Chapter Chapter 8 · THE BADGER

. THE BADGER

According to the “Shoki,” it was in the second month of the

thirty-fifth year of the Emperor Suiko in Michinoku that a badger first

assumed the shape of a man. True, according to one copyist’s version,

the badger was mistaken for a man instead of taking a man’s shape, but

since it is written in both copies afterwards that it sang, it seems

that, whether it took a man’s shape or was mistaken for a man, it is a

fact that it sang songs like an ordinary man.

Earlier than this, it was written in the “Suininki” under date of the

eighty-seventh year, that after the dog of a man named Mikaso in the

province of Tamba had eaten a badger, there was found in its belly the

curved Yasakani jewel. The story of this curved jewel was later made

use of by Bakin in “Hakkenden” where he introduced Yao Bikuni Myōchin.

But the badger of the time of the Emperor Suinin only had a brilliant

gem in its belly and could not change itself at will into other shapes,

as could the badgers of later days. Then after all, it was probably

in the second month of the thirty-fifth year of Suiko that the badger

first assumed the form of man.

Of course the badger had lived in the fields and mountains of Japan

ever since the eastern expedition of the Emperor Jimmu. And it began

to bewitch people for the first time in the year 1288 of the Japanese

calendar. At this, you may at first be surprised. But it probably

began in some such way as the following:

In those days a Michinoku girl who carried water up from the sea was in

love with a salt maker of the same village. But she lived alone with

her mother. And since they tried to meet nightly without her mother

knowing it, there was no slight worry.

Every night the man crossed over a hill by the sea and came near the

girl’s house. And she, her mind on the time appointed, would slip

stealthily out. But out of regard for her mother’s feelings, she was

likely to be late. Sometimes she would finally come as the moon was

beginning to decline. Sometimes she had not yet come even when it was

time for the first cock to lift his voice far and near.

It was one night after things had gone on thus for some time. The man,

squatting under a high rock like a folding screen, sang a song to

beguile his loneliness as he waited. He gathered up his impatience in

his salty throat and sang with all his might against the surging waves.

The mother, hearing the song, asked her daughter lying beside her what

it was. The girl shammed sleep at first, but after she had been asked

a second and third time, she could not but answer. “It doesn’t seem to

be a man’s voice, does it?” she said deceitfully, frightened out of her

wits.

Then the mother came back with the question what could sing save a man.

And through sheer quickness of wit, the girl replied that it might be a

badger. Through the ages, time and again, has love taught such wit to

women.

When morning came, the mother spoke of having heard the song to an old

woman of the neighborhood who wove straw mats. And the old woman was

one of those who had heard the song. She expressed her doubt that a

badger could sing but handed the story on to a man who gathered reeds.

When, after passing from mouth to mouth, the story came to the ears

of a mendicant priest who had come to the village, he explained with

reason how a badger could sing a song. In Buddhist teaching there is a

thing called metempsychosis. So the soul of the badger might originally

have been the soul of a man. In which case, what the man could do, the

badger could do. Such a thing as singing a song on a moonlight night

was not greatly to be wondered at.

After that in this village any number of people came to say that they

had heard the song of the badger. And then at last appeared even a man

who said he had seen the badger. He said that one night, while on his

way home along the beach from gathering seagulls’ eggs, he had seen

distinctly by the light of some remaining patches of snow a badger

hulking along singing a song at the foot of a seaside hill.

Already even its form had been seen. It was natural that after that

practically everybody in the village, young and old, male and female,

should have heard the song. Sometimes it came from the hills. Sometimes

it came from the sea. And sometimes, besides, it came from over the

roofs of the rush-thatched huts scattered about between the hills and

the sea. And that was not all. At last one night the girl who drew

sea-water was herself suddenly startled by the song.

She, of course, thought it was the man singing. She listened to her

mother’s breathing and thought that she was fast asleep. Then she stole

from her bed, and opening the door the least bit, peeped out. But

outside there was only a dim moon and the sound of the waves, and no

man’s form anywhere. Involuntarily, in the chilly spring-night wind,

she pressed her hand to her cheek and stood transfixed. There in the

sand before the door were dimly visible the scattered footprints of a

badger.

This story was immediately carried across hundreds of miles of mountain

and river to the district of the capital. Then the badgers of Yamashiro

changed their shapes. The badgers of Omi changed theirs. Finally the

related racoon dog began to assume human form, and in Tokugawa days,

a fellow called Sado-no-Danzaburō, who was neither a racoon dog nor a

badger, began to bewitch even the people of Echizen Province across the

sea.

He did not begin to bewitch them, but it came to be thought that he

did, you may say. But how much difference is there after all between

being bewitched and believing that one is bewitched?

This is true not only in the case of badgers. Is it not a fact that all

things that exist for us are in the end but things in the existence of

which we believe?

It is written in “The Celtic Twilight,” by Yeats, that some children

on Lake Gill believed without a doubt that a little Protestant girl

in blue and white garments was the Holy Mother Mary herself. When we

think of them as both living in the human mind just the same, there is

no difference between Mary on the lake and the badger in the wilds.

Should we not believe in that which lives within us just as our

forefathers believed that the badger bewitched men? And should we not

live as bidden by that in which we believe?

Herein lies reason why we should not despise the badger.