The Spirit of the Lotus Lily

Author: Traditional

Time Period: 1701 CE–1850 CE

Country or Culture: Japan

Genre: Folktale

PLOT SUMMARY

One day in feudal Japan, a deadly disease breaks out in Kyoto. It quickly spreads east into Idzumi (Izumo) Province. There, it strikes the lord of Koriyama. His wife and son fall critically ill as well. Because the lord of Koriyama is very popular, common people come to his castle to learn of his fate. They camp in the castle moats, which are left dry in this period of peace.

Soon, the lord’s highest official, Tada Samon, receives a mountain recluse, called a yamabushi. He tells Samon that the lord’s illness is caused by an evil spirit. The spirit could only enter the castle because its moats are dry and no lotus flowers grow in the water that should fill them up. The yamabushi offers to help: “I shall enter the castle to-day and pray that the evil spirit of sickness leave; and I ask that I may be allowed to plant lotuses in the northern moats” (Smith 269).

Samon agrees. The people help clean and fix the northern moats. After his ablutions and prayers, the yamabushi supervises their filling with water and planting of lotuses. The task done, he vanishes. The lord of Koriyama and his family soon recover. The people rejoice and name the place the Lotus Castle.

When the lord dies eventually, his son succeeds him but neglects the lotus flowers. One day in August, when the lotus flowers are in full bloom, a young samurai passes by. He sees two beautiful young boys playing on the bank of the moat. When he warns them that this is dangerous, they jump into the water and disappear. The samurai is sure he has seen two kappa, or water imps. He informs the castle. Yet when the moats are cleaned and dragged, no kappa are found, and people ridicule the samurai.

One evening a few weeks later, another samurai, Murata Ippai, admires the lotus flowers. Suddenly, he sees a group of about a dozen naked boys playing around the edge of the moat, splashing each other with water. Ippai is convinced these are kappa and determines to kill them all.

When Ippai approaches the boys with his sword drawn, the boys look almost natural. They are beautiful, and a scent of lotus lilies wafts from their bodies. Steeling his resolve, Ippai falls upon the boys. He “slash[es] right and left among the supposed kappas” and is sure he hit many bodies (272). When he looks around, a colorful mist arises, almost blinding him.

Ippai resolves to wait there until morning. At dawn, he sees nothing but lotus stalks rising from the water, their flowers cut off. Ippai realizes that he has killed not kappa but the spirits of the lotus. As the lotus saved the lord of Koriyama and his son, Ippai’s master, the samurai has committed a heinous crime. He realizes that he “must appease the spirits by disembowelling [him]self” (273). Ippai says a prayer and commits ritual suicide. However, from this day on, “no more lotus spirits [are] seen” (273).

SIGNIFICANCE

“The Spirit of the Lotus Lily” is a Japanese folktale collected by English amateur naturalist Richard Gordon Smith, who published it in his 1908 anthology Ancient Tales and Folk-Lore of Japan. Smith states that this tale was told to him by the Japanese storyteller Fukuga and that it was about two hundred years old. It is a local folktale from Izumo Province (mistranscribed “Idzumi” by Smith), part of contemporary Shimane Prefecture in Japan.

“The Spirit of the Lotus Lily” illustrates archaic and traditional Japanese attitudes toward diseases, their causes, and their spread. It adds a variant to the lore of the kappa. With its climactic scene, “The Spirit of the Lotus Lily” offers some rare, subtle popular criticism of the samurai class.

The conviction that physical illnesses are caused and spread by spiritual pollution has very deep, ancient roots in Japanese culture. An important part of traditional treatment of serious illnesses has been the chanting of prayers. Just as the yamabushi performs a powerful exorcism for the lord of Koriyama and his family in “The Spirit of the Lotus Lily,” Japanese families would seek spiritual help for ill members. In “Curable Cancers and Fatal Ulcers: Attitudes toward Cancer in Japan,” Susan and Bruce Long show that even contemporary Japanese people may perceive physical illness as a polluting force.

The lotus lilies of the folktale represent a powerful defense from spiritual pollution and thus illness. In Asia, reverence for the lotus flower is particularly strong in the Indian-originated religions of Hinduism and Buddhism. There, the lotus flower is seen as symbol of purity. The introduction of Buddhism in Japan spurred the cultivation of lotus flowers there.

“The Spirit of the Lotus Lily” adds a significant local variant to the folklore of the popular Japanese kappa, or water imps. The spirits of the lotus flower are mistaken for kappa that appear to have transformed into humans. Kappa are mythological child-sized water goblins with both humanlike and reptilian features. Traditionally, kappa are said to draw people and livestock under water to eat their livers and souls, but they have also mischievous and popular characteristics. As folklorist Michael Foster shows, by the late twentieth century, kappa had become a cute informal symbol of Japan and were used to promote a clean natural environment.

In “The Spirit of the Lotus Lily,” kappa are viewed with suspicion. However, the sheer brutality with which samurai Murata Ippai cuts down those naked boys he considers kappa hints at criticism of the samurai class by the common people. With stern self-discipline bordering on the psychopathological, Ippai convinces himself that it is his duty to kill the supposed kappa. “Seeing how innocent and unsuspecting the children looked,” Ippai is not moved to pity (Smith 272). Instead, he thinks that “he would not be acting up to the determination of a samurai if he changed his mind”—that is, spared the boys (272). For his mistake in killing the loyal, lifesaving lotus spirits, he has to die. In feudal Japan, samurai wielded great powers over commoners and cultivated a haughty attitude toward them. It is not surprising that a folktale, popular among commoners over two centuries, might include such veiled criticism.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Foster, Michael Dylan. “The Metamorphosis of the Kappa: Transformation of Folklore to Folklorism in Japan.” Asian Folklore Studies 57.1 (1998): 1–24. Print.

---. Pandemonium and Parade: Japanese Monsters and the Culture of Yokai. Berkeley: U of California P, 2008. Print.

Long, Susan, and Bruce Long. “Curable Cancers and Fatal Ulcers: Japanese Attitudes toward Cancer.” Social Science and Medicine 16.24 (1982): 2101–8. Print.

Manthorpe, Victoria, ed. Travels in the Land of the Gods (1898–1907): The Japanese Diaries of Richard Gordon Smith. Upper Saddle River: Prentice, 1986. Print.

Smith, Richard Gordon. “The Spirit of the Lotus Lily.” Ancient Tales and Folk-Lore of Japan. London: Black, 1908. 267–73. Print.