Shippeitaro

Shippeitaro^[1] or Shippei Taro^[2] (also given by the German spelling Schippeitaro^[3][4]) (しっぺい太郎,^[7] 竹篦太郎,^[8] 悉平太郎,^[9] 執柄太郎^[10]) is the name of a helper dog in the Japanese fairy tale by the same name.

"Schippeitaro is a strong and beautiful dog".

—from Mrs. T. H. James's Schippeitaro (1888), illustrated by Suzuki Munesaburo.

Translations include "Schippeitaro" in Andrew Lang's Violet Fairy Book (1901), taken from a German copy, and Mrs. James's "Schippeitaro" (1888), which share the same plotline: The mountain spirit and its minions (in the guise of cats in this version) demand a yearly human sacrifice of a maiden from the local village. A young warrior overhears the spirits hinting that their would-be bane was "Shippeitaro", which turns out to be a dog. This dog is substituted for the maiden to be placed inside the sacrificial container, and when the spirits arrive, the warrior and dog attack the cats and vanquish them.

The evil spirits appear as monkeys in most instances of the tale, as in the version of "Shippei Taro" given in Keigo Seki's anthology (translated into English 1963). In fact, this folktale is classified as "Destroying the Monkey Demon" (Sarugami taiji) tale type by Japanese folklorists.

In variants, the dog may have Suppeitarō, Suppetarō or a variety of other names, for example, "Hayatarō of Kōzenji temple in Shinano". The dog may not be given any name at all.

Monkey God tales preserved in the medieval anthologies Konjaku Monogatarishū and Uji Shūi Monogatari have been suggested as being the original sources of the orally disseminated versions.

Translations

The version of "Schippeitaro" in Andrew Lang's The Violet Fairy Book (1901) was taken from Japanische Märchen und Sagen collected by Professor David Brauns [de] (Leipzig, 1885).^[11][12][a]

The story of "Schippeitaro" (1888) as told by Mrs. T. H. James (Kate James^[14]), was number 17 in the "Japanese Fairy Tale Series" printed by Hasegawa Takejirō, who issued many such chirimen-bon or "crepe-paper books".^[15] Mrs. James's version follows a storyline identical to Lang's version.^[16]

Synopsis

Below is the summary of the Lang/Mrs. James version:^[4][17]

A young adventure-seeking warrior entered an enchanted forest, and he slept in a shrine (or chapel) there,^[b] and was awakened at midnight by the noises of cats yelling and dancing. The cats could be heard saying: "Do not tell Shippeitaro!"

Afterwards, the warrior visited a nearby village, and there he answered a girl's plea for help. It was the village custom to sacrifice a maiden to the mountain spirit, and it was her turn that year. She was placed inside a cage (or cask) and left at the shrine.^[c][d] The warrior made inquiries to find out about the famous dog Schippeitaro (standard modern romanization: Shippeitarō), owned by the prince's overseer,^[e] and obtained permission to borrow the dog. The warrior then replaced the maiden inside the cage with Schippeitaro. The cage was brought to the shrine, and the cats arrived. When the huge black cat opened the cage, Shippeitaro jumped out and killed it. The warrior entered the fray and together they killed several more cats, and the rest of them fled. The warrior returned Schippeitaro to his rightful owner, and the village afterwards held an annual festival in honor of the warrior and the heroic dog.^[f]

Variants

The Lang/Mrs. James version which features cats as the antagonists is actually atypical. In most Shippeitaro tales, the malevolent spirits appear as monkeys (or baboons).^[20][g]

An example of "Shippei Taro" published in Keigo Seki (ed.), Robert J. Adams (tr.), Folktales of Japan (1963) had been collected in Monou District, Miyagi. The priest in the story defeated the ogres (whose remains were those of dead monkeys) by replacing the sacrificial maiden inside the chest with Shippei Taro, a dog brought from the distant city of Nagahama in Ōmi Province.^[h][22][23]

Seki himself collected a number of variant tales from the field. When Seki published Nihon mukashibanashi taisei (1978), his provisional count reached 67 examples.^[i] This tally was inclusive, even counting tales where the dog helper did not appear at all.

