Tengu


Tengu are a type of legendary creature found in Shinto belief. They are considered a type of yōkai or Shinto kami. The Tengu were originally thought to take the forms of birds of prey and a monkey deity, and they were traditionally depicted with human, monkey, and avian characteristics. Sarutahiko Ōkami is considered to be the original model of Konoha-Tengu, which today is widely considered the Tengus defining characteristic in the popular imagination. He is the Shinto monkey deity who is said to shed light on Heaven and Earth. Some experts theorize that Sarutahiko was a sun god worshiped in the Ise region prior to the popularization of Amaterasu.
Buddhism long held that the Tengu were disruptive demons and harbingers of war. Their image gradually softened, however, into one of protective, if still dangerous, spirits of the mountains and forests. Tengu are associated with the ascetic practice of Shugendō, and they are usually depicted in the garb of its followers, the yamabushi.

Image

The tengu in art appears in a variety of shapes. It usually falls somewhere in between a large, monstrous bird and a wholly anthropomorphized being, often with a red face or an unusually large or long nose. Early depictions of tengu show them as kite-like beings who can take a human-like form, often retaining avian wings, heads, or beaks. The tengu's long nose seems to have been conceived in the 14th century, likely as a humanization of the original bird's bill. This feature allies them with the Sarutahiko Ōkami, who is described in the 720 CE text the Nihon Shoki with a similar nose measuring seven hand-spans in length. In village festivals, the two figures are often portrayed with identical red phallic-nosed mask designs.
Some of the earliest representations of tengu appear in Japanese picture scrolls, such as the Tenguzōshi Emaki, painted, which parodies high-ranking priests by endowing them with the hawk-like beaks of tengu demons.
Tengu are often pictured as taking the shape of some sort of priest. Beginning in the 13th century, tengu came to be associated in particular with yamabushi, the mountain ascetics who practice Shugendō. The association soon found its way into Japanese art, where tengu are most frequently depicted in the yamabushi's unique costume, which includes a distinctive headwear called the tokin and a pompom sash. Due to their priestly aesthetic, they are often shown wielding the khakkhara, a distinct staff used by Buddhist monks, called a shakujō in Japanese.
Tengu are commonly depicted holding a magical feather fan. According to legend, tengu taught Minamoto no Yoshitsune to fight with the "war-fan" and "the sword". In folk tales, these fans sometimes can grow or shrink a person's nose, but usually, they have attributed the power to stir up great winds. Various other strange accessories may be associated with tengu, such as a type of tall, one-toothed geta sandal often called tengu-geta.

Origins

It is believed, the term tengu and the characters used to write it are borrowed from the name of a fierce demon from Chinese folklore called tiāngǒu though this still has to be confirmed. Chinese literature assigns this creature a variety of descriptions, but most often it is a fierce and anthropophagous canine monster that resembles a shooting star or comet. It makes a noise like thunder and brings war wherever it falls. One account from the Shù Yì Jì, written in 1791, describes a dog-like tiāngǒu with a sharp beak and an upright posture, but usually tiāngǒu bear little resemblance to their Japanese counterparts.
The 23rd chapter of the Nihon Shoki, written in 720, is generally held to contain the first recorded mention of tengu in Japan. In this account a large shooting star appears and is identified by a Buddhist priest as a "heavenly dog", and much like the tiāngǒu of China, the star precedes a military uprising. "9th year, Spring, and month, 23rd day. A great star floated from East to West, and there was a noise like that of thunder. The people of that day said that it was the sound of the falling star. Others said that it was earth-thunder. Hereupon the Buddhist Priest Bin said:—"It is not the falling star, but the Celestial Dog, the sound of whose barking is like thunder.". When it appeared, there was famine".— Although the Chinese characters for tengu are used in the text, accompanying phonetic furigana characters give the reading as amatsukitsune. M. W. de Visser speculated that the early Japanese meaning for the characters used to write Tengu may represent a conglomeration of two Chinese spirits: the tiāngǒu and the fox spirits called huli jing before the nuances of meaning were expanded to include local Japanese kami, therefore the true Tengu in appearance.
Some Japanese scholars have speculated that the tengu's image derives from that of the Hindu eagle deity Garuda, who was pluralized in Buddhist scripture as one of the major races of non-human beings. Like the tengu, the garuda are often portrayed in a human-like form with wings and a bird's beak. The name tengu seems to be written in place of that of the garuda in a Japanese sutra called the Emmyō Jizō-kyō, but this was likely written in the Edo period, long after the tengu's image was established. At least one early story in the Konjaku Monogatari describes a tengu carrying off a dragon, which is reminiscent of the garuda's feud with the nāga serpents. In other respects, however, the tengu's original behavior differs markedly from that of the garuda, which is generally friendly towards Buddhism. De Visser has speculated that the tengu may be descended from an ancient Shinto bird-demon which was syncretized with both the garuda and the tiāngǒu when Buddhism arrived in Japan. However, he found little evidence to support this idea.
A later version of the Kujiki, an ancient Japanese historical text, writes the name of Amanozako, a monstrous female deity born from the god Susanoo's spat-out ferocity, with characters meaning tengu deity. The book describes Amanozako as a raging creature capable of flight, with the body of a human, the head of a beast, a long nose, long ears, and long teeth that can chew through swords. An 18th-century book called the Tengu Meigikō suggests that this goddess may be the true predecessor of the tengu, but the date and authenticity of the Kujiki, and of that edition, in particular, remain disputed.

