These considerations bring up another point. The legend is believed, it is remarkable, and also it is local. The scene of its action may be the village itself, or some special landmark in the environs. A stunted pine, an ominous cavern, a deep pool, a lofty peak are all customarily endowed with legendary associations. Geographical landmarks keep fresh the memory of events connected with them by power of association, sometimes fixed in the name itself, like "The Mountain of Abandoned Old People" or "The River of Human Sacrifice." Furthermore, since legends, like all other kinds of folklore, are carried from one place to another, they fasten easily onto a similar feature of the landscape in a different part of the country. Man-made structures as well as nature's handiwork become encrusted with traditionary incident over the course of time: bridges, dams, castles, derelict dwellings. In Japan especially, every shrine and temple seems to bear its burden of ancient story. Some dark tragedy of the long ago has caused the erection of yonder Shinto shrine, and the villagers who pass it daily or honor it annually know its message. As legends attach to particular places in the district, so they cling to unusual persons who have lived in or passed through the township. Individuals who stand out from the everyday throng in some peculiar way, because of their physical prowess or roguish humor or occult powers, are talked about by later generations until they take on legendary hues. Or a famous historical figure has traveled briefly through the district, and given rise to a host of apocryphal stories about his actions in the locality. A priest, a saint, a god has performed his miracles and left his traces here. In short, a legend needs anchorage, whether to a person, a place, or an event, or to all three in combination, if it is to persist in the unwritten annals of the community.
The "localness" of legends has a simple explanation. These believed episodes continue to be told by people who find in them a strong personal interest. If interest lags, the legend dies. What maintains interest is the intimate association with family or neighborhood history, or with familiar landmarks. The audience knows the names of the actors, whose descendants live in their midst, and who may indeed include their own ancestors, and they see regularly the sites of the bygone events. While the history of textbooks seems distant and impersonal, the remembered traditions of the community possess the fascination of immediate concern; they happened here, to us. To the appeal of the unusual and arresting incident is thus added the attraction of local interest. Legends represent the folk's-eye view of history.
As a consequence, local traditions flourish most vigorously in hamlets and villages that have endured with little social change for long reaches of time. In such a society one knows his neighbors and shares their sense of a common past; the community has roots, traditions, almost an independent corporate existence. Legends cannot persevere in the big city, save perhaps in local neighborhoods that manage for a space to preserve a sense of identity before the bulldozers desecrate the old landmarks and new swarms of migrants uproot the established dwellers. Nor will too sparse a settlement nourish the seeds of traditionary tales. Enough of a society must exist to set the stage for action, rumor, the play of fancy, and the bubbling currents of excited talk. It is no accident that in the United States New England, the oldest section of the country, and the one chiefly settled in compact townships, contributes the lion's share of American legends. Scarcely a New England town history but contains one chapter on local traditions: a case of witchcraft; a visit from the Devil, whose footprint remains in solid rock; foibles and antics of eccentric townsfolk; a sighting of the sea serpent off the shore: specters in a haunted house that bears an ineradicable bloodstain.
In closely knit communities a legend lives on through constant repetition. This repeated telling of the legend over the generations insures its folklore quality. For even if a story begins immediately after some remarkable happening, in a form fairly close to the facts, it will assume ever more fantastic hues over the years. The Icelandic sagas were first told in the eleventh century by professional saga-men as factual histories of the great chieftains, but when they were finally written down two centuries later, many floating folklore themes and tales had slipped into the narratives. There is indeed one group of scholars who contend that after 150 years of unbroken oral tradition not a vestige of historical truth remains. In more recent times some check is provided on the fanciful growth of oral legends through printed versions, which help to stabilize their form in a local history or topography, or traveler's report. So long as the legend continues to be told, whether or not it has seeped into print, we can call it a "folk legend." If some scribe wrote down the story in an earlier day with stylistic embellishments, in a manner no longer to be found on the lips of the people, we may call such a form a "literary legend." The classic documents of Japanese historical literature, the Kojiki and the Nihongi, contain literary legends of this sort. Or a contemporary writer may select a legendary theme as a basis for his own inventive additions, and this too is a literary legend. While in Japan I met an English couple who were preparing a book of Japanese "legends" for a series of volumes on legends of all lands being issued by a distinguished publishing house, and they planned to elaborate upon themes in the Kojiki and the Nihongi according to their own imaginative fancy. Such a volume may well prove entertaining, but its contents will bear no resemblance to the word-of-mouth traditions of Japanese villagers.
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We may now return to the question of why Japan possesses such an abundance of folk legends. All the elements favoring the creation of folk legendry coalesce in the Land of the Rising Sun. A stationary people have lived in their village communities since the dawn of history. No frontier march has drawn the population toward virgin land, save for the late nineteenth-century push to Hokkaido—and some Japanese today speak slightingly of Hokkaido in contrast to the "real Japan." No colonial empire has sucked out the people to foreign shores, except for the abortive expansion that ended in 1945. For three centuries, by imperial decree, no Japanese could leave nor foreigner enter the home-land. As a national boundary ringed in the islands, so did a village boundary fence in each mura, a formidable barrier erected by folk belief, which increased the natural isolation of mountain fastness and sequestered isle. Beyond the village boundary lay an unknown outside world beset with danger and mystery. Each returning villager purified himself with proper ritual when he recrossed the mura's edge. Dwellers in each farm village worshiped their own local deity, of whom indeed they all regarded themselves as descendants. Hence each mura possessed a powerful sense of its own individuality and tradition. Still, travelers and strangers crossed the boundary from time to time—itinerant monks, singing priestesses, woodworkers, peddlers, performers, blind musicians, tax collectors from the daimyo—bringing with them hearsay and traditions which easily adapted themselves to new homes. In spite of the tight clannish organization of the village society, one can find an identical legend scattered in fifty or a hundred mura the length and breadth of Japan.
The rice farmers or deep-sea fishermen and their families, living compactly in each hamlet, furnished the human reservoirs for the storing up of legends. An ancient history extending back into mythical origins presented a panorama of stirring events from which legends sprouted. From southern Kyushu to northern Aomori one hears of settlements founded by the Heike nobles who fled from the battlefields of the twelfth-century civil wars after their defeat by the Genji, and whose supposed descendants now live on as anonymous peasants. A spectacular landscape honeycombed with mountain ranges, watered with lakes, rivers, hot springs, and quiet pools, and covered with forests and shrubbery invites all manner of legendary association. We have simply to scan the titles of a typical collection of Japanese densetsu to see the ties between topography and tradition: "The Waterfall of Seven Pots"; "The Strange Willow Tree of Shigekubo"; "The Pond That Does Not Reflect the Moon"; "The Bridge Where Saigyo Turned Back"; "The Hot Spring Where the Son of a God Took a Bath"; "The Foundation Stone That Shed Blood"; "The Mound of Seizo the Strong Man." Collection after collection rings the changes on these themes, until it would seem that every willow tree, mound, and meadow carries its own special story.