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Konjaku Monogatari-shu:
Supernatural Creatures and Order
M ori Masato
INTRODUCTION In analyzing the collections of brief tales known as setsuwa, it is necessary to construct something such as the following three categories:
The editorial act.
The selection act.
The narrative act.
By editorial act, I mean the actual gathering of the narratives and the subsequent provision of unity to the collection. By the selection act, I mean the assigning of function and meaning to each story in order to fulfill the editorial plan of the collection. And by the narrative act, I mean the concrete choice of words to clarify the function and meaning of each individual tale. Hence, fundamentally, narrative is subordinate to selection, and selection is subordinate to the editorial act. Selection, however, is not completely controlled by the editorial plan, and the individual ^elections are thus able to stand on their own as independent units. There is, accordingly, a relationship of both harmony and friction born from the gap between the acts of editing and selec tion. Further, the narrative act does not serve merely to further the meaning of any given selection, and there are cases in which the narrative alone comes to have a life of its own. There is, then, the same relationship of harmony and friction existing between the acts of selection and narration. Collections of tales are made up of such interrelationships between the three acts of editing,
Translated by W. Michael Kelsey.
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selecting and narrating, and the relationships between these three factors are constantly shifting. In this essay I will consider Konjaku monogatari-shu, and in particular its volume X X V II (“Japanese tales: spirits”）from the perspective outlined above, concentrating in particular on an attempt to clarify the meaning assigned to supernatural creatures during the Heian period.1 Through this consideration I hope to touch on the overall structure of Konjaku monogatari-shu.
S U P E R N A T U R A L C R E A T U R E S: T IM E C O N S ID E R A T IO N S The reader of Volume X X V II of Konjaku monogatari-shu will soon be struck by the fact that supernatural creatures are active primarily during particular, set time periods. Their activities are concentrated mainly during the nighttime, and excepting that class of creatures called kami (“deities”), this is true of such diverse creatures as ghosts (m ), demons (oni), spirits (set), wild boars {inoshishi) and foxes (kitsune). Nighttime seems indeed to have been the time period made especially for these creatures. Night time was clearly a special time, one exempt from the order con trolled by humans during the daylight hours. Supernatural creatures were most active during the middle of the night. Both the ghost of the minister Minamoto no Toru which appeared before the retired emperor Uda (XX V II. 2)，and the spirit which came to steal the oil from the lamp in the palace ( X X V II.1 )are said to have appeared “in the middle of the night.” There were, however, also spirits which began moving earlier, during the evening. When the couple coming to the capital from the Eastern provinces stopped at Kawara-no-in they had no prob lems during the daytime, but when evening fell a demon murdered the wife (X X V II. 17). At an estate called Sozu-dono, a red robe
- For a general introduction to this collection of stories, made about 1100 by an unknown Buddhist monk, see Kelsey 1982. English translations of some of the tales dealt with here are available in Ury 1979, and for my own source see References. 148 Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 9/2—3 June-September 1982
M o r i M a s a to Supernatural creatures with this type of character did not, as a rule, leave their own grounds and appear at other places. These creatures were mostly spirits of those who had formerly lived at the site they now haunted. The spirit which appeared before the retired emperor Uda, the current owner of Kawara-no-in, was Minamoto no Toru, the former owner of the land (X X V II. 2). The house to which the official Miyoshi no Kiyoyuki moved in X X V II. 31 was said to be an “evil house,” and when he moved in several demons did indeed appear, using a number of means to try to frighten the new resident and drive him away. Both the ghost of Minamoto no Toru and the demons who inhabited the house into which Miyoshi no Kiyoyuki moved strenuously pressed their prior claims to ownership, and complained that they were now cramped for want of adequate space, but they were reasoned with and finally dispersed by the new owners. But these must have been particularly weak ghosts and demons, and the new owners people who had accumulated particularly unusual amounts of virtue. In most cases when a person treaded unprepared into a haunted place he would arouse the wrath of the supernatural creatures living there, and generally lose his life. For this reason, the Konjaku compiler constantly repeats his didactic messages: “You should never take even the smallest of steps into an area you do not know. It is needless to say that you should find spending the night in such a place unthinkable” (X X V II. 7)，or “You should never spend the night in old halls when there is no one around” (X X V II. 6). Thus it is easy to appreciate why the Konjaku com piler has added a detailed geographical explanation of places considered haunted, beginning with such places as Oni-dono and Sozu-dono and extending to other areas in which supernatural creatures were likely to appear. These spirits controlled such locations, and it was necessary for humans to learn that they should not invade them. Volume X X V II of Konjaku mono- gatari-shu might be considered a map of sites occupied by humans and supernatural creatures.