The dog may or may not have a name at all. And the name is not entirely consistent. The dog's name may be only a slight variant of Shippeitaro, such as (Suppeitarō, Suppetarō (すっぺい太郎, 素平太郎, すっぺ太郎), or an alternate reading (Takeberatarō^[j]) or altogether different. The dog may be Shippeitarō/Suppe(i)tarō from Ōmi or Tanba or some other province. In several examples, the dog appears as Hayatarō (早太郎) or Heibōtarō (へいぼう太郎, 兵坊太郎) of Kōzenji [ja] temple in Shinano Province.^[25][26]

According to one scholar the name Shippeitarō tends to occur near Tōtomi Province (Shizuoka Prefecture), while Hayatarō is concentrated in Shinano Province (Nagano Prefecture).^[9] It has been observed that in Shinano dialect, haibō (ハイ坊) denoted "wolf cub", which probably gave rise to the name Heibōtarō, and Hayatarō may well be a further corruption of this.^[27]

The evil spirits may be in the form of monkey, cat, rat, badger or "raccoon dog" (mujina, tanuki).^[28]

Old printed book

 

Shippeitaro breaks out of his box and destroys the wolves.

—from Zōho Shippeitarō (1796), printed from a drawing by Toyokuni.

There is also a kibyōshi type printed book from the Edo Period, the Zōho Shippeitarō (1796) meaning the "expanded version" that was written by Nansenshō Somahito (南杣笑そまひと) with illustrations by ukiyo-e artist Toyokuni. This book illustrates spirits of the monkey, fox, kappa, tanuki (raccoon dog), hare, and wolf kind devouring the human sacrifice, and in the culminating scene depicts Shippeitarō defeating wolves.^[10][29]

Precursor

In the medieval anthology Konjaku Monogatarishū occurs a similar story of a sacrifice-demanding monkey god, entitled "How in Mimasaka Province a God was Trapped by a Hunter and Living Sacrifice Stopped". The Shippeitaro tales have been considered orally transmitted versions of this medieval prototype.^[30][31]

English translations of this medieval version is found in S. W. Jones's Ages Ago: Thirty-Seven Tales from the Konjaku Monogatari Collection (1959),^[32] and Michelle Osterfeld Li's study Ambiguous Bodies.^[33]

A similar tale is also included in another medieval anthology, the Uji Shūi Monogatari.^[33]

Tale type

In Japanese folklore studies, the "Shippeitarō" story is classed under the tale type Sarugami taiji (猿神退治, "Destroying the Monkey Demon" or "Monkey Spirit Conquest"), categorized as Type 91 by Seki in his paper written in English.^[21][34][35] This general tale group is more broad, and includes tales where a dog is not involved at all.^[34] The tale group (Sarugami taiji) is assigned Seki No. 256 (NMBS = Nihon mukashibanashi shūsei II; NMBT=taisei.) in Japanese scholarship.^[24][36]

Since the story concludes with the heroes abolishing the practice of offering maidens as human sacrifice, it draws a parallel to the legend of Saint George and the Dragon, and there are certain similarities also to the story of Susanoo saving Kushinadahime from the great serpent Yamata no Orochi.^[37]

In the Aarne–Thompson classification, the tale is classed as "The Dragon Slayer" type, AT300.^[23]