Evil spirits and angry ghosts

The Konjaku Monogatarishū, a collection of stories published in the late Heian period, contains some of the earliest tales of tengu, already characterized as they would be for centuries to come. These tengu are the troublesome opponents of Buddhism, who mislead the pious with false images of the Buddha, carry off monks and drop them in remote places, possess women in an attempt to seduce holy men, rob temples, and endow those who worship them with unholy power. They often disguise themselves as priests or nuns, but their true form seems to be that of a kite.
Throughout the 12th and 13th centuries, accounts continued of tengu attempting to cause trouble in the world. They were now established as the ghosts of angry, vain, or heretical priests who had fallen on the "tengu-realm". They began to possess people, especially women and girls, and speak through their mouths. Still the enemies of Buddhism, the demons also turned their attention to the royal family. The Kojidan tells of an Empress who was possessed, and the Ōkagami reports that Emperor Sanjō was made blind by a tengu, the ghost of a priest who resented the throne.
One notorious tengu from the 12th century was himself the ghost of an emperor. The Hōgen Monogatari tells the story of Emperor Sutoku, who was forced by his father to abandon the throne. When he later raised the Hōgen Rebellion to take back the country from Emperor Go-Shirakawa, he was defeated and exiled to Sanuki Province in Shikoku. According to legend he died in torment, having sworn to haunt the nation of Japan as a great demon, and thus became a fearsome tengu with long nails and eyes like a kite's.
In stories from the 13th century, tengu began to abduct young boys as well as the priests they had always targeted. The boys were often returned, while the priests would be found tied to the tops of trees or other high places. All of the tengu's victims, however, would come back in a state near death or madness, sometimes after having been tricked into eating animal dung.
The tengu of this period were often conceived of as the ghosts of the arrogant, and as a result, the creatures have become strongly associated with vanity and pride. Today the Japanese expression tengu ni naru is still used to describe a conceited person.

Great and small demons

In the Genpei Jōsuiki, written in the late Kamakura period, a god appears to Go-Shirakawa and gives a detailed account of tengu ghosts. He says that they fall onto the tengu road because, as Buddhists, they cannot go to Hell, yet as people with bad principles, they also cannot go to Heaven. He describes the appearance of different types of tengu: the ghosts of priests, nuns, ordinary men, and ordinary women, all of whom in life possessed excessive pride. The god introduces the notion that not all tengu are equal; knowledgeable men become daitengu, but ignorant ones become kotengu.
The philosopher Hayashi Razan lists the greatest of these daitengu as Sōjōbō of Kurama, Tarōbō of Atago, and Jirōbō of Hira. The demons of Kurama and Atago are among the most famous tengu.
A section of the Tengu Meigikō, later quoted by Inoue Enryō, lists the daitengu in this order:
Daitengu are often pictured in a more human-like form than their underlings, and due to their long noses, they may also be called hanatakatengu. Kotengu may conversely be depicted as more bird-like. They are sometimes called Karasu-Tengu, or koppa- or konoha-tengu. Inoue Enryō described two kinds of tengu in his Tenguron: the great daitengu, and the small, bird-like konoha-tengu who live in Cryptomeria trees. The konoha-tengu are noted in a book from 1746 called the Shokoku Rijin Dan, as bird-like creatures with wings two meters across which were seen catching fish in the Ōi River, but this name rarely appears in literature otherwise.
Creatures that do not fit the classic bird or yamabushi image are sometimes called tengu. For example, tengu in the guise of wood-spirits may be called guhin, but this word can also refer to tengu with canine mouths or other features. The people of Kōchi Prefecture on Shikoku believe in a creature called shibaten or shibatengu, but this is a small childlike being who loves sumō wrestling and sometimes dwells in the water, and is generally considered one of the many kinds of kappa. Another water-dwelling tengu is the kawatengu of the Greater Tokyo Area. This creature is rarely seen, but it is believed to create strange fireballs and be a nuisance to fishermen.