Oguri: An Early Edo Tale of Suffering, Resurrection, Revenge, and Deification

The earliest hint of the existence of a heroic oral narrative about the travails and ultimate survival of a man named Oguri おぐり/小栗 appears in Kamakura ōzōshi 鎌倉大草紙, ¹ a late medieval military chronicle of uncertain authorship and date, also popularly known by the alternate title Taiheikōki 太平後記. Over time, through the skills of storytellers of various sorts, Oguri's life story developed into a tale that survives today as the grandest example of late medieval-early Edo orally derived narrative. ² Greatly elaborated and encompassing an exceptionally broad geographic range, the tale of Oguri and his devoted female partner Terute became widely popular. Its transmutation into written form owes much to its eventual adaptation as a part of the repertoire of the sekkyōbushi 説教節 "sermon ballad" performance genre. ³

Kamakura ōzōshi, with entries spanning 1379 to 1479, covers warfare and general political conditions in the Kantō and is thought to have been completed sometime between 1479 and the end of the Muromachi period. The preface to the chronicle states that its purposes include discriminating between good and evil, offering praise and criticism (kanchō 勸懲), and recording the deeds of important families for the edification of later generations. Though largely concerned with battles coming after those described in Taiheiki, it also includes a number of waka and narrative episodes. ⁴

In 1416, Uesugi Zenshū Ujinori 上杉禅秀氏憲 rose in rebellion against Ashikaga Mochiuji 足利持氏, for whom he had been serving as deputy (Kantō kanrei 関東管 領). One of Uesugi's allies, Oguri Mitsushige 小栗満重, the leader of the Oguri clan in Hitachi 常陸 province, persisted in opposition to Mochiuji even after Uesugi's death in 1417. An episode in Kamakura ōzōshi dated Ōei 30 (1423) describes Mitsushige's ongoing resistance and the deaths of some of his allies. Then roughly halfway through the brief account this chronicle takes a perceptible stylistic turn, moving into the colloquial-sounding, dialogue-laden language characteristic of setsuwa and quite different from the semi-kanbun flavor of the earlier passages. ⁵

After this Oguri secretly fled to Mikawa 三河. His son Kojirō Sukeshige 小次郎助重 secretly stayed in hiding in the Kantō. Oguri went to the Gongendō 権現堂 in Sagami province, and he found lodgings nearby in a place where thieves gathered. The innkeeper said, "I've heard that this rōnin is one of the richest men in the province. He must surely have some valuables on him. We should kill him and take them."

"But, he has a lot of strong men. What shall we do?" asked another.

One of the robbers answered, "Let's poison his sake and kill him by having him drink it."

"Right!" said the others.

They called together women entertainers from the inns in the area and had them sing imayō 今様 and dance to entertain him. They prepared a banquet for Oguri and his men and pressed sake upon them. The entertainer who was serving Oguri's sake that evening was a woman called Teruhime 照姫. She had recently become intimate with Oguri. It seems perhaps she had some idea of what was going on. She herself was not drinking the sake, and because of her sympathy for Oguri she whispered to him about what was happening.

So Oguri acted as if he were drinking, but he did not drink any sake at all. Knowing nothing about all this, his men were all laid out drunk. Then, acting as if he were just going out for a moment, Oguri went into some nearby woods. He found a fawn colored horse tethered there. This was a horse that the robbers had stolen from a daimyo passing by along the sea route. But the horse was as wild as could be, and he bit and trampled people, so the robbers had found him useless and left him tied up in the woods. Seeing this, Oguri secretly slipped back into his lodgings, got some of his valuables, mounted the horse, whipped it, and rode off.

Oguri was a horseman without parallel, and before long he came to the temple in Fujisawa 藤沢 where he sought out the Holy Man and asked for help. ⁶ The Holy Man...