Speak, Memorates
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ROBERT ITO SPEAK, MEMORATES IN TONO MONOGataRI, A TURN-OF-THE-CENTURY JAPANESE FOLKLORE CLASSIC, GHOSTS AND MONSTERS ARE FRIENDLY AND SYMPATHETIC CREATURES. WHY ARE THE “real” PEOPLE DESCRIBED IN THE STORIES ALMOST UNIFORMLY HORRIBLE AND CRUEL? Discussed: Cruel Monkeys, Mauled Wrestlers, Fish Brides, Seductive Ogres, Dismembered Kappa Babies, Fierce Tengu, The Rice-Growing Peasants of Japan’s Low Lands n November 4, initially found difficult to understand. 1908, Kunio Yana- Over the course of the following year, gita, a thirty-three- Sasaki enthralled the older man with year-old govern- story after weird story, all set in and ment bureaucrat around his hometown of Tono, a place andO self-taught anthropologist, met Ki- teeming with spooks, demons, and zen Sasaki, an aspiring writer from the tiny village of Tono, mysterious “mountain men.” The area’s forests, Yanagita in northeastern Japan. The two were introduced by a mu- discovered, were home to all manner of fantastical beasts, tual friend who felt they would enjoy each other’s com- from vicious, grudge-holding wolves to red-faced goblins pany, since Yanagita loved hearing ghost stories and tales who kidnapped and impregnated the local townswomen. of the weird, and Sasaki, then twenty-two, enjoyed tell- Small household idols sprang to life and lent a tiny hand ing them. Tall and bespectacled, Sasaki had dropped out of with the rice harvests; monkeys, cruel and lecherous, rou- medical school after two years to study history and litera- tinely pelted the villagers with stones and nuts. ture, and spoke with a thick Tohoku accent which Yanagita The human residents of Tono were equally peculiar, 18 Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, Tengu Messengers Colliding in Midair, 1882. Color woodblock print. Courtesy Los Angeles County Museum of Art and quite unlike the typical rural mouth thinking it was a cake. He the single, creepy detail, and if his folk—tight-knit, loyal to home and charged out of the hut in shock accounts sometimes ended abruptly, kin—that one expects to find in such and disappeared. It is said that the what of it? For many of them, this places. Where generosity was called hunter later found the man dead abruptness—indeed, their very brev- for, they were tightfisted. When at the bottom of the valley. ity—only added to their eeriness. bravery was required, they retreated Yanagita had 350 copies of the in fear. In one of Sasaki’s stories, a lo- What sets these stories apart book produced at his own expense, cal wrestler is mauled to death by a from similar ghost stories and fairy and gave nearly all of them to family wolf while his friends stand idly by, tales—besides, of course, the mysti- and friends. ( The writer also pub- unmoved by the man’s piteous cries fying actions of their protagonists— lished two other books that year: for help. In another, an entire fam- is that all of the events in them ac- Nochi no karikotoba no ki, a record of ily dies after eating poisonous mush- tually happened, or so said many of hunting terms used in southern Ja- rooms; the next morning, their rel- Sasaki’s contemporaries. These were pan, and Ishigami mondo, a compi- atives come from near and far to not “once upon a time” tales, but lation of letters written about small make off with all of the family’s pos- real events witnessed in the recent roadside gods.) A few of Yana gita’s sessions, down to the jars of miso past by people familiar to many in friends wrote reviews of Tono mo- paste in the kitchen. In nearly every the village. Scattered throughout Sa- nogatari, but the book attracted scant story, the villagers’ actions are mo- saki’s stories were the names of real literary or commercial attention at tivated by greed, fear, lethargy, self- Tono-ites, from Old Oto, the town the time, either in Japan or abroad. interest, or meanness. It’s not only drunkard, to Yanosuke, an accom- Today, however, Tono monoga- that the villagers of Tono sometimes plished hunter and flautist. In some tari is considered a classic through- don’t make the right choice; it’s how cases, Sasaki vouched for the verac- out Japan, and has inspired two films astonishing, how befuddling, their ity of the witnesses. “Maru kichi,” and a popular manga series. Its au- wrong choices can be. In one story, he said of one, “is a very modern thor (Yanagita, that is, not Sasaki) a hunter is toasting rice cakes over a and intelligent person and he is not is heralded as the father of Japanese fire and receives a visit from a large the kind of person to tell a lie.” Sa- folklore studies, while the town of man he does not know: saki also gave approximate dates for Tono has done a lively business as many of the events in his stories. a destination for “folklore tourists” The stranger entered the hut and In 1910, after selecting 119 of the world over, who are guided to gazed in wonder at the toasting Sasaki’s most intriguing tales and various sites mentioned in the book rice cakes. Then, unable to re- traveling to Tono to visit some where ghosts appeared and demons sist, he reached out, took some of the places mentioned in them, trod. While other collections of Jap- cakes and ate them. When all the Yanagita published Tono monogatari anese spook stories have come and cakes were eaten, the stranger (The Legends of Tono). “Kizen is not a gone since Yanagita’s time, his is still left. Thinking the man would good storyteller,” Yanagita wrote in the only one to draw all of its tales come back again the next day, the book’s preface, “but he is hon- from a single town and storyteller. the hunter placed some white est and sincere. I have written the The novelist Yukio Mishima, no stones that resembled the rice stories down as I understood them, slouch when it came to the creepy cakes along with the cakes over without adding a word or phrase.” and unsettling, praised the stories the fire. The rocks became quite It was an odd thing for Yanagita to for their coldness, their tonal flat- hot. The stranger came back as have said about his young colleague, ness, their “unforeseen ghastliness, expected and ate the rice cakes not to mention ungracious. Sasaki like when someone starts to talk and as he had done the previous day. certainly knew a lot of stories of all then suddenly stops speaking.” Then he put a hot stone into his different sorts, and had a way with This year marks the hundredth 19 anniversary of the book’s publica- Vicious old monkeys are like hu- some are maybe a mix of the tion. To commemorate the event, mans. They become desirous of two. One of them might even Lexington Books has released a new females and often steal off the be a deceased relative, or a edition of Ronald Morse’s English village women. They coat their loved one. translation, first published in 1975, fur with pine resin and then 4. Some of them may hurt you, with maps, archival photos, and an sprinkle sand on it. This makes if only given the chance. Oth- updated preface. In June 2010, the their fur and skin like armor, and ers are harmless. town of Tono will host an interna- even bullets cannot penetrate it. tional symposium, where scholars 5. Since it’s impossible to tell the and fans will celebrate the area’s tales Most of the stories are memorates, difference between the harm- and legends, and the two men who a term coined by the Swedish folk- less ones and the ones that brought them to the world. lorist C. W. von Sydow in 1934. Ac- may hurt you, it’s prudent to So what is it about Tono mono- cording to von Sydow, memorates treat all with caution. gatari—a critical and commercial are personal accounts of experiences bust when it was first released—that that either deal with the super natural After a brief overview of the so intrigues readers now? Were the or illustrate a specific set of beliefs, Tono region—its geographical his- spooks and demons of Tono real? often religious. If someone truly be- tory, its rivers and villages—the book And why is nearly everyone in the lieves in fairies, say, and then sees opens with seven tales about the ar- stories so very, very mean? one and tells his friends about it— ea’s yama bito, or mountain peo- that’s a memorate. After some time, ple. Little is known about them, be- ono monogatari is a small if the story gets told often enough to yond a few physical descriptions. book. Not counting its enough people, the memorate can They are tall, with “strange-colored” T preface and index, the itself become a fairy tale, or a legend. eyes, and shun the people from town. English translation is only sixty- Since the first-person experiences The women have long hair, which three pages long, with no chapters, behind memorates are often based they leave unbound; many of them story titles, chronological struc- upon fairy tales or myths themselves, are former villagers who were kid- ture, or commentary. A few of the whole process can become cir- napped and now live, far from home the stories are lumped together by cular: fairy tale spawns memorate and loved ones, with their yamabito common theme—“animal attacks,” spawns fairy tale. The glue holding “husbands.” for instance, or “household gods them all together is that initial belief, Theories abound about who the that come to life”—but most flow whether that belief is about a fairy, yamabito were, or how and why they from one to the next in no discern- or a demon, or a god.