestors.”

It was fortunate that this digressive discussion proved useful in explaining the narrative structure of Kuzunoha’s story about parting from her child and returning [to her realm].
The relationship between children and secret village rituals, as well as interactions between oracles and children, had already been discussed previously; but furthermore, the ancient mothers—for whom bearing children served both as the reason for marriage and simultaneously became the cause for divorce—were also cursed due to their secret lifestyles that differed from their husbands’.

X

When considering the interactions between Japanese deities and flora/fauna, beyond animals being gods themselves, there were scattered instances where they served as ancestral deities. Furthermore, there existed many who were made to serve as divine messengers or those called messenger princesses. Some considered this to be remnants of *toutemizumu*, but whether this alone satisfied the meaning of *toutemu* became the primary issue requiring resolution.

Not only animals, but there were also plants favored by deities. Behind this lay another reality: numerous types of animals and plants—some prohibited from utilization by parishioners of specific deities, others requiring abstention from consumption—had been both theorized upon and documented by Mr. Yanagita and others. In this realm, the domain of plants appeared particularly extensive. Generally, it was transmitted that resentment had been disseminated because deities had been led into error through obstructions by these plants and animals. This explanation attributing it to divine miscalculation likely bore some mythical connection and, I believe, had enveloped the original kernel. When the world reached an age where kernel-like traditions were forgotten, folk philosophy came to attribute causation to those myths. The myth in question posited that imperfect reality existed because deeds befitting an omnipotent deity had been obstructed by malevolent spirits. Conversely, there were also narratives where malevolent spirits failed and deities prevailed.

If we posit that people explained [the myths] by placing flora and fauna with deep emotional connections to the deity in the position of spirits said to have complicated or left incomplete its plans, clarity emerges.

For parishioners to appropriate the deity's daily implements or favored items constituted a transgression requiring scrupulous avoidance.
This prohibition faded from memory, leading people to reinterpret the taboo through an inverted lens.
They recounted how white chickens—originally sacred offerings not meant for human use—became objects of divine resentment when their ritual purpose was forgotten, resulting in disruptive dusk crowing that startled the deity.
Some explained their reluctance to utilize trees favored by the deity or plants perpetually offered as tributes as stemming from a duty to eternally commemorate divine resentment over being obstructed by those very species.
Such misunderstandings naturally caused offerings intended for the deity to be excluded from sacred tribute lists.
It had previously been noted that offerings shared with the deity during joint tasting rituals—items branching from the clan's symbolic root—were considered spiritually proximate to the divine.
If advancing such conjectures proved permissible, setting aside botanical matters allowed one bold minor conclusion regarding animals.

The traditions frequently cited from the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki—wherein the monkey’s cry was considered a messenger of Ise’s Imperial Great Deity and the white boar was regarded as a messenger of Ibuki Mountain Deity—were doubtful as to whether they truly shared the same essence as modern divine messengers.
However, it became clear that there had existed a belief that spirits employed by powerful beings would come to fulfill tasks ordered by deities, assuming such forms and voices.

The concept of divine messengers had existed since ancient times, even when considered separately from this.
The term “tedai,” which had already appeared during the Nara period, referred to those who functioned as the very hands of the gods.
This divine work shifted to humans, and even the tedai-be clan came to be formed.
During the warrior age, they appear to have been called “vanguard.”
It likely signified the deity’s vanguard.
The aspect that followed divine will possessed elements of a servitor spirit, but in its formation, there was yet another distinct aspect.

The practice of reading 犠牲 as ike-nihe (sacrifice) is partially correct but largely mistaken. Nihe refers to prepared food consumed by the gods and those close to them.
Ike means keeping [animals] alive.
It refers to animals kept alive so they can be offered as divine offerings at any time.
At the same time, it is a term that distinguishes them from plant-based offerings resembling inanimate objects.
The limit to which the faith of our country can be traced back lies precisely here.
However, there remains material sufficient to advance one step further.
The containers for offerings of animals and plants seemingly appear to be transformed manifestations of the divine seat into which the deity had entered.

Amidst this triad of opposition—the deity, the animals raised as sacrificial offerings for its rituals, and the parishioners—the animals destined to become offerings must not be taken lightly.
It was regarded sometimes as a deity itself and at other times as a divine messenger.

