Twice ToldHoncho jinja ko, vol. 6, the white nun of Wakasa (Hayashi Razan)
- Language
- Japanese
- Reading
- transcribed from the page image
- Translation
- ours
- Retrieved
- 18 October 2026
The Honcho jinja ko is Hayashi Razan’s survey of Japanese shrines, in six volumes, written in kanbun (Chinese as written in Japan). The Tohoku copy is an undated woodblock print with kunten, the small marks that give the Japanese reading order, and one small interlinear note. These marks are left out here. The passage is in volume 6, inside the entry for Miyako no Yoshika (都良香), a scholar the text counts among the immortals. Razan has just argued that such people belong in his book, and the white nun comes in as a further case. The words quoted are what Razan says his late father told him; the “I” in the last lines is Razan. The page was read at 3,600 px.
余先考嘗語曰、傳聞若狹國有号白比丘尼者、其父一旦入山、遇異人、與俱到一處、殆一天地而別世界也。其人與一物曰、是人魚也。食之延年不老。父携歸家。其女子迎歡而取衣帯、因得人魚于袖裏、乃食之。〔蓋肉芝之類歟〕女子寿四百餘歳。謂所白比丘尼是也。余幼齢嘗聞此事而不忘。先考終身不食言者也。白比丘尼之事、必有所受。余於是從容問曰、世間復有若玆之事乎。先考又告余
Translation
My late father once told me: “It is passed on that in Wakasa there was a woman called the White Nun. Her father went into the mountains one day and met a stranger. The stranger took him to a place that was practically a heaven and earth of its own, another world. The man gave him one thing and said: ‘This is a mermaid. If you eat it, your years will be lengthened and you will not grow old.’ The father took it home. His daughter came out gladly to take his robe and sash, found the mermaid in his sleeve, and ate it. [A small note in the text: perhaps it is something of the kind called flesh fungus.] The girl lived to more than four hundred years. She is the so-called White Nun.” I heard this as a child and have not forgotten it. My late father never went back on his word in his whole life. He must have had the story of the White Nun from someone. So I asked him quietly: “Is there anything else in the world like this?” My late father told me further
Notes
Togashi Akira dates the writing of the book to between 1638 and 1645; the print has no date and its colophon names only the Kyoto publisher. Razan says he heard the story as a child, which Togashi puts around 1590. The text has 四百餘歳, more than four hundred years, where the diaries of 1449 give 200 or 800. 肉芝 (flesh fungus) is a substance of Chinese immortality lore, and the small note 蓋肉芝之類歟 is set as a small interlinear note, the author’s aside rather than his father’s words, read here as “perhaps something of that kind”. 謂所 is printed in that order and is read as 所謂, “the so-called”, as the reading marks require. The passage runs on into a story of a giant man in Echizen, which is not part of this document. The Wakasa kokuden-ki (documents/wakasa-kokuden-ki-yao-bikuni-cave.md) quotes the same passage, with 四百歳 and no 餘 in the lines we could read.