Japanese Legends and Folklore Read online

  JAPANESE

  LEGENDS AND FOLKLORE

  Samurai Tales, Ghost Stories, Legends, Fairy Tales, Myths and Historical Accounts

  A.B. MITFORD

  With a new foreword by Michael Dylan Foster

  CONTENTS

  Foreword

  Preface

  The Forty-Seven Rōnins (四十七士)

  The Loves of Gompachi and Komurasaki (権八小紫比翼塚)

  Kazuma’s Revenge (鍵屋の辻の決闘)

  A Story of the Otokodate of Edo (江戸の男伊達)

  The Wonderful Adventures of Funakoshi Jūemon (三都勇劔伝 船越重右衛門之巻)

  The Eta Maiden and the Hatamoto (穢多の娘と旗本)

  Fairy Tales (おとぎ話)

  The Tongue-Cut Sparrow (舌切り雀)

  The Accomplished and Lucky Tea-Kettle (分福茶釜)

  The Crackling Mountain (かちかち山)

  The Story of the Old Man Who Made Withered Trees to Blossom (花咲か爺さん)

  The Battle of the Ape and the Crab (さるかに合戦)

  The Adventures of Little Peach Boy (桃太郎)

  The Foxes’ Wedding (狐の嫁入り)

  The History of Sakata Kintoki (金太郎)

  The Elves and the Envious Neighbor (小人たちと妬む隣人)

  The Ghost of Sakura (佐倉義民伝)

  How Tajima Shume was Tormented by a Devil of His Own Creation (心の中の悪魔に苦しめられた但馬主馬)

  Concerning Certain Superstitions (迷信)

  The Vampire Cat of Nabéshima (鍋島の化け猫騒動)

  The Story of the Faithful Cat (忠義な猫の物語)

  How a Man Was Bewitched and Had His Head Shaved by the Foxes (髪剃り狐)

  The Grateful Foxes (狐の恩返し)

  The Badger’s Money (狸のお金)

  The Prince and the Badger (殿様と狸)

  Japanese Sermons (日本の説教)

  The Sermons of Kyūō, Sermon I (説教 その一　鳩翁道話 壹之上)

  The Sermons of Kyūō, Sermon II (説教 その二　鳩翁道話 壹之下)

  The Sermons of Kyūō, Sermon III (説教 その三　鳩翁道話 貳之上)

  Appendices

  Appendix A: An Account of the Hara-Kiri (切腹)

  Appendix B: The Marriage Ceremony (婚礼)

  Appendix C: On the Birth and Rearing of Children (出産)

  Appendix D: Funeral Rites (葬儀)

  FOREWORD

  When A.B. Mitford’s Japanese Legends and Folklore, originally titled Tales of Old Japan, was published in Britain in 1871, a reviewer for The Times wrote “…we do not venture too high praise when we say that a strange country and people have never been the theme of a more entertaining and informing work.”1 Not only do these comments reflect the position of Japan in the Victorian imagination—as “a strange country and people”—but they also reflect a popular desire for understanding a faraway place that was experiencing unparalleled transformations in political, economic and cultural realms. Mitford’s work recounted tales of old Japan because a new Japan was emerging.

  During the long Edo period (1603–1868) a succession of military leaders known as shoguns ran the country, overseeing a hierarchical society divided into four major classes, with Samurai (less than ten percent of the population) positioned at the top. Because the Shogunate imposed strict limitations on economic and cultural exchange with other countries, Edo-period Japan was a world unto itself, relatively isolated from outside influences and ideas. But all this started to change in 1853, when Commodore Matthew C. Perry of the United States Navy sailed into Edo Bay with a small squadron of “black ships” and demanded that Japan open its ports. In the decade and a half that followed, continued pressure from the U.S. and other Western powers, combined with weakening domestic leadership, brought about the collapse of the Shogunate and the birth of a new government. The 1868 Meiji Restoration marked the beginning of Japan’s experiment with modernity and its emergence globally in economic, cultural, political and—all too soon—military arenas.

