The Great Tengu of Mount Kurama, northern Kyoto, Japan
Jinn, Nature Spirits, and Ecological Thought
Fieldwork, Kansai region, Japan, November 2017 – January 2018
In the spring of the ninth year of Emperor Jomei (637), on the twenty-third of the second month, a large star shot across the sky from east to west. Then there was a sound similar to thunder. The people said it was the sound of a shooting star. Others said it was earth-thunder. Thereupon, the monk Min said it was not a shooting star, but a celestial dog; its barking sounds like thunder.
— Nihon Shoki (The Chronicles of Japan)
The steeply forested slopes of Mt. Kurama, located in the far north of Kyoto, are the enchanted realm of the elusive spirit-deities of forests and mountains called tengu. The ‘shooting star’ identified as a ‘celestial dog’ in the early 8th-century Nihon Shoki was conflated with these Japanese spirit-deities. Uncanny and shape-shifting, the tengu were described as therianthropic creatures, part-human and part-animal in form. Their animal spirit was visualized with raptor attributes, such as the beak of a kite (small hawk) or crow, later humanized as an exaggeratedly long nose. Worshipped as Shinto deities, or manifestations of spiritual power (Jp. kami), they were conceived as ambivalent spirits trapped in the perpetual cycle of life and death. Even today, mountains are still regarded as numinous places that accommodate the spirits of the dead, and people still make food offerings to propitiate the tengu in some areas of Japan, to commune with and placate natural forces. As wardens of the forests, tengu are said to inhabit the enormous cryptomeria japonica, the national cedars of Japan, known as Sugi (lit., ‘Hair Tree’), which populate the forests. The trees with their raised tangled roots symbolize Mt. Kurama, the tengu mountain, and tengu territory generally. Tengu share some of their powers with other supernatural yokai (monsters), but their special skills include swordsmanship, the ability to become invisible, healing and transformation. The 17th-century scholar, Mori Shoken (1653-1746), followed by the 18th-century Kyokutei Bakin (1767–1848), recognized the antiquity of this deeply entrenched belief in the tengu by relating them to the similarly unruly pre-Buddhist forces of nature in Indian myth and religion, the yakshas, who likewise are closely linked with tree spirits. In this way, the elusive tengu form a complementary yet antithetical part of a configuration which can be likened to Gananath Obeyesekere's description of the Sri Lankan Buddhist pantheon, which can incorporate non-Buddhist deities so long as they are seen to be subordinate to the Buddha.
High up in the dense forests of Mt. Kurama, there is a ravine, known as the Sojogatani. The small shrines in this clearing are revered as the place to which the young Ushiwakamaru, later known as the renowned samurai Minamoto no Yoshitsune (1159-1189), was exiled on Mount Kuruma to become a monk. Legend has it that one day he encountered the white-haired Sojobo, the oldest and wisest of the tengu, who instructed him in the arts of swordsmanship (bugei). The kami is said to have been dressed in the garb of an itinerant mountain ascetic, a yamabushi (lit., ‘to prostrate oneself in the mountains’), or shugenja (a follower of the path of Shugendo, lit., the ‘Way of Cultivating Supernatural Power’) of Mt. Kuruma. Over the centuries, the tengu became closely associated with these warrior monks and often took on their form. The warrior monks, in turn, also took on the guise of the tengu to deter the uninitiated.
The Kuruma temple complex is said to have been built on Ryu-ketsu (‘dragon hole’), a site thought to be imbued with concentrated ‘spiritual energy.’ Founded in 770 by Gantei, a disciple of Ganjin, the Chinese monk who introduced Buddhism to Japan, the temple was originally dedicated to Bishamon-ten (Skr. Vaisravana/Kubera), the king of the yakshas and guardian of the north, regarded as a powerful protector of the city of Kyoto. Pairs of tigers, messengers of Bishamon-ten, guard the way leading up to the temple, as well as its main hall (hondo). Known as ‘the tigers of A-Un’ (Jp. A-un-no-tora), representing inhalation and expiration, the first and last sounds of the Sanskrit alphabet, these pairs of tigers symbolize the beginning and the end of all life.
