A Heian Note on the Supernatural

Author(s): Marian Ury

Reviewed work(s):
Source: The Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Nov., 1988),
pp. 189-194
Published by: American Association of Teachers of Japanese
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/488941 .
Accessed: 16/11/2012 16:04
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
.
American Association of Teachers of Japanese is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend
access to The Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192.168.72.232 on Fri, 16 Nov 2012 16:04:02 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Journal of
the Association
of
Teachers
of Japanese
A HEIAN NOTE ON THE SUPERNATURAL
Marian
Ury
The modern reader of stories of the
supernatural
and occult more like-
ly
than not finds them attractive-if he or she
does-precisely
because
they
are not to be
believed;
they
let him flirt in
perfect safety
with
terrors he knows to be
imaginary.
To
try
to see the world
through
the
eyes
of
people
for whom
supernatural
creatures
possess
an
independent
and
alarming reality requires
a
great
deal of effort.
Reading
the
Genji,
for
example,
we are so well satisfied with
interpreting
the mononoke
who afflict its heroines as "a dramatic means of
expressing
a woman's
repressed
or unconscious emotions" (in the words of an excellent recent
critic1) that we are
apt
to
stop
there,
overlooking
the fact
that,
on a
literal
level,
the mononoke
belong
to a class of
beings
which Murasaki
Shikibu's
original
audience
thought
of as
actually existing
and of which
many
of those readers must have had
explicit conceptions.
This is not to
deny
that
people
of the Heian era believed that a
person's
state of mind
could render him or her vulnerable to attack
by supernatural
forces.
Setsuwa of the
period
tell us
repeatedly
that those who harbored lust-
ful
thoughts,
who were foolish or
foolhardy,
who ventured out alone at
night
or to deserted
places,
were liable to be seduced
by
foxes or devoured
by
oni. There are also numerous tales of
persons
whose
bravery,
wit,
piety,
or artistic
accomplishment
enabled them to
get
the
upper
hand in
such encounters. But misadventures of this sort were matters of
probabili-
ty
rather than
certainty; why
one fell victim and another did not some-
times resisted
explanation.
There is a resemblance here to the modern
folklore of urban crime.
Concern with the
supernatural pervaded many
fields of Heian
knowledge, constituting
almost all of its medicine and natural science and
(depending
on definitions) some of its
sociology,
as well.
Along
with ritu-
al, Chinese
letters,
and
practical government, supernatural phenomena
gave
food for
thought
to some of the
period's
most
vigorous
intellects. Oe
no Masafusa
(1041-1111),
who wrote "A Record of
Fox-Magic,"
was the
most eminent literatus of his
day.
The scion of
many generations
of
hereditary academicians,
he was Confucian tutor to a series of crown
189
This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192.168.72.232 on Fri, 16 Nov 2012 16:04:02 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Volume 22, Number 2
princes,
founder of a substantial
library, poet
in Chinese whose well-
turned
couplets
were
applauded by
his fellow literati (as well as author
of waka deemed
worthy
of inclusion in
anthologies)
and
compiler
of a
comprehensive,
authoritative
compendium
of court ceremonies. He was
also a trusted, hard-headed adviser to
GoSanjo
in that ruler's
attempt
at shoen reform and, later, scholarly
tutor to the
Fujiwara regent
Moromichi
(1062-1099),
toward whom he behaved with an
informality
which some considered
shocking. During
several
periods
he was also a
provincial governor
whose
greed
became
legendary.
One thinks of him as
greedy,
as
well,
for life: he
sponsored
Taoist
longevity rituals,
among
others, and collected accounts of
Japanese
Taoist immortals. He was both
admired and disliked:
among
his faults,
in the view of the most ortho-
dox, was his fondness for
collecting
stories.
Masafusa took a
great
interest in the
lively
world around him, a
world of which we catch no
glimpse
in the
writings
of the court ladies.
He wrote a
description
of the
great dengaku
mania of
1096,2 and he was
fascinated
by
the different kinds of
professional
entertainers who could
be seen in
Kyoto
and its environs. He wrote an
essay
on the courtesans
who served the needs of
Kyoto
travelers at the
way-stations
of
Eguchi
and Kanzaki, praising
their charms but
noting
also the care with which
they
hoarded their valuables, and an
essay
and several
quatrains
on the
kugutsu, gypsy-like
bands who lived
by hunting, prostitution
and
pup-
petry.3 Perhaps
it is not a
great leap
from these
marginal
and
mysterious
folk to the most
mysterious
of all. Like the "Record of
Fox-Magic,"
all of
these
writings
were formal,
if
relatively unornamented, compositions
in
Chinese.
