The Lost Wolves of Japan

3. The Conflicts between Wolf Hunters and Rabid Man-Killers in Early Modern Japan

3 THE CONFLICTS BETWEEN WOLF HUNTERS AND RABID MAN-KILLERS IN EARLY MODERN JAPAN Shiga Naoya wrote some of Japan's most celebrated modern fiction during his long and productive life, and "Takibi" (Night fires; 1920) ranks among his finest. Filled with lucid descriptions of colorful sunsets, rainbows that stretch between towering mountain peaks, crisp reflections on calm alpine lakes, and the lapping flames of bonfires that illuminate coal-black nights, "Takibi" is a literaryfeast ofcolor, light, shapes, and natural imagery. Similar to the tales told in Yanagita Kunio's Tono monogatari, moreover, "Takibi" takes place in the once otherworldlyspace of the mountains and so the story strikes a familiar cord, one related to changing Japanese attitudes toward mountains and of interest to our discussion of the extinction of Japan's wolves. Midway through the story, while the characters gather birch to start a bonfire, Mr. K, ayoung mountain innkeeper, comes running out ofthe woods after having been startled by a strange worm with a glowing tail. The story's othercharacters-theartist Mr. Sand the narrator and his wife--have a hearty laugh and then begin to talk with Mr. K more seriously about his experiences living in the mountains. In a question that only the people of modern societies can even conjure-a question that would have baffled the legend creators and storytellers of Tono and even the epic poets of Ainu villagesthe narrator's wife, somewhat anxiously, asks, "Is there anything really frightening in these mountains?" For the Japanese of preindustrial mountain communities, dark forests roused fears of animals, both imagined and real, and ofscarcely understood deities and monsters that always lurked dan- Conflicts between Wolf Hunters and Rabid Man-Killers 97 gerously in the night. Tono monogatari is full of such frightful imagery as shape-shifting foxes and vengeful wolves. Mountain villagers understood themselves to live on the boundary between the realm of the ta no kami, the paddy deity, and the yama no kami, the mountain deity. In the winter, the ta no kami crossed over to the other side to become the yama no kami. In preindustrial Japan, animals possessed strongassociations with this mountain deity, and so one suspects that stories of such creatures had the ability to humble or even frighten those inhabiting this border space. But as "Takibi" reveals, such was not the case with modern societies like Japan in the Meiji period (1868- 1912), the newly modernized world ofShiga. Mr. K could confidently reply, "Nothing at all," and in the ensuing conversation, the innkeeper even dismisses traditional supernatural monsters, specifically the OnyfIdo, as mere superstitions. Now all things, animals and monsters alike, could be explained by science and controlled, if need be, by its technologies. The dense forests of Shiga's imagination contained no dangerous monsters, but he chose to resurrect the memory of wolves in "Takibi." As Mr. K recalled, his dark face partially lit by the flickering bonfire, "When I was a child, often we just heard their distant cries. Hearing their cries in the middle of the night, I remember that a lonely, uneasy feeling came over me." As everyone huddled around the bonfire, Mr. K began to talk about wolves (yamainu). He told how his deceased father, who liked night fishing, had one evening become encircled by wolves. Being close to the lakeshore, he was able to return home by wading through the water. Mr. Kalso recounted how, the same year that they cleared land for horse pastures, wolves ate about half the horses. "That year we put dynamite in the horse meat and killed them," he continued. "In one week we wiped them OUt."l Once creatures that haunted the otherworldly realm of mountains, and that occasionally ate horses after the denuding of their forest home to make pastures, in "Takibi" wolves became the stuff of childhood memories. Seen from a literary perspective, the technology of modern society, in the form of dynamite , had blown the Japanese wolf to bits. By Shiga's day, the myth of the mountains and the divine animals who called this otherworld their home had all but vanished: wild places became simply resources to exploit, or pretty places to recreate at, within Japan's new order. This chapter has begun with a brief discussion of Shiga'S "Takibi" because the story anticipates Japanese attitudes toward wolves in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: an extinct animal but one still part ofchildhood memories and local storytelling practices. How didwolves come to be...