Supernatural Creatures and Order One also notes that those places in which supernatural creatures lived and made appearances frequently were bridges or river- banks. Stories 13， 14 ， 41 ，42, and 43 of Volume X X V II provide examples of this. It is probably possible to explain this by con sidering these spirits to be related to water deities. Such an explanation would not be in error, but it would also tend to bring such supernatural creatures down to the same dimension, closing off any possibility of clarifying either the diverse characters such creatures possessed, or the various concepts and imaginative powers held by the Heian Japanese; further, it is in danger of bypassing the central problems found in Konjaku monogatari-shu. We cannot deal separately with the fact that supernatural crea tures on the one hand generally limited their appearances to times that were not a part of daily life and to locations also not a part of daily life, such as abandoned, rundown houses and buildings, and, on the other hand, that they often appeared around bridges and river banks. We need a unified explanation for these two facts. It is well known that since ancient times one of the most famous places for the appearance of demons had been the gate known as Rajomon.2 This first became widely known through the legend of the Heian warrior Watanabe no Tsuna’s conquest of a demon there. As far as can be determined, however, this legend can be traced only to the performance of the No drama Rashomon, and we can find no sign of it in the Heian period. The oldest known version of the legend of the Rajomon demon is, rather, the follow ing：
On a moonlit night a person was walking past the Rajomon Gate, humming the poem of Miyako no Yoshika: The air clears; the wind blows through the young willow’s hair.
- This gate is known now as Rashomon rather than as Rajomon, partly due to the fact that the title of the No play discussed below and a famous short story by Akutagawa Ryunosuke (later made into a movie) are called Rasdmon. In this essay, however, we will use the Heian pronunciation except when referring to the No play.
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There is also an episode in the picture scroll Haseo no soshi in which Ki no Haseo discovers that the person he has defeated in a dice game is the Suzakumon demon. The Rajomon and Suzakumon demons are mutually inter changeable in the story of the theft and recovery of the biwa Genjo. This is because these two gates resemble one another in a striking way. The main southern entrance to the imperial court was the Suzakumon, and if one went straight south from there along the Suzaku main road, one would arrive at the main entrance to the capital city, the Rajomon. The two were, in short, the most centrally important gates in the city, dividing respectively the imperial palace from the outside, and the capital city itself from the outside. What, then, is the meaning in the fact that demons lived and appeared at such gates? If we think of the Suzakumon as sym bolizing the imperial palace and the Rajomon as symbolizing the capital city, then we might interpret them as representing the decline of the imperial holdings and the decay of the court. This interpretation would not necessarily be in error, but it is by no means the whole story. Apparitions seem to have frequently appeared around gates, and these apparitions are not limited to demons (oni). For example, a man passing the gate called Otenmon during the dead of night caught sight of a pure green, shining object, and heard an eerie laughing voice. It is said he thought it was prob ably a fox {Konjaku monogatari-shu X X V II. 33). It would thus seem that the various extraordinary events that occurred around gates are related to the function of gates themselves. The story of Watanabe no Tsuna’s conquest of the demon can be found in the No Rashomon, in the special volume “Tsurugi no maki” （“ Stories of swords” ）in the Yashiro text of Heike mono-
gatari, and in Volume 23 of Taiheiki，and it differs slightly from
source to source. If we were to list a combination of all these episodes it would look like this:
I. The incident itself:
Tsuna hears rumors of the demon’s appearance.
Tsuna goes to the location of the appearances.
The demon appears in the form of a beautiful woman.
The demon seizes Tsuna’s helmet, or his hair.
Tsuna cuts off the demon’s arm.
Tsuna presents the arm to Minamoto no Yorimitsu. II. The sequel:
Tsuna, or Yorimitsu, goes into religious seclusion.
The demon assumes the form of a relative of Tsuna, or Yorimitsu.
The demon regains his arm and leaves.