To speak without reserve, deities of eras when their attributes had not yet been purified could be considered as one with sacrificial offerings.
Then in the subsequent period, these sacred animals were demoted one rank in status and came to incorporate influences from the concept of servitor spirits, taking on what might be called the form of divine servitor beasts.
Following this, on one path they appeared as divine messengers, while on the other they diverged into what might be termed food solely for the gods.
What emerges in this instance is the previously mentioned concept of entities cursed by the gods.

According to the explanations of Scholar Minakata Kumagusu, the foxes of Inari were said to be a misinterpretation of dakini—wolf-like beasts that served as the focus of dakini ritual practices.
This [concept] was foreign in origin, yet it suggested that even among those considered native divine messengers, there likely existed such servitor beasts.

The monkeys of Sannō appear to have been called “Teshirō no Saru” (White-Handed Monkeys).
This correctly demonstrated the significance of servitor beasts.
However, as long as the true form of the Ōyamakuhi deity associated with Sannō Gongen remained unclear, there persisted room to doubt whether they constituted innate servitor beasts.
The fact that certain animals—such as doves, crows, herons, rats, wolves, deer, boars, centipedes, turtles, and eels—became largely fixed as servitor beasts for shrine deities could be explained from the perspective of animals designated as sacrificial offerings.

XI

However, on another front emerged the tendency to employ local deities as divine messengers or regard them as servitor spirits—a development arising from the era when Buddhism viewed Shinto as a heterodox faith and sought its subjugation.
When this occurred, those deities found themselves overwhelmed by newly arrived Buddhist counterparts; in an age where theological interpretations had advanced, their divine status—never undergoing equivalent refinement—came to be treated both as spirits and monsters.

In the past, even deities like the Katsuragi deity—which Dr. Tsubouchi had dramatized and which had once intimidated even the fierce Emperor Yūryaku—came to suffer harsh treatment at the hands of En no Gyōja.
Dr. Shōyō drastically repositioned them even further, reducing these deities to monsters akin to those appearing in works like *A Midsummer Night’s Dream*.

The oni known as Zenki and Goki from the foot of Ōmine Mountain—who were likewise employed by En no Gyōja—are thought to have originally been deities of the Yoshino mountains.
Both Zenki and Goki’s descendants live as humans, having established villages bearing their names.
If we cite a similar example from the Buddhist side, there is Yase Village in relation to Mount Hiei.
The ancestors of this village are also said to be descendants of oni who were employed by Dengyō Daishi at the beginning of "my Tatsusoma."

The term oni has been explained in various ways by various people, but no satisfactory theory has been reached.
The currently influential Chinese phonetic etymology theory that posits oni as a phonetic shift from characters like “yin” or “hidden” remains an especially unconvincing notion.
It is recorded that Prince Shōtoku’s mother bore names attested both as Kamikuma and Onikuma.
Even if their significance as Chinese characters appears proximate, no example exists in native Japanese readings where oni is interpreted as kami.
These terms became established as mono (spirits), oni, and such.
Upon examination, this can only indicate that the name was referred to in two distinct manners.
This name undeniably derives from a place name.
That site—being an awe-inspiring location—was likely designated in semi-proper noun form as both Onikuma and Kamikuma.
This demonstrates there was also an era when the boundary between these two terms remained indistinct.
If one were to forcibly delineate them, oni would largely appear to denote unenshrined spirits.

Yase Village considered themselves descendants of deities who could be seen as Hiei’s local tutelary gods, and likely regarded their ancestors as oni.
This village had maintained what could be called a temple servant-like relationship with Enryaku-ji.
The enslaved communities belonging to great temples were called Dōji Villages.
This derived from how villagers were called *Dōji* when employed for temple duties.
At Hachiman’s Jingū-ji temples and similar institutions, there existed large Dōji Villages.
Even in Dōji Villages that did not claim descent from oni who yielded to a temple founder’s spiritual power and were put to work, there likely persisted the notion that they were successors to local deities made to serve like servitor spirits under eminent priests.
From how *dōji*—temple pages who served as slaves undertaking physical labor for Buddhism—were employed, they came to be called “Dōdōji” when serving at Buddhist ceremonies held by court nobles.
The term *dōji* derived from the distinctive hairstyle worn by temple slaves’ leaders.
They called disheveled hair *warawa*, and when considering how children with loosely flowing hair were termed *warawa* based on their hairstyle, this was because temple slaves kept their hair unbound and disheveled—what came to be called the “Dōji” hairstyle.
Those referred to by Mr. Yanagita Kunio as “Kamuro” or “Kebōshu”—individuals who led semi-monastic lives without undergoing ordination—also originally emerged from temple slaves.