  As the Second Secretary of the British Legation from 1866–1870, A.B. Mitford participated in many of the critical diplomatic negotiations of these momentous years. He met with shoguns and regional lords, and he was among the first Westerners ever to have a personal audience with the new Meiji Emperor. He did this all before the age of thirty-five.

  Indeed, Algernon Bertram Mitford (1837–1916) led an extraordinary life. Bertie, as he was called, was born into an English aristocratic family but spent his early years in Germany and France. His parents were divorced, something exceedingly rare at the time, and young Mitford was sent to Eton at the age of nine. He went on to Oxford and would eventually join the Foreign Office, where his father had also served for a short period. He was posted briefly to Russia, and next to Beijing, where he eagerly explored Chinese culture and gained an excellent understanding of the language.

  From China, Mitford was sent to Japan in October of 1866 to work under Sir Harry Parkes (1828–1885), Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary. There he also became close friends with Ernest Satow (1843–1929), who would go on to become a renowned scholar, diplomat, and Japan expert. During the waning days of the Shogunate, Japan was not a safe place for Western government officials, and Mitford experienced his share of adventures, including assassination attempts and military skirmishes, as well as storm, fire, and a near drowning. As he recalled many years later, “For nearly four years I never wrote a note without having a revolver on the table, and never went to bed without a Spencer rifle and bayonet at my hand.”2

  Mitford applied himself diligently to the study of the Japanese language, achieving an extraordinary level of proficiency. Even while pursuing his diplomatic duties, he gathered and translated materials for the present book, which he completed after his return to England and sold to a publishing house for only 240 pounds. “It was as much as they could be expected to give in the circumstances,” he explained in his autobiography Memories, “for the subject and I were both new, and it was impossible to say whether we should catch the fancy of the public.”3 But catch the fancy of the public they both did, especially with the book’s publication coinciding with Japan’s emergence into the European consciousness. The Times praised the work as “far more valuable than any mere record of personal adventure could possibly be, for it shows us Japanese life and manners, not only as they are seen by foreign eyes, but as they are depicted in the literature of the country itself.” Indeed, despite Mitford’s own exciting experiences in Japan, his book was not autobiographical but rather an earnest attempt to introduce Japan from an insider’s perspective.

  So what are the contents? In many ways, the work is a hodgepodge—the word “tales” interpreted rather openly to include translations of Edo-period literary texts, popular folktales for children, supernatural legends and Buddhist sermons. In some cases, Mitford also adds detailed introductions and notes concerning tradition, literature, theater, and history. Most famously perhaps, the appendix contains his own eyewitness account of ritual suicide or hara-kiri.

  The book begins with a telling of the story of “The Forty-Seven Rōnins,” an early eighteenth-century historical vendetta that had been recounted and reinvented throughout the second half of the Edo period in written, visual and performance traditions including bunraku puppet theater and kabuki drama. Today this legend of loyalty and revenge is well-known even in the West—most notoriously reinterpreted in 2013 as a film with Keanu Reeves! All this makes Mitford’s historical account even more compelling: his is the first detailed retelling ever rendered into English and was, for many years, considered an authoritative version. r />
  Another important first is Mitford’s inclusion of “Fairy Tales,” most of which he translates from “little separate pamphlets, with illustrations, the stereotype blocks of which have become so worn that the print is hardly legible.” These stories—like “The Tongue-Cut Sparrow,” “The Crackling Mountain” or “The Adventures of Little Peach Boy”—are classic Japanese folktales that would have been well known by children and adults alike, and are still popular today. He also translates a number of supernatural legends, under the heading “Concerning Certain Superstitions,” recounting the mischievous machinations of cats, foxes, and badgers (by which he means tanuki or raccoon dogs). Such creatures are quintessential examples of the fantastic shapeshifting yōkai or bakemono of Japanese folklore that were exceedingly popular in Edo-period culture—in everything from kabuki to woodblock prints to ghost story collections to board games—and are still refashioned today in popular media such as manga, anime, films, and video games.