Kuruma Temple (Jp. Kurama-dera) became a major center for Shugendo practices, a Japanese esoteric tradition that focuses on severe austerities to initiate practitioners into the physical elements of the mountain, its dense forests, streams, and waterfalls, so that they can experience its sacred dimension. This, in turn, offers up insights into their own interior landscapes, generating greater self-awareness. Often these ascetic practices are carried out to attain magico-religious ‘transformative’ power, and to spread this power for the benefit of others. The arduous discipline (Jp. shugyo) includes solitary confinement in caves, fasting, abstaining from drinking water, sleep deprivation, meditational practices in combination with breathing techniques and the recitation of mantras, the practice of ‘becoming a buddha in this very body’ (sokushin jobutsu) as well as mastery of the cold (Jp. samugyo; such as immersion in icy cold water), fire (Jp. goma; which includes fire-walking, hiwatari), and sharp swords (Jp. hawatari; climbing the sword ladder).
In the 12th century, the Shugendo mountain center at Kurama-dera became linked not only with the Esoteric Buddhist Tendai school but also with the theory and practices of the Buddhist female deity Marishi-ten (Skr. Marici), the patron goddess of warriors, both within the Vajrayana, or Tantric, tradition of Buddhism and in the field of Japanese martial arts. It is important to observe and to note that the supernatural abilities which she confers upon her followers are similar to those of the tengu: they include the powers of invisibility (or concealment), perspicuity, evasiveness (the ability to easily escape being bound or controlled), healing and exorcism. The ‘Secret Method’ of Marishi-ten includes the whip (Jp. saku) and the fan (Jp. uchiwa) rituals, as well as battle charms, also used by the tengu to ward off their enemies. It is no wonder that the tengu serve as ‘guides’ sent by Marishi-ten, to reveal and impart secret martial traditions (Jp. ryu). In some ryu transmission scrolls (such as Shinkage-ryu), Marishi-ten herself appears in the guise of a tengu. A tengu also served as Marishi-ten’s spiritual intermediary to the warrior monk Nen Ami Jion (c. 1350–c. 1408). His career has parallels with that of Minamoto no Yoshitsune, for in his youth Jion too served at Kurama-dera, where he learned a variety of martial arts (Jp. bugei). In a later dream vision inspired by Marishi-ten, the secrets of the martial tradition Nen-ryu were revealed to him. Like other oral traditions (Jp. kuden) of ryu, the inner teachings (Jp. gokui) of the Nen-ryu, even though they could tell us more about the pivotal role of the tengu in these esoteric traditions, remain well-guarded secrets, to be only revealed to the initiated. Shugendo's other deity, Fudo-myo-o (‘The Immovable One’; Skt. Acala), is said to dwell deep in the mountains and can also transform into a tengu. Tengu are thus profoundly interconnected with the other local deities of Mt. Kuruma. They manifest the potent ‘betwixt and between’ worlds between Shinto and Buddhist contexts common in mountain asceticism and, despite their apparently ‘demoted’ position, continue to hold significant symbolic and ideological power within both contexts.
In more recent times, the myth of Sojobo, the king of the tengu (Jp. daitengu), has continued to evolve. In October 1947, Shigaraki Koun, the head monk of Kurama Temple, established a new esoteric sect, the Kurama school (Jp. Kurama-kokyo), which blends Shugendo practice with eco-consciousness-raising messages as a source of religious value, and subsequently split away from Tendai Buddhism. Kurama-kokyo has a trinity of gods called ‘Son-ten’ or ‘Supreme Deity’, comprised of Bishamon-ten, Senju-Kannon and Kurama’s unique deity, the Daitengu Mao-son, yet another avatar of Sojobo. Just like the celestial dog/shooting star of the Nihon Shoki, Mao-son is a meteorite (or part thereof) but, according to Kurama-kokyo, it was 6,500,000 years ago that he came to earth from the planet Venus to live at Mt. Kurama. The remains of the meteoroid came to be housed as ‘Mao-son’ in a small shrine, called the ‘Okunoin Mao-den’, high on the mountain. Believed to be the deity responsible for the creation and destruction of the earth, the kami’s spirit, Goho-mao-son, is said to reside in the old cryptomeria next to the shrine, underscoring the fact that the tengu continue to remain a vital part of Japanese religious tradition associated with mountains.