An image of a rat. Raigo was a stern man, a priest whose duties included maintaining discipline among the acolytes of Mii Temple. A member of the influential Fujiwara family, he became spiritual adviser to Emperor Shirakawa (reigned 1072-86). ...
Lord Sadanobu was a minister at the Heian court in the first half of the tenth century. The 13th-century book Okagami tells the story of how one evening, as he was hurrying to a meeting at the imperial palace, he felt something grab the end of his...
Lord Sadanobu was a minister at the Heian court in the first half of the tenth century. The 13th-century book Okagami tells the story of how one evening, as he was hurrying to a meeting at the imperial palace, he felt something grab the end of his...
folk tales; women; kimonos; grasses (plants); birds (animals)
Tamamo no mae was the beautiful and learned concubine of the Emperor Toba. One evening during a banquet, the wind rose and the lights went out, and the emperor became ill. The court magician declared this the sorcerous work of the concubine, who...
hair ornaments; calligraphy; mirrors; hand mirrors
To celebrate and document the fashions of former times, Chikanobu created a chronological presentation of beautiful women in sumptuous garments. Above the foreground figures are pictorial insets which make reference to the era of the costume,...
Once upon a time, a woodcutter saved a badger's life. In gratitude the badger, which, like a fox, is capable of many transformations (see no. 3), turned itself into a tea kettle. The woodcutter sold the kettle to a priest at Morin Temple in the...
A man in ragged robes sits on the ground before a yellow-flowering bush watching sparrows flying above him. Sanekata was a poet and high-ranking nobleman of the Fujiwara clan. He died in exile in 994. Toward the end of his political career,...
A man in ragged robes sits on the ground before a yellow-flowering bush watching sparrows flying above him. Sanekata was a poet and high-ranking nobleman of the Fujiwara clan. He died in exile in 994. Toward the end of his political career,...
legends (folk tales); men (male humans); armor (protective wear); Buddhas
An armored samurai is wrestling a red demon and multitude of skeletons under the gaze of a grinning yellow Buddha. Toki Motosada has seized the demon by the wrist and is throwing it down. Moths flutter around them under a full moon.
Where...
legends (folk tales); men (male humans); caves; bats (animals)
While hunting with the shogun, the 12th-century samurai Nitta Shirō Tadatsune distinguished himself by seizing and killing a wounded boar about to attack the shogun. A couple of days later, Tadatsune was walking on Mt. Fuji, and he and his...
A woman, in a flower-covered red robe, dances, surrounded by small flames. Princess Yaegaki found herself in as difficult a situation as Romeo and Juliet, with whom this story from the play Honcho Nijushiko, or Twenty-four Examples of Filial Piety,...
legends (folk tales); women; kimonos; lanterns; children (people by age group); fusuma; interior spaces; foxes (animals)
An image of a woman, with a fox's head (seen through a screen) walking through a door, leaving her child behind in the house. Foxes, or kitsune, are mysterious, magical creatures with powers many times greater than those of badgers. Sometimes...
A woman, slightly bent over, grasps her hair at the river's edge. Kiyohime was the daughter of an innkeeper at the village of Masago. Anchin was a devout monk at Dojo Temple on the banks of the Hidaka river. Each year Anchin stayed at Kiyohime's...
legends (folk tales); women; rivers; waterfalls (natural bodies of water)
An image of a woman sitting in the base of a waterfall, praying as the water falls around her. Tamiya Gempachiro, a fencing master from the Ikoma clan in Sanuki Province, was put to death in 1624 by a rival. His wife was pregnant and after his...
A woman with a large yellow and black umbrella (open) is accompanied by three white herons. The relationship of the animal kingdom to the world of human beings is close in rural societies. People feel a kinship with the wild creatures around them. ...
men (male humans); warriors; armor (protective wear); folklore; ghost stories
Ii no Hayata dispatches the Nue--a beast with the head of a monkey, body of a badger, legs of a tiger, scales of dragon and tail of snake which descended onto the roof of the imperial palace in the form of a black cloud--with his sword after it was...
men (male humans); women; swords; kimonos; shores (landforms)
The newly built Himeji Castle was believed, in the early 17th century, to be haunted by the Shinto spirit Osakabe Myojin. The famous warrior Miyamoto Musashi (1584?-1645) was summoned to exorcise the spirit, and he is shown here confronting...
An image of monsters coming out of a basket, threatening an old man. An old man and an old woman were neighbors. Every evening the old man fed a sparrow that visited him. When he returned home one day he was disturbed not to see the sparrow and...
An image of a warrior with sword and bow and arrows in the foreground, looking back at human/demon forms dancing in the background. Minamoto no Tametomo was, like Oniwaka/Benkei (7), an extremely violent youth. By the time he was fifteen he is...
An image of a warrior with sword and bow and arrows in the foreground, looking back at human/demon forms dancing in the background. Minamoto no Tametomo was, like Oniwaka/Benkei (7), an extremely violent youth. By the time he was fifteen he is...