  Mitford’s emphasis on folklore rather than classical or “pure” literature reflects his belief that “no better means could be chosen of preserving a record of a curious and fast disappearing civilization, than the translation of some of the most interesting national legends and histories.” His translation of folkloric material also dovetails with the burgeoning field of folklore studies in his native Britain. It is no coincidence that in 1871, the same year Mitford published this book, Edward B. Tylor (1832–1917), one of the founding figures of anthropology, published his seminal work Primitive Culture. In 1872 Scottish folklorist and scholar Andrew Lang (1844–1912) published Ballads and Lyrics of Old France, and 1878 saw the founding of the Folklore Society in London. In other words, popular interest in Mitford’s work reflected excitement about Japan as well as a burgeoning appreciation of folklore and oral tradition as a window into people and culture. A scholarly interest in folklore would also take hold in Japan, but not until the work of Yanagita Kunio (1875–1962) and others in the early twentieth century. Mitford’s conscious efforts to collect and publish folktales and legends not only prefigured many domestic Japanese endeavors but were also a precursor of the work of more famous Western interpreters, such as Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904) and Basil Hall Chamberlain (1850–1935).

  Finally, another significant part of Mitford’s book is his firsthand account of hara-kiri, or seppuku, the traditional Samurai practice of disembowelment. “Up to that time,” he explains, “no foreigner had witnessed such an execution, which was rather looked upon as a traveler’s fable.” For a book that begins with the forty-seven Rōnin story—in which forty-seven Samurai meet “their death nobly” through hara-kiri—it is perhaps only fitting that Mitford comes full circle to describe an event he saw with his own eyes, as if to prove that his tales are more than a “traveler’s fable.” He is also bearing witness to this last gasp of a dying way of life, an ideology that he seems to find noble and inspiring; to an extent, indeed, Mitford is guilty of romanticizing hara-kiri, to say nothing of warfare and the so-called Samurai code—his tales are chock full of swordplay and other forms of violence. Whether or not this accurately reflects the Japan he experienced, it has had a lasting resonance in the Western cultural imagination, even having been cited by Robert Louis Stevenson in an essay simply entitled “Works Which Have Influenced Me.”4

  Mitford went on to become a distinguished member of British aristocracy with a long and varied career in government service. He was appointed Secretary of the Board of Works, elected to Parliament, and eventually received the title of Baron Redesdale. Nor did his expertise in Japan go unrecognized: Gilbert and Sullivan consulted him for The Mikado, and in 1906 he made a final journey back to Japan, this time with a member of the royal family to present the Order of the Garter to the Meiji Emperor.

  In Japan today, Mitford’s legacy has been overshadowed by later Western interpreters, such as Lafcadio Hearn, and of course by much more recent translators, scholars and journalists. And in Britain, he has been overshadowed in the public memory by the flamboyant exploits of his own descendants, particularly his six granddaughters (known as the Mitford sisters), notoriously eclectic and scandalous socialites who are still a subject of fascination and controversy to this day.

  Of all Mitford’s accomplishments, then, it is this book that is best remembered and remains the most relevant, valuable not only because of the stories it tells of old Japan but also because of what it reveals of old England. As a text, it has held up remarkably well—and is simply a pleasure to read. With its clear, accessible prose and exciting descriptions of rare events, it is a collection of souvenirs and snapshots of a country on the edge of modernity. “The book found favor,” Mitford himself pointed out in Memories. “Many editions were published, and I believe that it continues to be printed today.”5 He was certainly right about that: a century and a half after its initial publication, we are still reading it.

  Michael Dylan Foster

  Footnotes

  1 “Tales of Old Japan.” The Times (London), May 26, 1871; p. 4.

  2 Lord Redesdale, Memories (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1915), Vol. 1, p. 389.

  3 Memories, Vol. 2, p. 554.

  4 Robert Louis Stevenson, “Books Which Have Influenced Me,” in Essays in the Art of Writing, pp. 77–96 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1910). [Originally published in 1887]

  5 Memories, Vol. 2, p. 554.

  PREFACE

  In the Introduction to the story of the Forty-Seven Rōnins, I have said almost as much as is needful by way of preface to my stories.

