ent parts of their bodies (Yoshida, Mukashibanashi no kōkogaku iii, 108–12).
Thus, the yamauba may be identified as a dichotomous primordial god-
dess, the Great Mother, who brings fertility and wealth as well as death and
destruction, similar to other mythico-religious figures such as Isis and Kali.
In medieval Europe, the pagan archetype of the Great Mother who always
possesses two aspects is no less complicated, as in fairy tales, which are
mainly under the influence of Christian civilization: the light side is repre-
sented by the officially worshipped Virgin Mary, and the dark side, excluded
from the image of Mary and maintaining much of its pagan influence,
degenerates into a witch (Franz 105, 195).9 Kawai Hayao regards Kannon
as the positive image of the Great Mother in Japan and the yamauba, who
appears in fairy tales as an all-devouring mountain witch, as the negative
image (Kawai).
Compared with yamauba, Kannon is widely known in East Asia as
the Bodhisattva of Compassion. A main purpose of Blossom Princess is
to preach Kannon’s blessing; the miracle associated with Shō Kannon
(Aryavalokiteśvara, a manifestation of Avalokiteśvara) and Fuji Daibosatsu
(Great Bodhisattva of Mt. Fuji) is given prominence in the text.
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One of the most important and influential sutras of Mahayana
Buddhism, the Lotus Sutra or Scripture of the Lotus Blossom of the Fine
Dharma ( Myōhō renge kyō ), devotes an entire chapter to Kannon’s salvific
powers. Blossom Princess and her parents always recite the chapter titled
“Kanzeon bosatsu fumonhon” (The Universal Gateway of the Bodhisattva
Perceiver of the World’s Sounds; see Watson, Essential Lotus), which is
widely circulated separately as Kannon kyō (Kannon Sutra). According to
the Lotus Sutra the Buddha declared: “Suppose there are immeasurable
hundreds, thousands, ten thousands, millions of living beings who are
undergoing various trials and suffering. If they hear of this Bodhisattva
Perceiver of the World’s Sounds and single-minded[ly] call his name,
then at once he will perceive the sound of their voices and they will all
gain deliverance from their trials” (Watson, Essential Lotus 119–20); “this
Bodhisattva Perceiver of the World’s Sounds has succeeded in acquiring
benefits such as these and, taking on a variety of different forms, goes
about among the lands saving living beings” (Watson, Essential Lotus 123).
In other words, Kannon “will come to the rescue of anyone who appeals
to him for his aid, whatever the nature of his or her distress. Moreover .
. . [Kannon has] the ability to manifest himself in whatever shape, male
or female, is best for accomplishing his salvific miracles” (Idema 6). As
mentioned, Kannon’s efficacy is explained throughout Blossom Princess. For
example, Blossom Princess was born in response to the Moritaka couple’s
plea to Kannon. Moritaka believes he owes his reunion with his daughter
to Kannon’s protection; he says, “With your grateful vow to save Blossom
Princess, I could see my daughter once again. I am very thankful. Please
continue to protect her in the future” ( MJMT 10: 556).
While Kannon worship is prevalent in the three otogizōshi stories, a
yamauba appears only in Blossom Princess, and many scholars widely con-
sider the yamauba of Blossom Princess to be an assistant to, or a manifes-
tation of, Kannon (see okada, “ ‘Hanayo no hime’ to minkan denshō”
70). This interpretation is reasonable because Kannon has the ability to
transform into any shape and to save anyone who calls Kannon’s name.
Readers may have been expected to equate Kannon to the yamauba as a
heroine’s miraculous helper in time of need. But nowhere in the text does
it say that Kannon gives the ubakinu (or ubakawa) clothes and a treasure
bag to someone; it is the familiar yamauba in the mukashibanashi who gives
the miraculous gifts to the heroine (Matsumoto, “Minkan setsuwa kei no
Muromachi jidai monogatari” 27).
Blossom Princess
161
blOssOM PRincess anD Mukashibanashi
“ubakawa” and “komebuku awabuku”
The three otogizōshi stories are widely recognized as sharing similar plots to
the “Ubakawa”-type stories and “Komebuku Awabuku”–type mukashiban-
ashi grouped under the “stepchild stories” ( mamako-tan). Interestingly,
though, Kannon does not appear in either the “Ubakawa”- or “Komebuku
Awabuku”–type of mukashibanashi (Okada, “Otogi zōshi no bukkyō shisō
to minkan denshō” 145–46). Again, it is a yamauba who gives the heroine
wealth and assistance. In the “Ubakawa”-type stories the yamauba (or a frog)
gives the stepdaughter ubakawa, or clothes that transform her appearance
from a youthful heroine to an old crone. The summary of “Ubakawa” goes
as follows:
A stepdaughter is driven away from her home. The girl, who is to be
married to a serpent bridegroom, flees from him. The heroine meets with
an old woman in the woods, or she stops at a solitary house in the woods
where an old woman is present. The old woman (who is really the frog
saved by the heroine’s father) gives her an old woman’s skin (or frog skin
or hood, or a magic broom or towel), which makes the wearer dirty or old.