A formal
composition
was
expected
to follow
precedents,
and there
was a noted
precedent
to
inspire
Masafusa in
writing
about the
popular
scene: Shin
sarugaku
no ki (ca. 1060), by Fujiwara
no Akihira (? -1066),
the most
distinguished
of
mid-century literati, whose
position
Masafusa
inherited. The work is a kind of
glossary-one
of the ancestors of the tra-
ditional textbook
genre
known as oraimono-in the form of a
description
of a fictitious
family
each of whose members
represents
a
particular
character
type,
vocation or craft. The occasion of the fiction is a
temple
festival which the
family attends, and here Akihira describes the lead-
ing
entertainers of the
day, naming
their
specialities.
For
writing
about
fox-magic
in
particular,
there were
precedents
of another sort: collections
by
eminent literati of tales of the
supernatural
could be found in the work
of
Miyoshi Kiyoyuki (847-918),
the
great Sugawara
no Michizane's
rival, and Ki no Haseo (851-912), Michizane's friend and
disciple.4
And
finally,
there were the
supernatural
tales that came from China:
190
This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192.168.72.232 on Fri, 16 Nov 2012 16:04:02 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Journal
of
the Association
of
Teachers
of Japanese
Masafusa's
concluding
reference to a number of these
emphasizes
the
literary purpose
of the
piece.
The date of the
essay
is
unknown,
but
Kawaguchi
Hisao,
in his
sympathetic, imaginative
modern
biography
of
Masafusa,
suggests
that
the immediate
impulse
for
writing
the
essay may
have come from the
epidemic
of
1107-1108;
he surmises that the
uneasy atmosphere
of a time
when the
very gods
were
thought
to have deserted the
capital
must
have
prompted
Masafusa to
ponder closely
the
uncanny
events of six
years
earlier.5
A Record of
Fox-Magic
(Kobi no ki)6
In the third
year
of the Kowa era
(1101),
the
capital
was
greatly
troubled with
fox-magic.
The bewitchments were of more than one kind.
To
begin
with,
the foxes held a
grand
ceremonial feast in front of Suzaku
Gate,
with horse manure in the
place
of rice and cattle bones served
up
for the
tasty
delicacies.
Next,
they
feasted behind the
Ministry
of Cere-
monial and in front of the
palace
stewards'
gates. People
referred to
these occurrences as "Fox
Banquets."7
The
[later]
Assistant Director of the
Library
Minamoto no
Takayasu8
paid
a visit to the shrine of the Kamo Consecrated Princess and left his
carriage standing
outside the
gate.
After
night
had fallen two or three
youths
of the middle
nobility
forced their
way
into it. There were women
with
them,
as well.
Making
their
way by moonlight, they
followed the
Kamo river down as far as Seventh Avenue. The Lieutenant of the Mili-
tary
Guards of the
Right
Nakahara no Iesue encountered them en route
and saw
garments gleaming
red inside the
carriage-the
colors distinct
even in the dark of
night.
He was all
alone,
and it
gave
him
quite
a turn.
The
oxboy collapsed
in the
roadway
in
agony, whereupon
the nobles
gave
him a red fan and
hastily
departed.
There were fox tracks on
top
of the
carriage
sill.9 The
oxboy
went
home,
and when he looked at the fan the
next
day,
he found that it was a calf's bone. Not
long
afterwards he took
ill,
and some
days
later he died. His master
Takayasu
was
severely
frightened
and wanted to burn the
carriage.
In a
dream,
a divine
being
appeared
to him and
said,
"I
pray you,
do not burn
it;
you
will be re-
warded." In the letters of
appointment
the
following year
he was made
Assistant Director of the
Library.
A certain
Imperial Highness
was
building
a
temple
in fulfillment of
a vow
and,
before
forty-five nights
should have
passed,
was
making
a
191
This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192.168.72.232 on Fri, 16 Nov 2012 16:04:02 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Volume
22,
Number 2
royal progress
to avoid
infringing
the directional taboo.10
Suddenly
a
number of men on horseback
appeared
in his
procession. They
rode with
both sleeves
upraised, covering
their
faces;
page boys
with
dangling
capstrings1l brought up
their rear. The Chamberlain Assistant Head of
the
University Fujiwara
no
Shigetaka12
became
suspicious
and
ques-
tioned
them,
but
they
refused to
give any particulars
about themselves
and
galloped
off into the
palace grounds through
Suzaku Gate. An
instant later
they
vanished.