Explanatory notes

1. Lang in the Violet Fairy Book only cites "Japanische Märchen",^[11] but in his Pink Fairy Book (1897), he provides the longer and fuller citation naming Brauns.^[13]
2. Mrs. Smith calls it "little temple" or "ruined shrine", in contrast to Brauns's Kapelle and Lang's "chapel" which have Christian connotation.
3. Brauns translated the container as Käfig which is German for "cage", concurring with Mrs. James's rendition as "cage". A (wooden or bamboo) cage in Japanese is called a kago (籠),^[6] which can also denote either an open basket or ones with lids. The illustration in Mrs. Smith's book (drawn by Suzuki Munesaburo) depicts such a lidded basket (Cf. also kōri (行李) or wicker trunk). In the version Seki collected from Monou, the container is a nagamochi (長持), which is a lidded rectangular wardrobe chest.^[18]
4. Lang however rendered the container as "cask", which was illustrated as a barrel by Henry Justice Ford. And in E. K. Murray's retelling, "The Whispering Cats", the container is referred to as both "barrel" and "cask".^[19]
5. "The head man of our Prince", in Mrs. James's text
6. Mrs. Smith's version simply concludes with the warrior seeking new adventures.
7. Seki also gives monkey in the main, with cat, rat, badger as subtypes.^[21]
8. "Collected in Mono-gun, Miyagi-ken by Keisuke Sugawara". Seki & Adams (1963), p. 33.
9. As of the writing of the translator's headnote in Seki & Adams (1963), p. 33, the count stood at "twenty-six versions".
10. takebera is just the kun-yomi reading of shippei (竹篦), and perhaps should be read as "shippei".^[24]

References

Citations

1. James (1888), Preface
2. Seki & Adams (1963), p. 33
3. James (1888)
4. Lang (1901), pp. 36–40 (Violet Fairy Book)
5. Seki ed. (1978), Nihon mukashibanashi taisei, 7 pp.45–58
6. Kobayashi (2012), p. 84
7. Various examples in Seki (1978), Nihon mukashibanashi taisei.^[5][6]
8. James (1888), "Copyright reserved" notice (endpaper)
9. Etō (1989), pp. 186–187.
10. Nansenshō (1796).
11. Lang (1901), p. 40.
12. Brauns (1885), pp. 50–53 (Fraktur font); Schippeitaro (in Latin font online at zeno.org).
13. Lang, Andrew, ed. (1897), "Uraschimataro and the Turtle", The Pink Fairy Book, New York and Bombay: Longmans, Green, p. 25n
14. Sharf (1994), p. 10
15. Sharf (1994), p. 62
16. Cf. the text itself: James (1888)
17. James (1888), James (1889)
18. Ikegami (1983), p. 70.
19. Murray (1925), p. 453.
20. Kobayashi (2012), p. 81
21. Seki (1966), p. 52
22. Seki & Adams (1963), pp. 33–36
23. Hansen, William F. (2002), Ariadne's Thread: A Guide to International Tales Found in Classical Literature, Cornell University Press, pp. 119–121
24. Ikegami (2008), p. 298.
25. Taguchi (1987), pp. 2–3 (table)
26. Kobayashi (2012), pp. 86–94 (table)
27. Tanigawa, Ken'ichi [in Japanese] (1992), Nihon minzoku bunka shiryō shūsei 11: Dōshokubutsu no fōkuroa I 日本民俗文化資料集成 11: 動植物のフォークロア I (in Japanese), San-ichi, p. 74
28. Seki (1966), p. 52; Taguchi (1987), pp. 2–3 (table); Kobayashi (2012), pp. 86–94 (table)
29. Kobayashi (2012), p. 96.
30. Smith (1966), pp. 227–229, citing Seki & Adams (1963), p. 33
31. Ikegami (2008). Konjaku Monogatari tale, p. 55– and passim; Shippeitaro comared p. 298.
32. Smith (1966), p. 223.
33. Li, Michelle Osterfeld (2009), Ambiguous Bodies: Reading the Grotesque in Japanese Setsuwa Tales, Stanford University Press, pp. 201–205, ISBN 9780804771061
34. Knight, John (2003). Waiting for Wolves in Japan. Oxford University Press. p. 92. ISBN 9780199255184., citing Nakamura, Teiri [ja] (1989) Dobutsutachi no reiryoku [Spiritual powers of animals] pp. 54–5; and Nagano, E. (1991) Sarugami taiji in Nihon Minwa no Kai (ed.) Gaidobukku nihono no minwa [A Guidebook to Japanese Folktales] pp. 115-116.
35. Anderson (1969), p. 277, note 26
36. Inada, Kōji [in Japanese]; Inada, Kazuko [in Japanese] (1971). Nihon mukashibanashi hyakusen 日本昔話百選 (4th ed.). Sanseido. p. 28. ISBN 9784385420479.
37. Anderson (1969), p. 277.