The fact that the child Kuzunoha gave birth to came to be called “Dōji” and “Dōjimaru” would seem to have its basis here.

Oni are not only spoken of within Buddhist contexts; they also exist in shrines.
Our ancestors made the mountain people who remained living in outer mountains near villages participate in rituals.
And it appears they even referred to them as oni.
Since there are examples where uncivilized people were revered as gods, once the distinction between gods and oni became clearly defined, such violent gods would have come to be categorized as oni.

In Edo’s Ōoku, the practice of calling poison testers “Oni-yaku” not only appeared to follow an old lineage from the *tedai-bu* of old but also evoked nostalgia—though the term carried a dreadful ring, it preserved traces of that past even in its very name.

Those who served deities at shrines had been called *shinjin* since the medieval period.
The term *kamuzuko*, though its meaning later changed, originally signified precisely what its characters denote—"divine servants."
As mentioned earlier, people from Amagi District in Ise participating in rituals demonstrated that Miwa shrine servants resided beyond mountains and rivers in northern Ise.
Such villages were still simply called "villages" or shinjin villages.

Imamiya Village—now part of Osaka City west of Tennōji—enshrined Hirota Shrine as its tutelary deity while maintaining deep ties to Yasaka Shrine in Kyoto.
The Gion mikoshi prided itself on not moving unless these villagers attended, journeying up to Kyoto during festivals.
Moreover, this village appeared to maintain special connections with Shitennō-ji.
Fortunately, Imamiya Village received no special treatment from other villages.
However, most such shinjin villages came to receive distinctive treatment from other villages in later periods.
From an early modern perspective, having special communities participate in Shinto rituals seemed almost sacrilegious.
Villages with deep shrine-temple ties from their founding came to be despised not only as slave communities but also for another unavoidable reason.

Even among those equally called slaves, those attached to households—such as family retainers—became *gokenin* and *samurai* in the age of warrior rule, rising to positions above commoners, but shrine slaves came to endure unspoken insults.

These villagers were viewed by society as those who could freely employ *misaki* messengers and *tsukawashime* servitor spirits.
Therefore, when the era came where they could no longer rely solely on the shrine’s protection, they apparently engaged in manual crafts while practicing sorcery to make a living.
Moreover, they came to travel through various provinces proclaiming the merits of the deities they served.
The special abilities of those villagers were resented by other villagers.
They came to be considered as practicing curses; fear gradually shifted to aversion, and over time transformed into contempt.

The home villages of shrine servants naturally faced such aversion, and even the houses or villages that wandering villagers settled in and established during their travels likewise received this prejudice.
Many such households came to be shunned as lineages called “Spirit-Bearers,” “Dog Deity Lineages,” or “Human-Fox Families,” deemed unfit for human interaction.

The deities revered by shrine servants, curiously enough, often did not appear to be the principal deities enshrined in the main halls of their affiliated shrines or temples.
Wandering preachers were mostly lower-class people from shrine servant or temple servant backgrounds, but there appear to have been those who carried their home institution’s principal deities with them and those who did not.
In addition to shrine servants and temple pages, semi-secular religious practitioners of varied significances wandered and ultimately came to propagate great new doctrines.
This was mainly on the side of temple slaves who could not undergo ordination; it appears that the descendants of shrine servants largely found no place to settle.

The holy ones of Kōya-dō in Ōjōin Valley on Mount Kōya were what might be called parasitic adherents of the nenbutsu practice within the Shingon head temple.
This too is thought to have originally been temple slaves who emerged from the fishermen of Yuura Bay in Kii Province.
As previously mentioned, the deity of Imamiya Village in Settsu Province—which had been shrine servants of Gion—was "Hirota."
The ancient Inō Shrine, maintained by Amagi villagers who were Miwa shrine servants, also appears unrelated to Miwa Myōjin.

Various things could be considered regarding this matter.
The first consideration was that since households did not compel slaves lacking blood ties to worship their familial deities, even shrine slaves—who were unfree—were thought to have maintained their faith without coercion since ancient times.
The second consideration posited that if shrine slaves could be viewed as successors to oni, then despite maintaining their ancestral practice of attending rituals for deities their forebears did not worship, what they truly venerated would have been their ancestral oni deities.
The third point concerned the notion that they might have considered servitor spirits to be the ancestors of shrine slaves.
When the essence of deities became fragmented and the attributes of “divine messengers”—functioning as servitors—detached themselves, extending the custom of positing blood kinship between deities and priests could lead to viewing shrine slaves as descendants bearing the lineage of these divine envoys.
In that case, it followed that the forms of servitor spirits came to overlap with the objects of faith originally transmitted by shrine slaves.
When one imagined things in this manner, the process by which shrine servants came to employ servitor spirits also became comprehensible.
In any case, it seemed to be a fact that both shrine servants and temple pages were considered to have ancestors different from ordinary people.
The concept of animal ancestors easily intruded into such a context.