Master of
Discipline
S6chin13 was renowned as a
preacher.
An old
woman came to
him,
saying
that she was a widow and wanted him to
conduct a Buddhist service. How
grateful
she would
be,
she
said,
for the
light
of his
presence!
S6chin
agreed.
As the
appointed evening
drew
near,
the old woman came to him
repeatedly, bowing
low. Sochin
went,
as she had
requested,
to Suzaku Road and Sixth Avenue. The mansion
was a
splendid
one,
quite
in the usual
style.
He was offered a
meal,
but no
servant
brought
it to him:
instead,
there were
handclaps
within the
blinds,
and at intervals wine
cups
were thrust out to him. He became
suspicious
and touched neither food nor drink. He mounted his
pulpit
to
begin
the service and
rang
the ritual bell. At the first
sound,
the
lamp-
flames
suddenly
turned blue. The food and drink that had been served
him were
dung
and filth!
Everything
around him seemed
strange
and
wrong.
Confused, bewildered,
and
half-dead,
he made his
escape.
The
following day
when
inquiries
were
made,
the
ground
had been cleared
and the house was
gone.
Some
people bought
a fine house at Seventh Avenue and
Kyogoku
and afterwards smashed
up
the
buildings. They
went to Toribeno14 and
used their tricks to
get
funeral
paraphernalia.
The
goods they gave
in
payment
were
originally gold,
silver,
and silk but the next
day
were
discovered to be tattered straw
sandals,
old
shoes, tiles,
pebbles,
bones
and antlers.
Many
are the
prodigies
of
fox-magic
recorded in the histories! Ta-
chi of Yin became a nine-tailed fox.15 A certain Miss
Jen
became someone's
wife,
but when she went to Ma-wei she was
caught by
his
dogs.
In one
instance,
foxes
destroyed
Scholar
Cheng's possessions;
in
another,
they
studied books from old
graves;
in
yet
another,
a fox became a noble
and,
advancing
to a district
governorship,
betrothed his
daughter's corpse.16
These are
outstanding examples.
I had failed to
give
them full
credence,
but
just
now in our own
country
we have seen foxes
practice
their bewitch-
ments. Even in this latter
age
there are
unearthly
occurrences like those
of
antiquity. Strange
indeed!
192
This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192.168.72.232 on Fri, 16 Nov 2012 16:04:02 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Journal of
the Association
of
Teachers
of Japanese
NOTES
1. Haruo
Shirane,
The
Bridge of
Dreams: A Poetics
of
the Tale
of
Genji
(Stanford
University
Press, 1987),
p.
114.
2. Translated in
Jacob Raz,
"Popular
Entertainment and Politics: the
Great
Dengaku
of
1096,"
Monumenta
Nipponica
40
(1985)
pp
283-98.
3. The
prose pieces
are called
Yujo
no ki and Kuiraishi
[sic]
no
ki;
annotated texts can be found in
Yamagishi
Tokuhei et
al.,
eds.
Kodai
seiji
shakai shiso
(Tokyo:
Iwanami
Shoten, 1979, 1981,
ser.
Nihon koten shiso
taikei),
pp.
153-59. (The
readings
of the titles
are those of the editor of the individual
essays,
Osone Shosuke.)
4. See
Douglas
E.
Mills,
A Collection
of
Tales
from Uji (Cambridge
University
Press, 1970),
pp.
17-18.
5.
Kawaguchi
Hisao,
Oe no
Masafusa (Tokyo:
Yoshikawa
K6bunkan,
1969,
ser.
Jinbutsu sosho, 148),
pp.
194-95,
Kawaguchi
comments
that both the
dengaku
mania and the
special popularity
of
super-
natural anecdotes were
expressions
of the sickness of Insei
period
society.
6. This translation is
part
of a
very
much
larger project
of translation
of Masafusa's
major
works,
funded
by
a translation
grant
from the
National Endowment for the Humanities. I am
grateful
to Burton
Watson for comments on an earlier version and to
Mary
Picone for
reviving my
interest in the
topic
of Masafusa's
essay.
