Daitengu

The boy was supposed to be praying. Sent to a temple on Mount Kurama, north of Kyoto, to be made a monk, Ushiwakamaru instead slipped out at night into the cedar dark of the mountain, where the air smelled of pine resin and cold stone, and there he found a teacher no temple could provide. The figure waiting among the trees had white hair, a face the color of a lacquered mask, and a nose so long it seemed a deliberate insult to the human form. This was Sojobo, first among the daitengu, and before the boy grew into Minamoto no Yoshitsune, one of the most celebrated warriors Japan would ever produce, he learned everything the mountain king cared to teach: the sword, the reading of terrain and tactics, and a current of magic that ran beneath both.

That scene holds the whole contradiction of the daitengu in one frame. They are the great tengu, the senior order of a species of mountain spirit, and they are not benevolent in any simple sense. They are feared. The word that hangs over them in old belief is kamikakushi, “spirited away,” the explanation reached for when someone walked into the hills and never came back. Tengu took them. And yet a daitengu would also stand in the trees and patiently make a runaway boy into a hero.

The tengu did not begin with that long red nose. The earliest forms were birds, crow-billed and feathered, demons of the high places who fell somewhere between guardian and menace. The humanizing came later, with the nose itself conceived around the fourteenth century, very likely a softening of the original beak into something that could pass, almost, for a man. By then the tengu had absorbed a layer of Buddhist explanation that gave them their peculiar moral weight. The belief took hold that a tengu was the reborn soul of a corrupt priest, a learned and senior monk who had died choking on his own pride and resentment. A clever, arrogant, defeated cleric did not pass on. He came back winged. The Tengu Zoshi, painted in 1296, made the charge plainly, showing conceited monks of the great temples possessed and dragged into the tengu condition. This is the strange engine at the center of the daitengu: it is powerful and wise precisely because it was once a powerful and wise man, and it is dangerous for exactly the same reason.

Rank among the tengu followed knowledge. The ignorant became kotengu or karasu-tengu, the small crow-tengu who kept their avian shape and served as scouts and messengers. The knowledgeable rose to daitengu, almost wholly human in form, overseeing the lesser ones beneath them. A daitengu dresses as a yamabushi, one of the mountain ascetics of Shugendo, that austere mixing of Buddhism, Shinto, and older folk practice. The costume is exact: the small black tokin cap perched on the forehead, the pom-pommed sash, the high single-toothed clogs, and a fan of feathers or leaves held in one clawed hand. The disguise is also a confession, since the real yamabushi walked the same peaks the tengu claimed, and the line between holy man and spirit blurred in the mist between the trees.

What a daitengu can do follows from what it is. It flies. It changes shape, slipping into the form of a wandering priest or an ordinary traveler to walk among people unrecognized. With a sweep of its feathered fan it can raise winds strong enough to flatten a forest or carry a grown man off the path. Sojobo was said to hold the strength of a thousand tengu and a command of swordsmanship, magic, and military craft that no other creature matched, which is why his tutelage meant something. These are not random gifts. They are the accumulated expertise of a being that was once a master of doctrine and discipline, turned loose in the mountains with wings.

The limit is built into the origin too. The tengu’s besetting flaw is the very pride that made it. The old tales are full of tengu who overreach, who are outwitted by a humbler opponent, who mistake their own cunning for wisdom and fall for a simple trick. Buddhism, over the centuries, did not so much defeat the tengu as tame them, folding the fierce abductors of the forest into something closer to local protective deities, guardians of their particular peak. A daitengu at the height of its power is still a soul that could not let go of its own importance. That is its strength. It is also the seam where it can be broken.

Sometimes the mountain gives a runaway boy a swordmaster. Sometimes it swallows a traveler whole and gives back nothing. The daitengu is both of those mountains, wearing the robes of a holy man, watching the path with a face no one mistakes for human.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a daitengu?

A daitengu is the greatest and highest-ranking class of tengu, the mountain spirits of Japanese folklore. Daitengu are the most powerful and wisest of their kind, take a largely human form with a red face and a long nose, and oversee the lesser, bird-formed tengu beneath them.

What is the difference between a daitengu and a karasu-tengu?

The difference is rank and form. Karasu-tengu, or crow-tengu, are the lesser tengu who keep a bird-like appearance with beaks and wings and act as scouts and messengers, while daitengu are the senior, nearly human-shaped great tengu with long noses who command them. In the old belief, knowledgeable souls became daitengu and ignorant ones became the lesser kotengu.

Who is Sojobo?

Sojobo is the legendary king of the tengu, a daitengu who dwells on Mount Kurama north of Kyoto. He is described with long white hair, an immensely long nose, and the strength of a thousand tengu, and he famously taught swordsmanship, military tactics, and magic to the boy Ushiwakamaru, who grew up to become the warrior Minamoto no Yoshitsune.

Why were tengu believed to be reborn priests?

Buddhist tradition held that arrogant, corrupt, or resentful monks could be reborn as tengu after death. The 1296 picture-scroll Tengu Zoshi depicted conceited clerics of the great temples possessed and turned into tengu, which is why daitengu are imagined as both wise and proud, having retained the learning of the men they once were.

Are daitengu dangerous to humans?

Daitengu are dangerous and were blamed for kamikakushi, the mysterious disappearances of people spirited away in the mountains, and for humbling the vain and sacrilegious. But they are not purely malevolent, and the same beings could choose to teach favored humans, as Sojobo did with Yoshitsune.

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