1-2

The village of Abeno, where Abe no Yasuna and Kuzunoha lived and raised Dōjimaru, lay along the ancient Kumano Kaidō between Tennōji and Sumiyoshi, positioned closer to Tennōji.
The era of its development remained unknown.
The Noh play *Matsumushi* contained the line “Amidst the grassy wilds of Abeno’s mounds,” but even within such plains, Kumano Oji Shrine had existed as a remote worship site for Kumano, its presence traceable back to the end of the Heian period.
From this shrine, passing several more Oji shrines and proceeding to Shinoda, one would find Shinoda Oji Shrine standing here as well.
The banquet song *Kumano Pilgrimage* depicted its journey sequence with such vividness that one could trace the route with their hand.
Since only this much was known about the interactions between Abeno and Shinoda, no necessary relationship between them could be discerned at present.

The names Dōjimaru and Abe no Dōji carried a distinctive resonance.
One might presume the author had arbitrarily coined these names, but such was not the case.
There existed historical precedents for such nomenclature.
From the mid-Heian period onward, figures like Onidōmaru—who sought vengeance against Yorimitsu—appeared regularly in records, while the *Saikyūki* chronicled a bandit named Hata Inu Dōji.
Among their ilk, as Elder Nambō noted, one also finds mention of Fujiwara Dōjimaru.

Yet since Kakudayū’s *Shinoda Wife*, even within Kabuki ballads singing of Kuzunoha’s journey, there echoed the line: “Where lies Abe no Dōji’s mother...?”
These verses likely descended from Sekkyōbushi traditions.
The appellation “Abe no Dōji,” through centuries of auditory familiarity, had acquired an almost vernacular stability despite its faint aura as a proper noun.
An inevitable intimacy clung to it—the patina of ages-old reiteration.

It could not have been merely about referring to a child of the Abe clan—one destined to become Seimei of that lineage.
I posit that within these Abeno plains there existed a group of temple slaves who had established a village and likely belonged to a major nearby temple.
That temple was probably Shitennō-ji, though it may possibly have been Sumiyoshi’s Jingū-ji.
In any case, might this name not have emerged through the lips of whoever first narrated what is considered the prototype oral tale of *Shinoda Wife*—arising from how those villagers had become accustomed to being called “Abeno Dōji,” a term already familiar to contemporary ears?
Nor was this all—might not this village too have harbored legends of animal ancestors like those found in other shrine servant and temple page villages, its people regarded as descendants of foxes?

If we attempt to align the story’s logic, the Abeno Dōji had a tradition that from their own village emerged Abe no Seimei, the Yin-Yang Master.
Seimei’s mother was a fox incarnation from Shinoda.
Therefore, they became descendants of foxes.
It was commonly believed that society called them “Abeno Dōji” because it derived from Seimei’s childhood name.
First, when considered in this way, things cohered up to a certain point.
However, the facts were not likely to have been organized so neatly.

Sekkyōbushi likely originated from the ideal of “Praising the Buddhist Vehicle,” emerging through attempts at exegetic expansion of sutras by adding expedient means as embellishments to legends from India, China, and Japan. However, having been refined through Buddhist vocal music into melodic patterns that captivated listeners’ hearts, it gradually shifted away from proselytizing expediency toward life’s practicalities and is thought to have advanced further into artistic refinement.
It has been considered that works such as *Sanbōe-kotoba* (Illustrated Anthology of the Three Jewels) and *Konjaku Monogatari* (Tales of Times Now Past) might have served as such source texts, and by the end of the imperial court period, Sekkyōshi performers’ activities likely began yielding measurable impact.
Thus transformed into narratives that struck close to lived experience—centering on tales of those who had endured the full bitterness of worldly suffering to inspire yearning for afterlife peace—this may well have given birth to *honji-mono* (deity incarnation tales).
This cultural budding appears to date back to the very emergence of the samurai class.

