Tonight’s story is a variation on a folktale that is famous all over the world. The Tale of the Peony Lantern has been featured in A-Yokai-A-Day before, and also appears on yokai.com. It’s inspired Toriyama Sekien to create the yokai hone onna, who also has appeared in A-Yokai-A-Day before.

This version is clearly based on that story, with a few differences. Instead of a Peony Lantern (牡丹灯; botan dō), we have a Peony Hall (牡丹堂; botan dō); pronounced identically in Japanese. Although the story still roughly follows the same storyline, it’s an interesting change. The ending is basically the same, and it’s so startling that it is clear why this story has remained so popular for such a long time and over such a wide geographical area.

Interestingly, this is also the only story in Shokoku hyakumonogatari that does not take place in Japan.

The Obsession of the Woman from Peony Hall

In ancient China there was a temple called Peony Hall. When a person died, their remains were placed in a box and peonies were painted on its sides, and these boxes were brought to Peony Hall and stacked on top of each other.

One man who lost his wife was so overcome with grief that for many days he went to Peony Hall every night and recited nenbutsu.

One night, a young woman wearing a gong around her neck came to Peony Hall to recite nenbutsu. The man found this strange, and asked her, “Why would a woman come to a place like this?”

The woman explained, “I was separated from my husband by death, and so…”

Then she began to cry. After that, the two of them stood up and wandered together among the graves, here and there, chanting nenbutsu. They returned every night and did the same thing. Eventually they developed deep feelings for each other, and they confessed their love and went back to the man’s house together. After night fell, they were drinking sake and merrymaking, when a neighbor peeked in at them only to see that the man was sitting across from a woman’s skull and drinking with it.

The neighbor was astonished, and the following day he spoke to the man and told him what he had seen. The man was shocked. He waited for evening to come, and when the woman came back, he saw that she was indeed a skull! The man was so horrified that he shut himself in his home for three years, which he spent fasting and purifying himself.

After three years, the man stepped outside for a diversion and tried to catch a small bird. While he was chasing after a sparrow, it flew into Peony Hall to hide. The man was seen following the bird up to the entrance of Peony Hall, but a moment later he disappeared. His servants were astonished. They searched among the boxes stacked up in Peony Hall, where they found a box that was smeared with blood. When they looked inside the box, inside they found a woman’s skeleton gripping the man’s head in her jaws. Though three years had passed, the woman’s obsession caught the man at least.

Tonight’s story is from Shimōsa Province, which today covers part of Chiba, Ibaraki, Saitama and Tokyo Prefectures, however, the precise location of Sano nor of the Yuzuru Kannon are not known. It’s a strange story in which the main character gets teleported across the country from Shimōsa to Sado in the pursuit of military knowledge.

Today’s story features another chigo (see yesterday’s story) and also uses the term kamuro to describe the person carrying the teacup. Both chigo and kamuro are common figures in Shokoku hyakumonogatari. Kamuro have appeared in other posts on this site, so I’ll refer to them to explain the term.

The tiny man in the cup is hard to figure, as nothing detailed is given about him, other than he is tiny and is carried around in a teacup by a kamuro, and has the ability to grant wishes. Presumably this tiny man is one of the many forms of Kannon, a Buddhist goddess of mercy. The tiny man reminds me of Issun bōshi, a Japanese fairy tale character, but it’s hard to say much else about him.

Anyway, here is the story!

Learning the Art of War from Yuzuru no Kannon

In a place called Sano in Shimōsa Province there was a samurai who excelled in the art of war. In the same province was another man who, one way or another, wished to surpass this master tactician. He had heard that there was a renowned and miraculous holy site called Yuzuru no Kannon deep in a place called Tatebayashi, so he went there and prayed continuously for his wish to come true.

On the third night of his vigil, a kamuro of around eleven or twelve appeared, carrying an indigo-dyed teacup in which sat a person. The person in the teacup said, “If you can defeat this chigo in sumo, I will grant your wish.”

The man wrestled the chigo, but the chigo was stronger than he expected. It looked like he was going to lose. Finally, he managed to grab the chigo, but just as he was about to throw him down, he was thrown down himself.

When he got up, he saw that he was not standing in front of the Kannon statue, but was instead on top of a steep, rocky crag. Surprised and confused, he managed to descend to the base of the crag by clinging to the branches of trees growing out of the cracks in the rocks. Then he found someone on the road and asked, “Which way is Sano?”

The traveler laughed and asked him, “Who are you, and what are you talking about?”

Thinking this strange, the man asked, “What is this place called?”

“This is Sado Province,” replied the traveler. “And where did you come from?”

“I came from the top of this mountain,” replied the man.

The traveler was astonished. “This mountain is called Hokusangatake, and no humans live there anymore. Why have you come down from this mountain? You must not be human!” And he ran away in fear.

Afterwards, the man boarded a ship headed for the eastern provinces and returned to his village in Sano. He was so puzzled that he returned to Yuzuru no Kannon’s village, and the person in the teacup appeared once again.

“Well, well, you are an honest and good-natured person. Therefore, I will grant you your wish,” said the person in the teacup. And he taught the man all of the secret techniques of the art of war.

After that, the man became a renowned tactician. He even mastered the technique of not allowing others to draw their swords, and the technique that, if his arm was ever cut by another’s sword, he would make it so that he was not injured at all.

Until very recently, his child resided in Edo, but I heard that he is no longer able to perform that technique.

Tonight’s story is another one featuring a tanuki, and like the one from last week, it has a bloody ending. This time, though, the yōkai is a lot more dangerous.

The ending of this story matches a pattern that is seen in several yokai stories from all around Japan. Aside from a wild animal disguising itself as an old woman, discovering the pile of bodies underneath the floorboards seems to have been a popular folklore trope. We see it in story patterns like senbiki ōkami, although that is with wolves and not tanuki.

Anyway, this story serves as a reminder that even the furry little critter yōkai are sometimes vicious man-eaters!

The Tanuki Who Transformed into an Old Woman at Nabari, Iga Province

In Iga Province, there is a mountain village to the southeast of a place called Nabari. In this village, every night, one by one people were disappearing. Nobody knew who or what was responsible. One person had their child taken, another person had their parents taken, and the crying and grieving was too painful to watch.

One day, a hunter from that village went into the mountains at dusk. A person came at them from out of the mountains, and when he looked to see who it was, it was a hundred-year-old woman, with disheveled white hair scattered in all directions, and shining eyes. Her appearance was inhuman, so the hunter immediately nocked a crescent-headed arrow and recklessly fired it with a loud twang. It looked like he hit, but the woman got away.

In the morning, the hunter went back to that spot and found a trail of clotted blood that went here and there among the mountains. He followed the trail of blood back to his village, to a small hut behind the village headman’s manor. The hunter was mystified. He asked the village headman, “Who lives in the small hut behind your house?”

“My mother lives there,” he replied. “She is retired. She hasn’t been feeling well since last night, and she won’t eat or let anyone near her.”

The hunter replied, “Well, I have a strange story about that…” And he told the headman everything that had happened.

The headman was also mystified. He went to the small hut, but his mother realized out what was going on, and in an instant she tore through the wall of the hut and ran off. They looked into the bedroom and found a pool of blood the size of a rug. When they looked under the floor, they found countless human bones, including the hands and feet of a child, which had been chewed up and discarded there.

After that they searched the mountains and found the corpse of an old tanuki whose chest had been pierced by an arrow. The headman’s mother had earlier been eaten by this tanuki, which then disguised itself as her and took her place.