Japan is known as eight million gods, and among the many gods, the three major monsters are the most famous.
These three major monsters are either from prominent backgrounds or have explosive combat effectiveness, and eat people and abduct children are almost innocent.
Tengu is the best of the three mighty Japanese yokai.
In the famous Japanese anime work "Detective Conan", the figure of tengu has appeared many times. For example, in the episode "The Killing of the Misty Tengu", the tengu that was haunted in the foggy day had a terrible face, which really became the childhood shadow of many people.
But anyone who has seen the image of the Japanese Tengu will wonder why the Japanese Tengu does not look like a dog at all.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >01 The origin and evolution of the Japanese tengu</h1>
The original Japanese tengu was not only not a dog, but also had nothing to do with dogs.
In Japan, the earliest record of the tengu is the Nihon Shoki: in 637 AD, that is, in the ninth year of Emperor Shuming, in February, a spectacle appeared in the sky, and a meteor with flames pierced the sky and continued to fall. Min Min, a monk who returned to Japan from studying in the Tang Dynasty, saw this scene and said, "Not a shooting star, it is a tengu also, and its bark is like thunder."
The "tengu" that the monk Min thinks is actually what we often call an extraterrestrial meteorite.
Flames and thunder are special phenomena produced when meteorites rub against the atmosphere at high speed, and the ancients could not understand this strange phenomenon, and could only be explained by the term "tengu".
Gradually, more and more records of tengu became more and more, and tengu slowly emerged from many yokai and occupied an extremely important position.
The most famous tengu in Japanese history is Emperor Shōtoku, one of the four great wraiths of ancient Japan and known as the "First Demon King".
According to legend, Emperor Shōtoku was the child born to Emperor Shirakawa and Tohidemon-in. He was the wife of Emperor Toba, the grandson of Emperor Shirakawa, so Emperor Shōtoku was called his nephew Emperor Toba as soon as he was born.
At the age of 5, Emperor Shirakawa put Emperor Shōtoku on the throne, but at the age of 23, Emperor Toba forced Emperor Shōtoku to abdicate by force, ceding the throne to his son, Prince Tohitoshi, the adopted son of Emperor Shōtoku, and Emperor Konoe has since entered the stage of history.
After the death of Emperor Toba, a conflict broke out between Emperor Shōtoku and his successor, Emperor Gokoe, over power, known as the Hogen Rebellion.
Emperor Shōtoku was defeated, defeated, exiled to Sanuki, and on the way to exile, he bit his tongue and wrote the cursed verse "Willing to be the great demon of Japan, disturb the world, take the people as the emperor, take the emperor for the people", and then died of hatred at the age of 46.
Due to his great resentment, Emperor Chongde transformed into a tengu after his death, endangering the people and stirring up no peace inside and outside the imperial court. In later texts, Emperor Shōtoku was always regarded as the leader of the tengu, leading a group of small tengu to harm the human world.
According to folklore master Kunio Yanagida, Japanese culture refers to children who have disappeared inexplicably as "shinto", that is, people who are hidden by gods and yokai.
Tengu, as representatives of evil forces, will abduct people walking in the forest, especially like to tease and abduct children.
In Japanese yokai legends, tengu has been a negative image for a long time. Especially after the appearance of Emperor Chongde, one of the four great ghosts, the image of the tengu disaster in the human world has become more and more deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, so that in many film, television and anime works, the image of the tengu is basically evil.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >02 What breeds are there in the Japanese tengu? </h1>
How many Japanese tengu are there?
According to the Tengu Sutra, a work written in the Edo period in Japan, there are 48 kinds of tengu in Japan, and the number is as high as more than 125,500.
With such a large number of tengu in the population, breeds will naturally not be scarce. From the appearance point of view, the image of different tengus in different periods and different breeds is very different.
As we all know, the Japanese tengu actually originated from the Chinese ancient book "Shan Hai Jing", so for a long time, the Japanese tengu followed the "like a fox" setting of the tengu in the "Shan Hai Jing" in terms of appearance.
It was not until the end of the Heian period that the image of the tengu finally changed, from the original "ten fox" to a bird resembling an "eagle".
The tengu in Tales of The Past and Present also has a new ability: it can not only possess humans, but also soar in the sky.
The prominent representative of this is the first great demon king, Emperor Chongde. In that year, after the death of Emperor Chongde, the spirit of resentment turned into a tengu shaped like a golden kite, committing many evils and bringing calamity to the country and the people. Fearing great strength, future generations have always regarded Emperor Shōtoku as the leader of tengu.
This kind of tengu with a pair of large wings is generally called "raven tengu". In addition to the distinctive large wing symbol, the Raven Tengu also has a hard and aggressive beak and a pair of angry round eyes.
Tengu mostly haunts the mountains, and various legends about tengu are usually incorporated into mountain legends. In the Tale of the Pingjia Story, the "tengu" is depicted as a yokai with a variety of images: "not human, not bird, not dog, four-body human and like a dog, with wings on its back."
In The Japanese yokai culture, tengu has a long history, and the classification is also very complicated.
In general, to make a simple distinction based on the difference in nose characteristics, the Japanese tengu can be roughly divided into two categories, one is the "big tengu", the nose is high and long, the spiritual power is deep, and the status is high; the other type is the "raven tengu", the nose tip, the sword skill is strong, but the status is far inferior to the big tengu.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >03 Why is the Japanese Tengu nose high? </h1>
Most of the images of the tengu we see in movies, television, and anime works are more consistent: burly, wearing a monk's uniform, stepping on a high-toothed clogs, holding a lupine fan in one hand, holding a treasure mallet in the other; the face is red, a long nose is particularly eye-catching, and behind it is a pair of exaggerated large wings.
Why do modern Japanese tengus have a long, tall nose? This starts with the story in "Painting the Evil Fang".
During the Kamakura period, the Japanese Tendai Sect monks cultivated to a high level, and the Chinese Tengu "is a pest" and the Tendai sect monks fought, and the "is a pest" was injured in the fighting method. When it asked the Japanese Tengu for help, the Japanese Tengu was arrogant and unmoved.
In Japanese culture, arrogance has the meaning of "nose height", which may be the reason why contemporary tengu have a long nose.
In medieval Japan, not only did the six Buddhist ways prevail, but also the tengu way was said to be popular.
Some practicing Daoist monks did not practice enough before they were born, they could not attain the Tao, and after death they could not let go of their attachments and delusions. The Buddha's practice before they died saved them from falling into the four paths of hell, evil ghosts, asuras, and beasts, but because of their practice of magic, they were doomed to not be able to ascend to the Heavenly Path, and eventually they could only be banished to the Tengu Path outside the six reincarnations.
According to Kunio Yanagida, the founder of Japanese folklore, the gods who were relegated to the mortal world became yokai, as did yokai such as kappa and tengu.
However, with the evolution of time and the development of history, the Japanese tengu gradually merged with the elements of the concept of believing in the mountains, and slowly transitioned from the identity of the evil yokai to the identity of the mountain god.
Especially those tengu who have been living deep in the mountains, such as the big tengu, they immerse themselves in buddhism, punish evil and promote good, in line with people's inner setting of the image of the mountain god, and gradually, the image of the tengu overlaps with the image of the mountain god, and then the tengu has completely become the image of the new generation of mountain gods.
Looking at the evolution history of the Japanese Tengu, it is not difficult to find that from the auspicious omen to the auspicious star, from the demon king who harmed the human world to the mountain god who persuaded evil to be good, the transformation of the image of good and evil of the tengu reflected the change in people's worship of nature at that time.