The Legends of Tono (Tono Monogatari)

Yanagita Kunio (as told by Sasaki Kizen) · 1910

Overview

Published in 1910. Yanagita Kunio wrote down the lore of Tono in Iwate Prefecture as told by Sasaki Kizen, a native of the district, and arranged it into a preface and 119 tales. Mountain gods, tengu, mountain men and mountain women, kappa, zashiki-warashi, Oshira-sama, people spirited away, foxes, the spirits of the dead: all are told as things the villagers actually saw and heard, and recorded calmly in short passages of classical prose.

Background

As an official of the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce, Yanagita traveled the provinces on inspection and grew deeply interested in rural life and belief. In 1908 he met Sasaki Kizen in Tokyo and wrote down his stories, and two years later he published 350 copies at his own expense. It was the period after the Russo-Japanese War, when the wave of modernization was beginning to reach the countryside, and the preface's call to "make the people of the plains tremble" carries the will to confront city people with a world of mountain villages they knew nothing of. Tono is a basin ringed by mountains such as Hayachine, and a market town linking the coast and the interior.

Highlights

  1. The old woman of SamutoA girl spirited away comes back, more than thirty years later on a day of strong wind, as an old woman. And then she leaves again.Read “(place)” →
  2. Zashiki-warashiA god in the shape of a child who lives in old houses. When it leaves, the house declines.Read “(place)” →
  3. Kappa-buchiA kappa tries to drag a horse into the pool and is dragged all the way to the stable instead.Read “(place)” →
  4. Ghosts of the tsunamiA man who lost his wife in the great Meiji tsunami meets her ghost on the shore one summer night. She is with another man.Read “(place)” →
  5. MayoigaA fine, empty mansion that appears in the mountains. Anything taken home from it brings good fortune.Read “(place)” →