She wears the old woman’s skin and is employed in a rich man’s house as an
old kitchen maid or hearth maid. The rich man’s son catches a glimpse of
her in her natural form, when she is in her room alone. He becomes sick. A
fortuneteller tells the rich man that his son’s illness is caused by his love for
a certain woman in his house. All the women in the house are taken before
the son one by one to offer him tea or medicine. When he sees the heroine
in the old woman’s skin, he smiles at her and takes a drink from the cup she
offered him. She takes off the old woman’s skin and becomes the son’s wife
(Mayer 48–49; Seki, Nihon mukashibanashi shūsei 3: 899–911; Seki, “Types of
Japanese Folktales” 114–15).
In the “Komebuku Awabuku”–type stories, the yamauba gives Komebuku
a treasure box of fine clothes because she picks lice out of the yamauba’s
hair. A summary of “Komebuku Awabuku” is as follows:
A mother gives a broken bag to her stepdaughter named Komebuku
and a good bag to her real daughter named Awabuku and sends them to the
woods to fill their bags with chestnuts (or acorns). The two daughters stop at
a yamauba’s house in the woods. The stepdaughter takes lice off the yamauba’s
head, while the real daughter does not. When they leave the yamauba’s house,
she gives them each a basket. The stepdaughter’s basket contains pretty
dresses, and the real daughter’s basket contains frogs or dirty things. The
mother takes her real daughter to a play (or festival) and has the stepdaugh-
ter stay at home to perform tasks of carrying water and separating millet,
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rice, and other grains. The stepdaughter’s friend (or a priest) and a sparrow
help her perform the tasks, and then she goes to the pl
ay with her friend.
While they are watching the play, (a) the stepdaughter is discovered by her
stepsister, or (b) the stepdaughter throws something at her stepmother and
stepsister. A young man who sees the stepdaughter at the play proposes
marriage to her. Her mother tries to procure him for her real daughter, but
the young man marries the stepdaughter. The real daughter wants to be mar-
ried, and her mother goes to seek a suitor, carrying her in a mortar. They fall
into a stream and turn into mud snails (Mayer 44–46; Seki, Nihon mukashiban-
ashi shūsei 3: 822–44; Seki, “Types of Japanese Folktales” 111).
Legends of “Obasute” (Deserted Old woman)
Another mukashibanashi that seems to have a strong relationship with Blossom
Princess is “obasute” or “Ubasute” (Abandoned old Women) or “Ubasute-
yama” (The Mountain Where old Women Are Abandoned). Compared
with the studies done on the two aforementioned mukashibanashi—the
“Ubakawa” Type and the “Komebuku Awabuku” type—the amount of
research on “obasute” is very small in relation to that on Blossom Princess.10
The stories of “obasute” vary in detail, but they all include as part of
their plot structure the occurrence of an old man or woman being aban-
doned on a mountain.11 It is the yamauba’s personal story that makes me
believe in the “Obasute” influence. The yamauba of Blossom Princess tells Blossom Princess:
Listen, I was human once. But I’ve outlived all my children. After that, my
grandchildren and great-grandchildren were taking care of me, but they
hated me so much and would not let me in their house. So I made the
mountain my home, picking up nuts for food. one day an oni came and
felt affection for me. He usually journeys from the peak of Mt. Fuji and
sleeps in this cavern at night. During the day he cuts firewood and piles
it at the cavern’s entrance, and during the night I make a fire and warm
myself by it. Even now when I have the mind of an ordinary human, I try
to be compassionate. ( MJMT 10: 530–31)
The extremely old woman lives on the mountain called “Ubagamine”
(old Women’s Peak) because her kin abandoned her. Her voice is that of a
lonely, deserted woman who wants someone to hear her story. The yamauba
in the “Ubakawa”- or “Komebuku Awabuku”–type mukashibanashi do not
offer any personal stories. As to why old folks are deserted on a mountain,
mukashibanashi present various explanations, including: the old person is
useless, superfluous, and consumes food; a law to abandon the old person
Blossom Princess
163
is imposed by a regional lord; it is a custom of the village; an old person is
unsightly; or a wife dislikes her mother- in-law and urges her husband to get
rid of her.12 In an attempt to understand the yamauba’s circumstances, let us
examine the “obasute” stories of these mukashibanashi more closely.
According to both Yanagita and Mihara, “Ubasute-yama” is a folk-
tale in complete form that belongs to the “Cleverness at Work”–type of
tale (Yanagita, Nihon mukashibanashi meii 173–75; Mihara, “Ubasute-yama”;
for an English translation, see Mayer 168–71). “Ubasute-yama” stories are
often divided into four types.13
The first type involves a middle-aged man with a son who nearly aban-
dons one of his own parents by carrying him or her in a mokko (rope bas-
ket). The middle-aged man takes his son and his elderly parent to the moun-
tain where he plans to abandon his parent. But just as he is about to do this,
his son says he is going to bring the mokko back home to use the next time.
Realizing that the next time will be his turn, the middle-aged man brings his
elderly parent back to their home.
