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 place 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 (Leipzig, 1885).[11][12][lower-alpha 1]

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 warrior wandered the land in search of adventure, eventually finding an enchanted forest, wherein he slept in a shrine (or chapel).[lower-alpha 2] He was awoken at midnight by ferocious yowls from cats, who were dancing and yelling, some saying, "Do not tell Shippeitaro!" He got up and continued on, eventually finding a village where he heard a female voice lamenting and pleading for help. He was told that every year they had to sacrifice a maiden to the spirit of the mountain, and it was this girl's turn this year. She was put in a cage (or cask) which, in turn, was placed in the shrine.[lower-alpha 3][lower-alpha 4] He inquired about Shippeitaro: a dog of the prince's overseer,[lower-alpha 5] living nearby. The warrior visited the overseer and persuaded him to lend him the dog. He went to the cage, replacing the maiden with Shippeitaro. The cage was brought to the shrine, and the cats came. A huge black cat opened the cage, and Shippeitaro jumped out and killed it. Then, with the help of the warrior, killed several others before they fled. The warrior brought Shippeitaro back to his owner in the morning, and every year a feast was held in honor of the warrior and Shippeitaro.[lower-alpha 6]

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][lower-alpha 7]

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 the dog Shippei Taro, found in the distant city of Nagahama, Ōmi Province.[lower-alpha 8][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.[lower-alpha 9] 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[lower-alpha 10]) 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 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". This in Japanese would be 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. It reads "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 (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 (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; Inada, Kazuko (1971). Nihon mukashibanashi hyakusen 日本昔話百選 (4th ed.). Sanseido. p. 28. ISBN 9784385420479.
  37. Anderson (1969), p. 277.
Bibliography
  • Brauns, David, ed. (1885), "Schippeitaro", Japanische Märchen und Sagen (in German), Leipzig: Wilhelm Friedrich, pp. 50–53
  • 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

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
  • 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
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