However, as one of our nation’s arts that typically endured through long years without undergoing major revolutions under the protection of shrines and temples, it is thought to have persisted in an unwaveringly conservative manner. However, after the importation of the shamisen, it suddenly quickened its pace and advanced. And before sekkyōbushi narrators came to hold their seats and perform within huts, there must have been a long history of them as gate-side performers who beat umbrella handles in fan-like rhythms.

As for Sekkyōbushi, I have previously stated that there must have been two types of scripts: old and new. The creation of the new script likely did not occur so very long before it was published as an authorized text. Before the new script was completed, the period during which the old script was used must have been quite long. In the new authorized texts that embellished simple old sekkyō narratives, it is thought that the knowledge carried over from long-familiar old sekkyō was left intact. Therefore, within the Sekkyōbushi that exist today, one can observe scattered instances of omissions arising from anticipating the audience’s prior knowledge, as well as oversights that would never have been left out if these were original compositions. Even in Kakudayū’s *Shinoda Wife*, there are such instances.

It remains unclear which shrine or temple’s origin, honji (original Buddhist form), or miraculous efficacy *Shinoda Wife* narrates. If pressed, might it not have been a honji-mono born from the origins of Shinoda Forest’s Sei Shrine or its apparent branch shrine Kuzunoha Shrine—one that taught how a fox achieved liberation from the beast realm and underwent rebirth as a deity? Who first gave this tale melodic form and began its recitation? If my conjecture about the "Abeno Dōji" village proves accurate, one could posit that a narrative born from temple pages of this village—itinerant missionaries who spread their teachings—was incorporated into Sekkyōbushi, transmitted as the tale of "Abeno Dōji," until ultimately becoming the name of a principal figure.

The narrative of Ishidōmaru, which one imagines was first told by Kōya’s “Saint of Kōdō Hall” mentioned earlier, came to be incorporated into Sekkyōbushi.
Moreover, the fact that Ishido’s father is called Karukaya can be seen in the Noh play as “The Saint of Karukaya.”
Thus, the tale of the Saint of Kōdō Hall presumably came to be called the tale of the Saint of Karukaya and even became the name of a character within the work.

This “Shintoku-maru” (also called “Toshitoku-maru”), another of the Five Sekkyōbushi, is believed to be an old transmitted work.
In Noh plays, it bears the title *Yorobōshi* (The Feeble Monk).
It is said that people came to give Shuntokumaru—who had become a blind beggar and was tottering about—the nickname [Yorobōshi].
However, the late Dr. Yoshida Tōgo once suggested there might be a connection between the term *Yorobōshi* (“Feeble Monk”) and the *Yōreiboshi* (“Phantom Star”) mentioned in the song from the “Takatoki’s Dengaku” section of *Taiheiki*: “Have you not seen Tennōji’s Yōreiboshi?”
If one extends this consideration, since the characters are pronounced as *rei-harau* (霊祓), it would be *Yōrauboshi* rather than *Yōreiboshi*.
It appears that people of that time, feeling it resembled an ill omen, chose a mysterious character combination.

The song’s meaning was: “Shall we not go see the *Yōrauboshi* dance performed at Tennōji today?”
“Have you not seen Tennōji’s renowned Yōrauboshi dance?
It must have been saying things like ‘I cannot speak.’”
“Boshi” was undoubtedly “hyōshi” (rhythm).
Shirabyōshi was one with rhythm.
It must have been the name of a sung narrative accompanied by dance.
This too was a narrative passed down at Tennōji—a place with Shirabyōshi traditions—as a piece called “Yorohyōshi,” originally a tale of Tennōji’s miraculous efficacy that over time became the protagonist’s name and even came to be intuitively perceived as describing a monk who appeared frail and tottering.

Mr. Yanagita regards *Sanshō Dayū*—another of the Five Sekkyōbushi—as having been narrated by artists of the Sanjo special community.

The fact that such practices were performed indicated that they had long been transmitted orally through chanting, not relying on written scripts.

The names of those who first began narrating and made chanting these tales their regular practice—these appellations, originating from the provisional titles of their narratives, would readily enter into the works themselves as characters’ names.

The phrase “Let us return, back to the old nest” is a stock little song verse found in Kuzunoha tales.
Even here, echoes of *The Land of Shinobi* lingered.

The title *Shinoda Wife* too could not be determined when exactly it had begun.
It was a term that did not appear in the main text.
In this too there seemed to lie an origin.
Moreover, I found it interesting that this name appeared to contain the implication of “a wife from a village of a different tribe.”