The text
translated is Kobi no
ki,
ed.
Osone,
in
Yamagishi
et
al.,
pp.
166-68,
310, 454,
and Osone's
commentary
has
provided
much of the infor-
mation in the notes that follow.
7. Fox
Banquets:
Kitsune no
daikyo, perhaps
with reference to such
important palace
ceremonies as the annual
Daijin
no
daikyo
(taikyo),
the New Year's
Banquet given by
the Minister of State.
8. Minamoto no
Takayasu
was a descendant of
Emperor
Koko;
not
only
his office but his
comparatively
modest final rank-lower
fifth,
junior grade-suggests
that he was a literatus and
perhaps
a
per-
sonal
acquaintance
of Masafusa.
9.
Tojikimi,
the low board fitted across the front
opening
of the car-
riage.
10.
Any
disturbance of the
ground
was an offense
against
the
god
who
controlled that
direction;
the effect could be nullified if the
person
responsible
made a
temporary change
of residence within the
req-
uisite
period.
Such directional taboos were
part
of a
complicated
system
of
astrological
and
geomantic
beliefs
brought
from China.
They
are described in detail in Bernard
Frank,
Kata-imi et Kata-
tagae
(Bulletin
de la Maison
Franco-Japonaise,
Nouvelle Serie
193
This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192.168.72.232 on Fri, 16 Nov 2012 16:04:02 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Volume 22, Number 2
5:24, 1958).
Interestingly
enough,
one of Frank's chief sources is
Kuchizusami,
a
primer
of useful
knowledge
written in 970 for the
seven-year-old
son of a
regent
by
an eminent
literatus,
Minamoto no
Tamenori.
11.
Dangling capstrings
identified them as
civil,
as
opposed
to mili-
tary,
officials.
12. Masafusa does not
say
so,
but it
may
be
presumed
that he had the
story
direct from
Shigetaka
(1075-1118),
a
younger
literatus.
13. Praise of S6chin's
(1036-1109)
preaching appears
in other sources of
the
period.
The
story
that Masafusa tells here
evidently
circula-
ted
widely.
There is a version of it in the
miscellany
Fukuro
soshi,
compiled
ca.
1156,
the author
stating
that he heard it from a
high-
ranking
Buddhist cleric named
Shogan;
Ozawa Masao et
al.,
eds.
Fukuro s6shi chushaku
(Tokyo:
Kaku
Shobo, 1974, 1976),
1:289-93.
14. Toribeno was a burial and cremation
ground
in the extreme eastern
part
of
Kyoto
and the site of
many supernatural legends.
15. Ta-chi
appears
in the "Annals of Yin" of the Shih
chi;
she was the
favorite concubine of the debauched last
emperor
of Yin. There was
a tradition in
Japan
that after she was executed she turned into a
nine-tailed fox and flew into the
sky;
Osone cites evidence
suggest-
ing
that its source
may
have been in a Five
Dynasties commentary
to the Thousand Character
Classic,
a text which was much studied
in Heian
Japan.
16. The tale of Miss
Jen
seems also to have been a
popular
one in
Masafusa's
time;
its source was
supposed
to be a
poem
of Po
Chui-i,
but the
poem,
if it
existed,
does not
appear
in his collected works
and
may
be
presumed
lost.
Kawaguchi
derives the
story
from a
T'ang period
ch'uan-ch'i. The
story
was of a wife so beloved that
her husband could not
part
from her for an instant and when he
went
hunting placed
her before him on his horse. His
dogs recog-
nized her as a
fox,
leaped up
and killed her. The
story
about foxes
studying
books from
graves
is identified
by
Osone with one in
Chapter
18 of the Sou-shen chi. A man climbs a hill on Double
Nine
day,
hears a voice
lecturing,
and discovers that it comes from
a cave. In the cave are a
great many
foxes,
seated side
by
side. At
the
sight
of a human
being they
all
flee, except
for one with a
white
head,
who turns out to be the
protagonist's
own former
teacher-a venerable old man who one
day
had
mysteriously
disappeared.
Osone is unable to
identify
the other two stories that
Masafusa
cites,
although
the course of the latter can
easily
be
imagined.
194
This content downloaded by the authorized user from 192.168.72.232 on Fri, 16 Nov 2012 16:04:02 PM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions