THE SHAMANIC and ESOTERIC ORIGINS of the JAPANESE MARTIAL ARTS Tengu and a Buddhist Monk, by Kawanabe Kyo¯ Sai
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TENGU THE SHAMANIC AND ESOTERIC ORIGINS OF THE JAPANESE MARTIAL ARTS Tengu and a Buddhist monk, by Kawanabe Kyo¯ sai. The tengu wears the cap and pom-pommed sash of a follower of Shugendo¯ . Now is the time to show the world those arts of war that I have rehearsed for many months and years upon the Mountain of Kurama _________ Words spoken by the Chorus in the No play ‘Eboshi-ori’ by Miyamasu (sixteenth century) They refer to the tengu training given to Ushiwaka Who later became the famous young general, Minamoto-no-Yoshitsune T E N G U The Shamanic and Esoteric Origins of the Japanese Martial Arts By ROALD KNUTSEN TENGU The Shamanic and Esoteric Origins of the Japanese Martial Arts By Roald Knutsen First published 2011 by GLOBAL ORIENTAL PO Box 219 Folkestone Kent CT20 2WP UK Global Oriental is an imprint of Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints BRILL, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, and VSP. www.brill.nl/globaloriental © Roald Knutsen 2011 ISBN 978-1-906876-24-1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Set in Bembo 11 on 12 by Dataworks, Chennai, India Printed and bound in England by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, Wilts This book is dedicated to Patricia for always being with me Contents Plate section facing page 132 Foreword xi List of Figures xix List of Plates xxii List of Maps xxiv 1. Introduction 1 2. The Tengu 9 3. About Shamanism in the Present Context 12 • Shamanism 15 • Examples of shamanic practices 19 4. Communing with the Gods 28 • The Drum and Mirrors 31 • Shape-Shifting and Therianthropes 32 • Initiatory Dreams 34 5. Origins 36 • Summary 37 • The Three Han Commanderies, the Samhan 39 • Kibi and the Yamato Settlement 41 6. Cultic Symbols 43 • The Deer Cult and the Tree of Life 43 • Iron Smithing 48 • Griffi n Symbolism 48 • Armour, Weapons, and Divine Protection 49 7. The Transition from the Griffi n to the Hawk and Crow 51 8. The Shaman and his Drum 57 • The ancient Sword Kashira 64 viii CONTENTS 9. Shamanism and the Japanese Context 66 • Mastery of Fire and Internal Heat 68 • Shape-shifting 69 10. Transition from the Ancient to the Medieval Period 72 • Attraction of the Mountains 76 • En-no-Gyo¯ ja 78 • The Proto-yamabushi 81 11. Introduction of the Buddhist Mikkyo¯ 84 • The Hijiri Experience 86 • Zao¯ -gongen 88 12. Were the ‘Protectors’ the Proto-Yamabushi? 89 • Sacred and ‘protected’ Mountains 90 • The Zenki and Goki fi gures 96 13. Comparisons 100 14. An Alternative Origin for the Tengu 104 15. Apparitions 108 • The Appeal of Marishi-ten 111 • Minamoto-no-Yoshitsune and Kurama-yama 112 • The Bishop’s Valley 113 • Yamabushi and Tengu in the early-Muromachi Period 116 • Tengu as Mounted Infantry? 117 16. Tengu Weapons and Other Items 119 17. Dai-tengu and Sho¯ -tengu in the Iconography 126 • Shugendo¯ Honzon and Kurama Shinkage-ryu¯ Densho¯ 126 • Dai-tengu Figures: 128 • Sho¯ -tengu Figures 130 • Two Final Honzon 134 18. Messenger of the Deities 138 • Huginn and Muninn, Messengers of Odin, and the Yatagarasu 140 • Observations 141 19. Bugei Tengu Iconography 144 • The So¯ -jutsu Densho¯ (Name to follow) 145 • So¯ -jutsu Mokuroku Scroll – Edo-jidai 148 • The Shinkage-ryu¯ Tengu 150 • Two fi nal Tora-no-maki and Densho¯ 152 20. Marishi-ten and ‘Divine Assistance’ 155 • Winged Therianthropic Figures 158 • The ‘Caped Wings’ 159 • Tentative Conclusions 161 • In-yo ¯ -kigaku – The Interpretation of the Yin-yang in the Tao 164 CONTENTS ix • Tengu and the Ko-ryu¯ 166 • Infl uence of the Yamabushi 171 • The Okuden Levels 175 • The Lessons to be Drawn from the Tengu Figures 177 21. Tengu Revisited 183 Endnotes 189 Glossary 203 Bibliography 233 Index 237 Foreword engu have been one of my personal interests since I was fi rst T introduced to them some forty-fi ve years ago. At fi rst, like many others coming fresh to Kendo, I understood them to be fanciful creatures that appeared from time to time in fi ctitious stories from the extraordi- narily rich Japanese folklore, a broad subject that also intrigued both my wife and myself. Soon, our insights were developed by various senior Kendo and Bujutsu masters who took the trouble, unusually, to explain something of the tengu’s signifi cance in the warrior tradition. It became clear to us that these fi gures were a rather different kind of tengu from the tricksy ones who inhabited the imaginations of the usual secular or Buddhist strata of the Heian and medieval Japanese society, both high and low. Why should we fi nd these therianthropic creatures, part- animal and part-human, interacting with deadly serious bugei masters in matters of the greatest importance to the study and understanding of the Arts of War? Here, emerging if only partially glimpsed, were beings who did not conform to the creatures of the common folklore and were not the creations of the Buddhist priests intent on demonizing that which they did not understand and, more signifi cantly, could not control. These far more secretive tengu brought with them echoes and characteristics from a very distant past and, as it soon became appar- ent, evolved quite apart from their fanciful cousins of the folk beliefs. Of course, there was confusion between the two; this confusion giving rise to the centuries-old misconceptions and the tengu’s comic image in most quarters in the present day. Perhaps these fancies were deliberately introduced or fostered by the early bushi themselves? Who can tell? But the fact remains that the almost hidden tengu of the early bugei passed on and taught the clearest theory of tactics and strategy to warriors of the highest calibre, the absorption and mastery of which often decided if the warrior and his clan lived or were annihilated on the killing grounds of the Muromachi age (1392–1573). Why was it that the denigration of these tengu was solely in the hands of the annoyingly humourless priests xii FOREWORD and the especially high-ranking, self-important, stiff-necked Buddhist prelates, and of little concern to those of Shinto when the two existed close side-by-side? Why were many of these tengu, both in the folklore and the bugei, indistinguishable from the strange yamabushi of Shugendo¯ ? And, setting aside for the present a number of other questions, where did they come from in the fi rst place? It is against this background that my interest developed. Perhaps it will be diffi cult for some to accept that without the foundation of close connections with Japanese culture and lacking access to much of the language except through translation, no ‘foreigner’ can possibly penetrate such an obscure subject. I can understand this viewpoint, of course; all I can state in reply is that my personal approach started from a broad inter- est in folklore of every type and especially ancient and early- medieval, and the realization that much of this folklore and attendant religious beliefs, was linked to the ancient tribal migrations across and from the Eurasian steppe. In addition, over the past forty or more years I have visited and travelled extensively throughout Japan and have taken every opportunity to broaden my knowledge. Furthermore, the structure of ‘traditional’ Kendo and that of the ko-ryu¯ disciplines in particular, have changed comparatively little since the end of the Edo period. As I have said, it was curiosity about these unusual beings that drove me to delve deeper and fi nally inspired this study. To fi nd these tengu described (and dismissed) on the one hand as mere imps and forest gob- lins irked me, to say the least, when on the other hand it was clear that very many hard-headed masters of strategy took them very seriously indeed. These two aspects, almost diametrically opposed, only found common ground in the mundane fact that most tengu – long-nosed or hawk-faced – were popularly visualized as resembling, or clothed like, yamabushi. This, in itself, was an oddity that required examina- tion. Ranged on one side, then, were the Buddhists with their stories of tengu impudence, fi rst appearing in collections dating from the mid- or late-Heian; on the other side were the deadly serious tengu of the bugei, acknowledged masters of the Arts of War and instructing warriors in a huge range of highly original interpretations contained in the great Chinese military philosopher Sun Tzu’s Ping-fa, or ‘Art of War’, written sometime around the fourth century BCE. o O o My regular military service with the Colours was in Egypt and Libya with suffi cient time to read the general histories of the whole region from the Near East to the Far East and especially Japan. In the 1950s, China was still closed to foreigners, and so, like a number of others interested in oriental art and history, I turned my attention towards medieval Japan. Friendship and guidance from the late Basil Robinson of the Victoria and Albert Museum was invaluable and soon resulted in what proved FOREWORD xiii to be a very fortunate introduction to that brilliant specialist in arms and armour, H. Russell Robinson, of the Royal Armouries. Over the following fi ve or six years I spent many study sessions under the latter’s often abrasive tutelage to increase my understanding of many aspects of samurai culture and especially their use of polearms.