  Those of my readers who are most capable of pointing out the many shortcomings and faults of my work, will also be the most indulgent towards me; for any one who has been in Japan, and studied Japanese, knows the great difficulties by which the learner is beset.

  For the illustrations, at least, I feel that I need make no apology. Drawn, in the first instance, by one Ōdake, an artist in my employ, they were cut on wood by a famous wood-engraver at Edo (Tokyo), and are therefore genuine specimens of Japanese art. Messrs. Dalziel, on examining the wood blocks, pointed out to me, as an interesting fact, that the lines are cut with the grain of the wood, after the manner of Albert Dürer and some of the old German masters, a process which has been abandoned by modern European wood-engravers.

  It will be noticed that very little allusion is made in these Tales to the Emperor and his Court. Although I searched diligently, I was able to find no story in which they played a conspicuous part.

  Another class to which no allusion is made is that of the Gōshi. The Gōshi are a kind of yeomen, or bonnet-lairds, as they would be called over the border, living on their own land, and owning no allegiance to any feudal lord. Their rank is inferior to that of the Samurai, or men of the military class, between whom and the peasantry they hold a middle place. Like the Samurai, they wear two swords, and are in many cases prosperous and wealthy men claiming a descent more ancient than that of many of the feudal Princes. A large number of them are enrolled among the Emperor’s body-guard; and these have played a conspicuous part in the recent political changes in Japan, as the most conservative and anti-foreign element in the nation.

  With these exceptions, I think that all classes are fairly represented in my stories.

  The feudal system has passed away like a dissolving view before the eyes of those who have lived in Japan during the last few years. But when they arrived there it was in full force, and there is not an incident narrated in the following pages, however strange it may appear to Europeans, for the possibility and probability of which those most competent to judge will not vouch. Nor, as many a recent event can prove, have heroism, chivalry, and devotion gone out of the land altogether. We may deplore and inveigh against the Yamato Damashii, or Spirit of Old Japan, which still breathes in the soul of the Samurai, but we cannot withhold our admiration from the self-sacrifices which men will still make for the love of their country.

  The first two of the Tales have already appeared in the Fortnightly Review
, and two of the Sermons, with a portion of the Appendix on the subject of the Hara-kiri, in the pages of the Cornhill Magazine. I have to thank the editors of those periodicals for permission to reprint them here.

  London, January 7, 1871

  THE FORTY-SEVEN RŌNINS

  四十七士

  The books which have been written of late years about Japan have either been compiled from official records, or have contained the sketchy impressions of passing travelers. Of the inner life of the Japanese the world at large knows but little: their religion, their superstitions, their ways of thought, the hidden springs by which they move—all these are as yet mysteries. Nor is this to be wondered at. The first Western men who came in contact with Japan—I am speaking not of the Old Dutch and Portuguese traders and priests, but of the diplomatists and merchants of eleven years ago—met with a cold reception. Above all things, the native government threw obstacles in the way of any inquiry into their language, literature, and history. The fact was that the Tycoon’s government—with whom alone, so long as the Mikado remained in seclusion in his sacred capital at Kyoto, any relations were maintained—knew that the Imperial purple with which they sought to invest their chief must quickly fade before the strong sunlight which would be brought upon it so soon as there should be European linguists capable of examining their books and records. No opportunity was lost of throwing dust in the eyes of the newcomers, whom, even in the most trifling details, it was the official policy to lead astray. Now, however, there is no cause for concealment; the Roi Faineant has shaken off his sloth, and his Maire du Palais, together, and an intelligible government, which need not fear scrutiny from abroad, is the result: the records of the country being but so many proofs of the Mikado’s title to power, there is no reason for keeping up any show of mystery. The path of inquiry is open to all; and although there is yet much to be learnt, some knowledge has been attained, in which it may interest those who stay at home to share.