The No Rashomon lacks I. 3，I. 6 and all of I I ; Heike monogatari lacks I. 1 and I. 6, and Taiheiki lacks I. 3. Rashomon has the loca tion of the demon’s appearance at Rajomon; in Heike monogatari it is the bridge at Ichij5, and in Taiheiki it is a forest in Uda County of Yamato Province. We can, accordingly, see that gates, bridges and forests are interchangeable as sites for the appearance of d e m o n s. 1 his observation is strongly reaffirmed if we follow it up with a look at Konjaku X X V I I. 13. This tale has the bridge called Agi no hashi，in Omi Province, as the site of a demon's appearance, and a warrior fights with this demon. The warrior makes a bet with his compatriots that he will be able to cross the bridge, and, insofar as he succeeds, we have the episodes I. 3 and I. 4; ultimately, though, his head is chewed off by the demon, and here we have II. 3. Excepting I. 6， all of the structural elements noted above for the Tsuna tale com plex are also present here. The reason that gates and bridges have such interchangeability should be understood in light of the fact that they were seen as having identical characters. Simply speaking, that which unifies the bridge and the gate is the fact that each is a boundary. That is to say, they both distinguish “this side” from “that side，” and are the connectors that tie two different spaces together; they
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two or cause it to move again. Thus it happens that demons reveal themselves at gates and bridges, those places which link the center with the surroundings, or order with confusion. It is not only demons who appear at boundaries. A fox ap peared at the bank of the K5ya River (Konjaku X X V II. 41)，and the ghost of a woman who had died in childbirth at the bank of a river in Mino Province (Konjaku X X V II. 43). Further, the boun daries at whicn supernatural creatures appear are not limited to gates, rivers and bridges. In the Suzuka Mountains, which constituted the boundary between Ise and Omi provinces, there was an old temple held to be the residence of a demon {Konjaku monogatari-shu X X V II. 44). Also, there is the following story: A man who was skilled at singing kagura songs wanted to cross from Mutsu Province to Hitachi Provice. He awakened with a start from a doze on horseback, and seeing that he had indeed arrived in Hitachi, sang a Hitachi song. At this he heard a frightening voice from deep in the mountains call out, “A h ，delightful!” The man died that night at his inn. He had been taken by the god of the mountain, who liked his song so much (Konjaku X X V II. 45, paraphrase).
The man here was far too unprepared. Boundaries belong to both the areas they mark off. Alternatively, they belong to neither. They are thus characterized by the fact that they are the places where two orders meet, interact, and mingle together, and it is necessary for those who would pass through them to take special precautions.
S U P E R N A T U R A L C R E A T U R E S AS O P P O N E N T S O F O R D E R According to Taiheiki, the demon conquered by Watanabe no Tsuna appeared in a forest. This is because the forest is an unopened area，in contrast to villages and cities where one finds human civilization. Demons attacked people or domestic animals going through forests primarily because this was the area the demons had initially controlled, and they did not want to permit the invasion of culture into it. Demons had their own order, as demons. The facts, then, that on the one hand supernatural creatures made their appear
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ances at boundary areas such as gates, bridges and the like, and on the other, that they lived in residences and buildings, are not separate problems. And this, in turn, is not a problem separate from the fact that demons were active during a fixed time frame, at night. That which we call “demon” is the concrete mani festation of the chaos which was conceived of as being outside order. Demons were, accordingly, often imagined in frightful forms, as having large bodies, grotesque horns, piercing raised eyes, sharp tusks, and the like. Such forms accurately transmit the demon in his character as a representative of confusion. At the same time, though, we should turn our attention to the fact that the demon was a creature that often could not be seen. Several sources attest to this nature of the demon: “Poetry... moves even those demons which cannot be seen by the eye，’ (Preface to Kokinzvakashu). “ Demons which cannot be seen by the eye” (Genji monogatari, Hahakigi chapter). “ Demons and women should not be seen by people，， (Tsutsumi Chunagon monogatari, “ The Princess who Loved Insects”). The demons which appear in tales very frequently do so without actually showing their form. One rainy night Ariwara no Nari hira took a woman to a warehouse where they spent the night; the woman who was supposed to be by his side was eaten by a demon who left only her clothes and head {Konjaku monogatari- shu X X V II.フ)• An official was eaten by a demon when he reported for work early in the morning; in this case, too, only the head was left {Konjaku X X V II. 9). In neither of these stories was the demon actually seen by anyone. The demon who stole the biwa Genjo returned it by a means that would allow mm to remain hidden. Demons were thus invisible, and lived in an invisible dimension. By “ invisible dimension,” I mean a dimension of chaos which was not illuminated by the light of human civilization, a world of Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 9/2—3 June-September 1982 157
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quered is loudly proclaimed as the following:
Both the earth and the trees belong to our great lord.... is not Rashomon indeed the southern gate to our capital? Even if supernatural creatures like demons are living there, are we to permit this?
And in Okagami, Fujiwara no Tadahira disperses the demon with the following authority:
W hat manner of creature is it that attempts to lay hands on one who has come to carry out an imperial order? Not to comply would be evil indeed.