The second type concerns the wisdom of an old person in solving dif-
ficult problems. A lord imposes a law to abandon old folks, but a filial man
is unable to do so and hides his parent in the cellar. one day, a neighboring
country’s king threatens to invade the lord’s country unless the lord solves
some difficult questions. The lord is unable to answer them and issues an
order that anyone who can solve the problems will be rewarded. The man
tells the questions to his hidden elderly parent, who easily solves the prob-
lems. The lord learns of the old parent’s wisdom and rescinds the edict to
abandon old people.
The third type is the breaking of branches to make marks on the
mountain. on a journey to the place of abandonment, an old parent breaks
branches of trees as a mark for the son to return home safely. Moved by his
parent’s love for him, he takes the parent back home. The fourth type is the
attainment of wealth by a deserted old woman. An old woman abandoned
by her son on the mountain becomes wealthy with help from an oni or
mountain deity, and her son and his wife are punished.
In the last type, the attainment of wealth is particularly relevant to what
I have described before and wish to focus on. An old woman is considered
unproductive and is disliked to the point of being abandoned, but as if to
compensate or redeem the negative treatment by the family members and
villagers, after desertion she is endowed with the power to produce material
wealth to make people, usually compassionate strangers, happy. An exem-
plar story transmitted in Iwate prefecture goes as follows:
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A son has a wife, who initially is nice to her mother-in-law. As years go by,
the wife increasingly treats her mother-in-law as a hindrance and speaks ill
of her to her husband. Looking at her elderly mother-in-law chewing up
lice from her hair, the wife slanders the mother-in-law to her husband that
his mother steals and eats their precious rice. She then tells her husband
to make a hut in the mountain, leave his mother there, and set fire to the
hut. He does as instructed by his wife, but his mother escapes from the
hut and warms herself by the fire with her legs wide open. Several oni chil-
dren come there, see her genitals, and ask what they are. The old woman
replies that they form a mouth that eats oni. Believing the old woman, the
oni’s children offer her their wish-granting mallet to save their lives. With
the oni’s mallet, the woman builds a town and becomes its lord. The wife
learns the status of her mother-in-law and tries to do the same. But instead
of getting rich, she burns to death in a hut in the mountain. (Sasaki,
Kikimimi no sōshi 43–45)
Just as the old woman in mukashibanashi becomes wealthy, the abandoned
woman as a yamauba in Blossom Princess is bestowed with miraculous power.14
summary of Comparisons and Contrasts of four stories
First, as mentioned, the yamauba of the “Ubakawa”- or “Komebuku
Awabuku”–type tales do not specify the reason they are on the moun-
tain. In contrast, the yamauba of Blossom Princess and the old woman of
“obasute” are on the mountain because they are disliked and abandoned
by their family members. There are few examples of an old woman going
to the mountain by herself in mukashibanashi (Yoshikawa 123). In comp
ari-
son, the yamauba in Blossom Princess probably walked to the mountain by
herself to survive. In both cases, she is abandoned by her kin. The figure
who is deserted on the mountain and expected to die is actually reflected in
Blossom Princess. Blossom Princess is carried by a samurai on his back, as
is often seen in other “obasute” stories. Indeed, the samurai who kidnaps
her from the veranda of her house “determinedly abandoned her there and
returned without even looking back once” ( MJMT 10: 525).15
Second, as for the yamauba’s task for the heroine, this part exists only
in Blossom Princess and the “Komebuku Awabuku” type. The heroine of
“Komebuku Awabuku” takes lice from the yamauba’s hair, whereas the yam-
auba in Blossom Princess makes her take snake-like worms from her head.
Head lice are believed to be more of a day-to-day phenomenon than snake-
like worms in the hair, but as the lice turn into more frightening snake-like
worms in Blossom Princess, the reward for Blossom Princess is greater than
those of the heroines in “Komebuku Awabuku”–type tales.16 Head lice
Blossom Princess
165
also appear in “obasute”—the old “obasute” woman eats lice from her
hair. This becomes the major cause of her desertion in an “obasute” story.
Further, eating lice has a commonality with the yamauba in Blossom Princess eating the coiled worms in her head; after the yamauba made the heroine kill
the coiled worms, “the yamauba picked them up and ate them saying, ‘Ah,
yummy’ ” ( MJMT 10: 531). A mix of various mukashibanashi elements seems
to appear in Blossom Princess, and some elements of Blossom Princess may have
been influenced by these mukashibanashi.
Regarding the third and fourth points, a fire in the mountain and oni are
involved in all the stories. The heroines of Blossom Princess, “Ubakawa,” and
“Komebuku Awabuku” are all lost in the woods or mountains and see a faint
light in the distance. As the heroines walk in the direction of the light, they
find a house or a cave in which a yamauba is making a fire. The place is also
inhabited by (an) oni. In the “obasute” story, the oni children are attracted by
the fire and come to the fireplace. Okada Keisuke explains that the yamauba
in mukashibanashi appears as a keeper of a sacred fire, which is a fire that casts
Seven Demon Stories from Medieval Japan Page 25