天狗　Tengu

5th March – 弥生

God or monster alike creature which has been believed to exist in deep mountain. He has red face with very tall nose and flying with his wings. He has huge body and wear Japanese mountain ascetic hermits (山伏＝Yamabushi) style clothes.

From the old time, Japanese people have believed that mountain has spiritual power. Because of this belief, the story about urban legend creature 天狗 (Tengu) has been handed down and scare people to go into the mountain.

This mysterious creature was originated in … of course China, as you can expect many things in Japan was inherited from China. Chinese people used to believe that Tengu is informing the bad luck and they consider the falling star as Tengu. When the falling star falls close from the ground, it makes huge explosion sound. They thought the sound was same as the dog barking and how the falling star falls in the sky looked like dog running around the sky. As 天 (Ten) means sky and 狗(gu) means dog, this word was born.

In Japan, Tengu has roughly 3 different species:

-大天狗 (Dai-tengu): This is the most powerful tengu, having huge body and be able to change the looks into anything

-烏天狗 (Karasu-tengu): Second strongest species, having crow-alike beak and can fly. Karasu means crow

-木の葉天狗 (Konoha-tengu): Have the least power compared to the other species. It is over 2m high and have bird looks.

Tengu has many scary story such as causing fire and typhoon by using his special fun called 葉団扇 (Ha-uchiwa), controling humans’ mind and teleportation ability. Expecially, Tengu’s kidnapping story is famous as there is a book about one boy kidnapped came back after 7 years. Therefore in the old time, kids were told to come back before the outside becomes dark as Tengu would kidnap them.

On the other side, Tengu also have a good story like healing the illness. This urban legend probably was told because it was actually happened – but by monk.

In the past, monks went into the mountain ans trained themselves. Then when they finished the training, they came down from the mountain and looked like very different person. Those people helped healing the sick for villagers using herbs in the mountain as they had a lot knowledge about herbs by then. Therefore, villagers thought those people as Tengu and believing they were gods.

This is why Tengu has been considered both god and monster.

There are another hypothesis that Tengu was actually Western people. There is one thought that when the Western ship drifted in Japan and people on the ship went into the mountain and lived there. Or when Japanese saw the western person back then, they were scared of foreigner as they looked different. Therefore people might have considered Western people as Tengu.

Anyhow, learning Tengu’s legendary story is very attractive and interesting, if you are interested, why not searching about ’仙境異聞’ (Senkyou-ibun) story!