And, further, when the Japanese ambassador to the T ’ang court， Kibi no Makibi’ encountered a demon in China, he made the following proclamation:
What manner of being are you? I am none other than the messenger of the Emperor of Japan. Nothing should stand in the way of Imperial business. How, demon, could you interfere? (Kibi Daijin nitto emaki and others).
Further, in Shichiku kuden’s description of the disappearance of the biwa Genjo, the Emperor has a proclamation read that there is no one— even if it be a spirit—who is exempt from obeying an imperial edict, and the demon, muttering, “I must follow the imperial edict，’’ lowers the biwa from the top of the gate. Demons, then, were frequently brought under control by the words of the central government or the Emperor. We have a glimpse here at the relationship between the governmental and imperial authorities and how they imagined the demon, as a crea ture who stood outside their authority and came into conflict with it, the preservation of order, authority and centralism. Demons were not, of course, the only creatures who were in visible. The creature who came during the middle of the night to the court to steal the oil for the lamps ultimately flees without revealing its shape [Konjaku monogatari-shu X X V II. 10). And it was not only demons who came into conflict with the central government or the emperor. The ghost of Minamoto no Toru, who was the former owner of the Kawara-no-in, is overwhelmed
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by the imperial authority in the words of the retired emperor Uda and must leave {Konjaku X X V II. 2). Supernatural creatures’ nearly without exception, are squeezed out of the human world of order and must come into conflict with that world.
T H E E D IT O R IA L A C T Konjaku monogatari-shu is made up of a total of 1,059 stories, and is organized on the following three general principles:
Spatial (with stories set in India, China and Japan).
Topical (stories concerning both Buddhist and secular themes).
Time.
Volume X X V II，which is composed of stories about supernatural creatures, belongs to the Japanese secular tales, and the question is what ranking has been given to it within the Japanese secular stories. One way to answer this question is through an investigation of what forms the central hub of the Japanese secular stories in Konjaku monogatari-shu. I would like to approach this problem by first giving the reader a general idea of the structure of the first half of the collection’s Japanese secular stories. These contain the following subject matter: Volume X X I: No longer extant. Volume X X II: History of the Fujiwara family (stories 1-8). Volume X X III: Stories of strength and proficiency (stories 13-26). Volume X X IV : Stories of artistic and literature accomplish ment (stories 1—57). Volume X X V : Histories of warriors (stories 1—14).
Volume X X I is no longer extant. It is generally considered to have been planned to contain stories about the history of the imperial family, but that it was never completed. This supposition seems true, especially in light of the fact that Volume X ，which
creatures outside of the framework of order—within a section that is generally devoted to the affirmation of the authority of the central government. The paradoxical relationship that Volume X X V II holds within the collection is significant both to the volume itself and the overall collection. A diversity of supernatural creatures appears within the stories in Volume X X V II of Konjaku monogatari-shu. They are diverse, but it is possible to classify them at least to a certain extent, and it would seem that the Konjaku compiler himself has attempted such a classification. His classification by and large is based on their names: the
five categories include ghosts (rei)，demons (oni), spirits (sei), ani
mals (dobutsu) and deities (kami). The distinctions between the individual categories are not always clear, but “ghosts” are the souls of humans (almost always of dead people), “demons” are violent, frightening creatures, “spirits” are the souls of inorganic things, and “animals” are creatures such as wild boars and foxes that trick human beings. By far the majority of these super natural creatures are demons and ghosts. Thus the word reiki ぐ‘spirits”) used in the title of the volume itself should not be thought of as “strange demons called ghosts，” but rather as “ghosts (rei) and demons (ki, or om').” Volume X X V II was, in short, titled by the compiler’s selection of two of the typical supernatural creatures who appear in its stories. The five categories into which the supernatural creatures appear ing within Volume X X V II fit constitute the first principle by which the stories in the volume have been arranged. The tendency of the volume to associate stories from the same group is actually quite conspicuous.1 his cannot be explained merely as a matter of convenience in the disposal of the tales. As I will explain in greater detail below, supernatural creatures were viewed as them selves existing in a certain ranking, and their ranking within the collection by and large reflects this. To put it in other words, Konjaku monogatari-shu has attempted to provide a ranking to the supernatural creatures. Here we must
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consider the following reality. In short, the first supernatural creature treated in Volume X X V II is the ghost of a man killed by lightening before the establishment of the capital in Kyoto; he is, in other words, the oldest of the supernatural creatures existing in the capital. The narrative proceeds, so to speak, from the birth of supernatural creatures in the capital, and the tendency pene trating nearly completely through Konjaku monogatari-shu to place the story of creation at the beginning of the volume also manifests itself here. We can, thus, see Konjaku monogatari-shU as a work attempting to organize its ideas on supernatural creatures and systematize them. The mere imagination of supernatural creatures is not the same thing as actually transferring that mental picture to words and organizing it. The act of narrating and editing stories about supernatural creatures is a positive undertaking, aimed at bringing light into the darkness of confusion and providing order.
