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C H A P T E R 3 Manipulating the Medium Separating the Sanjin from the Tengu Atsutane’s Other World Senkyò ibun opens with a conversation between Atsutane and his elder confidant and friend, Yashiro Hirokata, in which the existence of a mysterious and supernatural Other World is a premise accepted by both parties. As explained earlier, for Atsutane, the Other World had the meaning of the normally invisible half of a universe made up of two worlds, one seen and one unseen. As he explained in his most famous cosmological text The August Pillar of the Soul, drafted in 1812, the unseen half of the universe was first mentioned in the ancient stories about Òkuninushi ceding the land of Japan to the Imperial Grandson, Ninigi no mikoto. In these stories, in exchange for his peaceful generosity, Òkuninushi was given charge of this Other World.1 According to Atsutane’s interpretation of the mythological concession, it was Òkuninushi who received the better part of the deal. This was due to his belief that the Other World was the numinous world inhabited by kami and spirits, and as such also served as the wonderful realm of the afterlife for the souls of the Japanese departed. However, this pleasant and reassuring Other World was also populated by a variety of creatures that were menacing to the world of humans. Furthermore, although it was difficult for humans to cross into the Other World and obtain any solid information about it, it was not difficult for the inhabitants of the Other World to cross over into the human world. Another point of interest in Atsutane’s theory is that the Other World and this world tended to intersect in the wilderness; that is, in the mountains of Japan. Traditionally in Japan, even before Atsutane’s speculative efforts, the mountains were seen as an entryway into the supernatural world. According to Atsutane’s cosmology, the Other World and this world overlapped, and it was in the mountains that the wall separating the two became porous enough to allow penetration by the human being. Manipulating the Medium 75 Therefore, the topography of the Other World was exactly the same as the topography of Japan. When Torakichi described the landscape of the Other World in which he claimed to have lived for years, geographically speaking, he was only describing certain mountains in Japan about which any bold and resourceful human could also have known. Therefore, Torakichi ’s special contribution to Atsutane’s theory of the Other World would lay in his discussion about its inhabitants. Torakichi’s Other World Some of Torakichi’s stories of the Other World concern its animal inhabitants . A few of his stories about the fantastic animal life are probably actually about animals we would consider commonplace. For example, Torakichi told an exciting story of a certain creature that flew down from a tree and latched on to his face. It was not a large creature, perhaps no larger than his face, but it could fly, it had claws, and it was fierce. Although Torakichi seemed convinced he had had a brush with something quite exotic, from his description, it is fairly clear that his ferocious battle took place with a flying squirrel, not a completely unknown or fantastic creature. Torakichi told another story of being attacked by a dragon. One day he was wading through a stream when an animal in the water grabbed him and pulled him under. He escaped by fighting off the dragon, which from his description might be alternatively identified as a large snake. However, Torakichi insisted that a baby dragon had attacked him. In both of these examples the beasts of Torakichi’s Other World are dangerous and ferocious , but his descriptions of them do not set them apart from animals in this world. One story introduced another legendary but imaginary beast. Torakichi told of monkeys who resembled humans. The most interesting detail about them was that they could make a special type of liquor, which Torakichi reported to be especially delicious. Here Torakichi is depending upon legends of an orangutan-type beast, a shòjò, a hairy creature with a human face who was reportedly fond of sake. This story had been popularly told throughout China and Japan for centuries. Senkyò ibun contains other stories in which Torakichi describes beasts not so easily identified in reality or in legend. One such example is Torakichi ’s account of a four-legged armored creature, a drawing of...

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