Folk Legends of Japan Read Online Free Page B

de Visser, "The Fox and Badger in Japanese Folklore," pp. 112-13,136-37.
    Text from Kunio Yanagita, "Folk Talesfrom Hachinoe," in Mukashi-banashi Kenkyu, II (Tokyo, 1937), p. 288. Collected by Kimura, 1936.
    T HERE IS a spring by the name of St. Kobo's Well in the village of Muramatsu, Ninohe-gun. The following story concerning this well is told in this district. A girl was once weaving alone at her home. An old man, staggering, came by there and asked her for a cup of water. She walked over the hill more than a thousand yards away and brought back water for the visitor. The old man was pleased with her kindness and said that he would make her free from such painful labor. After saying this, he struck the ground with his cane. While he was striking, water sprang forth from the point struck by his cane. That spring was called St. Kobo's Welt.
    The old man who could do such a miraculous deed was thought to be St. Kobo, however poor and weak he might look.
    THE WILLOW WELL OF KOBO
    A variant of the above. Text from Edo no Kohi to Densetsu, no. 17, p. 45.
    Note: Kashima, a large shrine where warriors prayed before going into battle.
    T HERE IS a well in the compound of Zempuku-ji in Azabu. In ancient times while Kobo Daishi was staying in this temple, in order to get the water for offering to the Buddha, he put his staff into the ground, praying to the god of the Kashima Shrine. Then clear water gushed forth. Later Kobo Daishi planted a willow tree by the well to commemorate it forever. So it is called the Willow Well.
    THE KOBO CHESTNUT TREES
    Ikeda refers to this legend and assigns it Type 750 B, "Hospitality Rewarded."
    Text from Aichi-ken Densetsu Shu, p. 223.
    I N THE mountains around Fukiage Pass in Nagura-mura, Kita Shidaragun, grow chestnut trees called Kobo chestnuts. Those trees bear fruit very young, even when they are only three feet high.
    Hundreds of years ago there was a big chestnut tree on this pass. Boys would rush to climb it to pick the chestnuts, but little children could not climb the tree. One day while they were weeping, a traveling priest passed by, saw the little children crying, and said: "Well, you shall be able to pick the chestnuts from next year on."
    The next year every small young chestnut tree bore fruit so that the little children could pick them easily. The villagers thought that the traveling priest must have been St. Kobo, and since then they have called these the Kobo chestnut trees.
    THE WATERLESS RIVER IN TAKIO
    In some variants potatoes grow hard as stones after they are refused to Kobo. A story from Mimino-mura, in Yanagita, Mountain Village Life, p. 407 (in ch. 56, "Curses of the Gods"), tells of a river turning dry after a man refused a beggar a piece of radish he was washing. Elisseeff, pp. 287-88, reviewing Otari Kohishu by Naotaro Koike, summarizes a legend of greedy fishermen who refuse fish to a begging bonze; he throws a sheet of paper into the water, and thenceforth the fish disappear from the river. Ikeda, pp. 210-11, analyzes the tale under Type 751, "The Greedy Peasant Woman." An unusual variant in Murai, pp. 68-69, "Maid-enhair Tree of Yoshida," tells of a woman who refused a night's lodging to a traveler; he says that leaves and snow will fall; after the snotv falls, his footprints remain in the drifts; it was St. Kobo. Since then people believe a heavy snow follows the falling of leaves.
    Text from Bungo Densetsu Shu, p. 28. Told by Mitsuko Shikishima.
    A LONG TIME AGO a farmer's wife was washing sweet potatoes in a stream near Ikarijima. A poor, dirty-looking priest came from somewhere and asked her: "Please give me a potato. I am too hungry to walk on."
    But the woman refused him, saying: "I have no potatoes to give you."

    The priest, feeble and low of spirit, went along. Strange to say, the waters of the stream disappeared at that moment and never ran again. Since then the villagers have suffered much for lack of water. The upper and lower reaches of the river have