T H E S E L E C T IO N ACT The selection act is fundamentally subordinate to the editorial act. The insertion of a single tale is done for the realization of the plan, and the selection thus inserted is not independent from its place in the overall organization. As an example, let us consider Konjaku monogatari-shu X X V II. 2 8 :
The daughter of Fujiwara no Michinaga, the princess of the Jdtomon’in ， heard during the height of the cherry blossom season at the palace Kyogaku- den a voice recite the following couplet: Overflowing in their fragrance, these cherry flowers! She had someone investigate to see who had recited this couplet, but they could not find the poet. Thinking it must have been the work of a spirit, she reported it to the prime minister (her brother Fujiwara no Yorimichi), who replied, “ Things like that are always happening around that area.” (Paraphrase.)
Konjaku monogatari-shu has taken this tale from a work of poetry
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would be possible to deal effectively with that creature in the event one happened to encounter it. For example, not all supernatural creatures had the same type of power— demons ate people, but wild boars and foxes merely tricked them— and hence one had to be careful not to enter any unknown place that might contain demons, but in the case of wild boars and foxes, it was necessary to maintain a calm, courageous attitude. There was a ranking among the supernatural creatures. Volume X X V II. 34 provides a good example:
A hunter sometimes heard, when passing by a wooded area, something or other calling out his name. Whatever it was, it did not call out from the hunter’s left side—— that is, the side at which he held his bow—— but it called from his right side. At about that time his younger brother, who had been living in the capital for a long time, returned home, and when he passed the same area in an experiment, he was called by his brother’s name. Think ing that if it were a demon or spirit it would never mistake the younger brother for the elder one, the younger brother decided that it was a worth less fellow indeed. The next night the younger brother mounted his horse backwards, to confuse whatever it was into thinking that his left hand, where he held his bow, was his right hand, and passed the area. As usual, it called out his elder brother’s name, and he quickly got off an arrow in the direction of the voice. The next morning they found that a large wild boar had been killed by the arrow (Paraphrase).
If a supernatural creature is found out like this, it is an invitation to defeat. Alternatively, when a supernatural creature has con ceded defeat, it will show its true form. For example, when the creature that had been appearing around the palace Reizeiin and frightening people was caught, it said, “I am a water sp irit，，，and then disappeared. This water spirit never appeared again {Kon jaku X X V II. 5). Thus to learn the true form of a extraordinary being is to over power that being. The act of selection in Konjaku monogatari- shu is, accordingly, an attempt to clarify the true form of super natural creatures, an attempt to provide order to confusion, an overpowering of supernatural creatures through the power of
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language. There are, however, also examples such as Volume X X V I I. 10:
A creature would come every night to steal the oil from the palace lamps. The Emperor ordered a high ranking aristocrat, Minamoto no Kintada, ‘‘Make it reveal its shape.” While Kintada was waiting for it he heard the sound of footsteps, although he could see nothing. When Kintada kicked at the sound, it ran away. When a lamp was lit they found a blood trail that led to the room called the Nurigome, but there was nothing inside. The creature did not, however, come back again to steal the oil (Paraphrase).
Kintada defeated this supernatural creature and drove it away by injuring it and drawing blood, which is equivalent to making it reveal part of its own body. In its description of Kintada’s vic tory Konjaku monogatari-shu has, by the power of words, been able to realize the overwhelming of this supernatural creature. Konjaku does, however, consistently refer to the supernatural creature that appears in this story by the name mono. Because this “mono” is a general expression for supernatural creatures which do not have clear forms, Konjaku has not here been able to see through to the true form of the creature and call it by its proper name. The compiler has not, in short, been able, through the act of selection, to completely overwhelm the supernatural creature in this case.
T H E N A R R A T IV E A C T The act of narrative is fundamentally subordinate to the selection act. The story in Toshiyori zuino, in which a spirit recites a poem, has been adapted by Konjaku monogatari-shu and the topic changed. This shift is effected through a concrete act of style. Let us compare the two works:
( 1 ) When the princess looked out through her screen, there was no sign of anything, or of any human presence, and she said, ‘‘What is this? Who said that?” She summoned several people and had them look around, but they reported, ‘‘There is no sign of anyone, either near or far,” and she was frightened, saying, “W hat is this? It must be a spirit.” (Konjaku mono-
