Twice ToldKagakushū, the entry for inuoumono (dog-shooting), 1617 printing
- Language
- Japanese
- Reading
- transcribed from the page image
- Translation
- ours
- Retrieved
- 24 September 2026
The Kagakushū (下學集) is a dictionary of words in everyday use, compiled in 1444. Its entry for inuoumono, a samurai archery exercise in which riders shot at dogs, tells the whole Tamamo story in eighty-odd characters to explain where the sport came from. This is the Genna 3 (1617) printing, NDL call number せ-24.
犬追物
昔西域有班足王。其夫人悪虐過人、勸王取千人之首。其後出生支那國、爲周幽王后。其名曰褒姒。滅國惑人。死後出生于日本、近衛院御宇、号玉藻前。傷人無極。後化成白狐、害人惟多。時俗欲驅之、先追走犬、以試其射騎。白狐知之、化而成石。飛禽走獸當其殺氣者、莫不立斃。故謂之殺生石。于今在下野那須野原也。犬追者始于茲矣。但聴之古老之口号、雖不知本説、且載之而已。
Translation
Inuoumono (dog-shooting).
Long ago in the Western Regions there was a king called Hanzoku. His queen was cruel beyond anyone and urged him to take the heads of a thousand men. She was later born again in China as the consort of King You of Zhou, under the name Bao Si, and she ruined the state and led people astray. After her death she was born again in Japan, in the reign of Emperor Konoe, and was called Tamamo-no-mae. There was no end to the harm she did. Later she turned into a white fox and killed a great many people. The people of the time wanted to drive it off, so they first chased dogs to test their skill at shooting from horseback. The white fox knew it and turned into a stone. Any bird or beast that met its killing breath dropped dead on the spot, and so it was called the killing stone. It is still on the moor of Nasu in Shimotsuke. This is where dog-shooting began. I have only heard it from old people; I don’t know where it comes from, but I record it here anyway.
Notes
- Transcription conventions: the main text only, in the characters as printed (爲, 勸, 聴, 氣). The small katakana glosses and return marks beside the text are left out, and the punctuation is ours.
- The heading is printed 犬追物; the last sentence writes the same word 犬追者.
- The dictionary sets the story in Emperor Konoe’s reign, as the Shinmeikyō does. The Noh play and most modern dictionaries name the retired emperor Toba instead.
- Its chain of lives runs India, China, Japan, with Bao Si as the Chinese woman. Daji, who leads the chain in the Edo-period novels, is not in it.
- The closing line is the compiler’s own: he has the story from “古老之口号”, the talk of old people, and says he doesn’t know its 本説, a written authority. The Shinmeikyō, an older written version, already existed.
- The NDL also holds a late-Muromachi manuscript copy of the dictionary (WA16-121, frames 32 to 33) with the same entry, written with more glosses.