This vast body of folk custom and ritual contributed to the growth of legend in various ways. Spirits of the dead who nourished some grievance or hatred toward the living at the time of their deaths must be placated by the erection of shrines. Only if the shrine is regularly attended and annually propitiated will the spirit restrain its power to harm. So the ancient tale of human sacrifice or vengeful murder stays alive in the memory of the kin group obligated to tend the shrine, and of the villagers who daily pass by. The curious feature of this belief, to a Westerner, lies in the veneration of an enemy. Sometimes the enshrined spirit has acted nobly and heroically, as when a young boy allows himself to be buried alive in order to appease the god of the lake and keep its waters from flooding the dam. But in many instances the now-honored person lost his life after an act of treachery or wanton cruelty or hand-to-hand strife on the battlefield. Lafcadio Hearn gives an ironic example of this perverse attitude in his Kwaidan, where a dishonest servant is beheaded by his master and dies with a curse on his lips. The other servants in great fright beseech their lord to build a shrine to his spirit, but the lord refuses, finally explaining that all the malice of the spirit was expended when the head rolled on the ground and chewed a stone, to fulfill the servant's dying threat. Customarily, of course, the spirit's venom is never drawn by such last-minute diversions.
Besides the spirits of the long dead, Japanese villagers fear also a host of demons. These odd-appearing and malevolent creatures are thought to be the degenerate corruptions of ancient divinities. By far the best known is the kappa, a manlike goblin with a saucer-shaped indentation in the top of its head that holds water; if the water is spilled, the kappa loses his power. Kappa inhabit rivers and prey on children who swim in their waters or upon horses tethered by the river bank. They enter their victim through the anus and draw forth his intestines. Hence when a drowned person is discovered with a distended anus, a kappa is believed to have pulled him under. Recently a Japanese sociologist came upon a village in Kagoshima Prefecture whose people still worship at a kappa shrine, a fact supporting the theory that the kappa descends from a monkey messenger of a river god. The tengu is a winged demon with a long pointed nose who lives in the top of tall pine trees and abducts human beings. Since he is found in mountainous regions, and even on occasion serves as protector of a mountain shrine, some historic connection appears to exist between mountain divinities and tengu. Today at Shinto festivals the guide in the procession bearing the portable shrine (mikoshi) wears the mask of a tengu, representing the Sky World deity Saruta-hiko. Divinity may also lurk behind the yama-uba, an ogreish witch whose name itself signifies "old woman of the mountains." Legends arise from the experiences of the villagers with these and other anthropomorphic monstrosities.
In a different though related class fall the animals who enchant and deceive—foxes and badgers and serpents. They assume the guise both of ordinary animals and of human beings. They may marry with humans, haunt families, bring treasure to those who have befriended them, and cause humiliation and death to their enemies. A close link binds the kitsune, fox, with Inari, the Rice God, whom he serves as messenger, a vestige perhaps of a primeval era of fox worship. Buddhism has influenced the conception of the badger, who is pictured as a full-bellied Buddhist monk. In folk tales and popular belief the serpent, snake, or dragon often assumes the form of a comely maiden or handsome suitor. In ancient times people considered the serpent a mountain god incarnate. The Japanese mythologist Higo Kazuo has identified the serpent with a pre-Buddhist water god, who demands human sacrifices. Since the serpent always ends up in the bottom of a pond, which is ever after known as his lair, his legendary home is clearly marked. Foxes and badgers are not so closely associated with landmarks, but carry on their mischief in country and even city districts, where their outrageous tricks enter into family and village saga.
Because of this pervasive force of minkan shinko, the Japanese idea of densetsu means something more than our "legend." Densetsu intimately and continuously affect the lives of the farming and fishing families. They are not idle and picturesque legends broadcast by chambers of commerce to lure tourists to scenic spots, but traditions based on ancient beliefs. The word "religion," even coupled with "folk," again clouds the issue, for the tissue of beliefs in minkan shinko does not carry the ecclesiastical overtones of formal Christian worship. These taboos, rites, festivals, offerings do not linger underground like the folklore of Christianity, with its hidden Devil and witches, ghosts and charms, but survive openly and publicly. The densetsu never move very far from this central core of compulsive and time-honored beliefs that dominate Japanese country people. A tradition about a vengeful spirit is remembered not just for itself, but because a shrine has been built for that spirit, which must be tended and served. A powerful wrestler to whom legendary feats of strength are ascribed is said to have obtained his power from a god. A hunter with marvelous skill received the gift of unerring aim from a goddess of the mountain whom he aided in childbirth. Even tricks of a scapegoat, retold in other countries for their comic sauce, in Japan become involved with minkan shinko; the knave deceives the god or impersonates a priest. Legends about choja, or rich peasants, are inspired by Buddhist ideas of impermanence and the humbling of the rich and prospering of the poor. Ancestral spirits become village deities, deities degenerate into demons, the old nature-religion endows trees and stones, mountains and rivers with spirit life, the imported Buddhism introduces new gods and saints who perform miracles, and every phase produces its growth of folk legends.
European folklorists of the nineteenth century speculated on the origin of folk tradition which, under the glare of civilization, took on the guise of quaint and curious survivals from a pagan society. European and American legends of haunted houses, spiteful fairies, and shape-changing werewolves do seem anachronistic alongside motorized highways and television sets. But densetsu belong to the living folk-culture of Japan, and are supported by the institutions of the culture, like Shinto shrines and national festivals and Kabuki and Noh drama, which honor the old traditions. The intellectuals may not believe in a god of the privy or the transformation of foxes, but they are thoroughly familiar with such ideas and should never regard them as quaint or curious. Families still become fox-possessed, and yet bear scales that testify to snake ancestors. While I was in Japan the newspapers carried a story: "Tokyo Restaurant Cook Haunted by Cat's Ghost" (Asahi Evening News, June 19, 1957). The story broke first when a secretary of the Austrian Embassy wrote to the papers exposing an act of cruelty she had witnessed while dining out. A cook in a fit of irritation at a stray cat that had been pestering him threw the animal into a hot oven. The restaurant fired the cook, the police fined him, and the cat too exacted revenge:
The restaurant cook who hurled a tomcat into a roaring oven in a fiery rage told police today the animal's ghost has begun to haunt him.
The cook, Koji Hayama, said every night since Saturday when the cat was roasted to death in the oven of Tokyo Kaikan's Grill Rossini, he has been suffering pains in his legs and hips and has been sleeping fitfully.
According to Japanese superstition, anyone killing a cat will be haunted by the animal's ghost.
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The accurate collecting of Japanese legends began only in the present century. Indeed the science of folklore in Japan is no longer than the life of eighty-four-year-old Kunio Yanagita, whose duties as a young man in the agricultural branch of the government brought him in contact with farmers in the rice paddies, and eventually directed his energies toward rural