Bibliography

• Anderson, Susanne Andrea (1969), "Legends of holy men of early Japan", Monumenta Serica, 28: 258–320, doi:10.1080/02549948.1969.11731071
• Brauns, David, ed. (1885), "Schippeitaro", Japanische Märchen und Sagen (in German), Leipzig: Wilhelm Friedrich, pp. 50–53
• Etō, Jun (1989), Inu 犬, Nihon no meizuihitsu 76, Sakuhinsha, pp. 184–189, ISBN 9784878939761
• Ikegami, Jun'ichi [in Japanese] (1983), Konjaku monogatari no sekai: chūsei no akebono 「今昔物語集」の世界: 中世のあけぼの (in Japanese), Tsukuma Shobo
• —— (2008). Konjaku/Sangoku monogatari no sekai 今昔・三国伝記の世界 (in Japanese). Vol. 3. Izumi Shoin. ISBN 9784757604438.
• James, Mrs. T. H. (1888), Schippeitaro (PDF), Japanese Fairy Tale Series, Suzuki Munesaburo (illustr.), Kobunsha
• James, Mrs. T. H. (1889) [1888], Schippeitaro, Japanese Fairy Tale Series, Suzuki Munesaburo (illustr.), Kobunsha
• Kobayashi, Koichiro (2012), Chirimenbon Shippeitaro ni arawareru Odoru Neko ちりめん本『竹篦太郎』に表れる「踊る猫」 [Dancing cats evident in the chirimen-book Shippeitaro] (PDF) (in Japanese), Institute for the Study of Japanese Folk Culture Kanagawa University (Research Center for Nonwritten Cultural Materials)
• Murray, E. K. (1925), "The Whispering Cats", The New Merry-go-round, 2 (12): 453–454
• Nansenshō, Somahito 南杣笑そまひと (1796), Zōho Shippeitarō 増補執柄太郎, Utagawa Toyokuni I (illstr.)

Waseda Univ. collection (in Japanese)

• Lang, Andrew, ed. (1901), "Schippeitaro", The Violet Fairy Book, New York and Bombay: Longmans, Green, pp. 36–40
• Seki, Keigo, ed. (1963), Robert J. Adams (tr.), "Shippei Taro", Folktales of Japan, University of Chicago Press, pp. 33–36
• Seki, Keigo (1966), Types of Japanese Folktales (PDF), Society for Asian Folklore, pp. 52–
• Sharf, Frederic Alan (1994), Takejiro Hasegawa: Meiji Japan's Preeminent Publisher of Wood-block-illustrated Crepe-paper Books, Peabody Essex Museum Collections, vol. 130, Salem: Peabody Essex Museum
• Smith, Robert (1966), "On Certain Tales of the 'Konjaku Monogatari' as Reflections of Japanese Folk Religion" (PDF), Asian Folklore Studies, Nanzan University, 25: 227–229, doi:10.2307/1177479, JSTOR 1177479
• Taguchi, Mamoru (1987), "Kyōdo minwa 'Shippeitarō' to 'Konjaku monogatari' 'Uji shūi monogatari'" 郷土民話「竹箆太郎」と「今昔物語」「宇治拾遺物語」--高校「古典」授業の活性化のために [Local folktale Shippeitaro and Kojaku Monogatari, Uji Shui Monogatari -- for stimulating 'classics' instruction in high school], Bulletin of the Faculty of Education, Ibaraki University (in Japanese) (36): 1–7, hdl:10109/11650