The Inō mononoke roku: where the demon king's mallet came from

Each 7 January, the Hino City Local History Museum says, a temple in Hiroshima called Kokuzenji brings out a wooden mallet for the public. It is the mallet a demon king gave to Inō Butayū, who as a boy of sixteen named Heitarō sat out a month of monsters in Miyoshi in 1749.¹¹¹²¹³ The museum devoted to the story in Miyoshi says the gift was not part of it at first: the mallet is among the content it calls 当初にない, “not there at first”, added as the story was retold.⁶ In Fujiwara Ayaka’s table comparing four versions, the earliest dated text we found, the notes of Inō’s colleague Kashiwa Seiho, has no mallet.⁵³¹³ Yet the mallet is in a first-person account said to be Inō’s own, which ends with a ledger following it from the night it was given to the day it went to the temple.¹⁴⁸²

Kashiwa’s notes, 1783

The earliest dated writing we found is not the first-person account. It is the record of a man named Kashiwa Seiho, who wrote down what Inō told him. The Miyoshi museum calls him Inō’s colleague, the Hino museum his friend.¹³ As an adult Inō bore the name Butayū; Heitarō is the name of the boy.¹³

An Ochanomizu University Library copy of Kashiwa’s record, made in 1872 by a copyist who signs 黒磐, carries Kashiwa’s self-preface, which ends with a date and his name.²⁴³

Tenmei 3 is 1783, thirty-four years after the events.¹²³ Fujiwara, quoting Shigehara Hisashi (1995), says the preface states that Kashiwa heard the story from Inō four times.²⁵ The University of Tokyo has another copy, titled 稲亭物怪録, Tōtei mononoke roku, and its last leaf carries a postscript dated 寛政十一歳　夏四月, the fourth month of Kansei 11, which is 1799.²⁴²⁶ The catalogue entry for the Ochanomizu copy lists the same two dates.³²⁶

The account that says it is Inō’s

The Sanji jitsuroku monogatari, “the true record of Miyoshi”, is told in the first person. After a long opening it has one dated entry for each day of the month, thirty in all.¹ The opening is an argument and a climb. Inō and the wrestler argue over whether monsters exist, he climbs Mt Hikuma on a stormy night, and on the third day of the fifth month the two sit at the top and tell hundred-story tales; nothing happens, and they come down sure that no monsters exist.¹⁵²⁷ The rock they find at the summit is said in this text to be the tomb of “Miyoshi-dono”, and touching it means death.²⁸

The text ends in two parts. A note after the last entry says the “direct writing” (直書), an autograph, was deposited at Kokuzenji in Kōka 1, which is 1844.⁹

Inō died in 1803²⁹, so whoever deposited it did so forty-one years after his death. The note’s year is written 申辰 where Kōka 1 would be 甲辰; we cannot say whether the slip is in the print or in the transcription.⁹ After the note comes a ledger headed 槌之次第覚, “record of the mallet’s course”. It has eleven dated items.⁸

The ledger has three more items, each a new hiding place after a change of house.³³ Its second item repeats the demon king’s terms for keeping the mallet secret.³⁰ Its move to Hiroshima in 1758 agrees with the Hino museum, which says the retainers of the Miyoshi domain were moved there that year.³⁴ The whole ledger is in the document file with our translation.

Hirata’s copy, 1806 to 1811

The third group of texts comes from Hirata Atsutane and his pupils. The Hino museum says they collated the earlier texts, aiming at publication.³⁵ Fujiwara, after Yoshida Asako (1998), says the Hirata text took Kashiwa’s text as its base and added to it from three picture books.³⁵ The two accounts differ on whether the Sanji text was one of the sources, and we have not seen the Hirata text.

The Ochanomizu copy carries a preface by Atsutane dated Bunka 3 and a postscript by him dated Bunka 8.³⁶ Those years are 1806 and 1811. On the page the preface ends with the date 文化三年九月十五日, the fifteenth of the ninth month, and a signature that begins 平田.³⁶ Fujiwara, again quoting Shigehara, says the postscript explains that the Bunka 3 copy had errors, and that a pupil was made to correct it and copy it afresh.³⁶

The mallet, text by text

Here the texts part. The Sanji account has the demon king give Heitarō a mallet and tell him to strike the veranda of the south-west room if he is ever in mortal danger.⁴³⁷ He must keep it to himself and show it to nobody, relatives included, for fifty years, though one very close outsider may be told after a hundred days.³⁷

The fifty years ran from the night of receipt in 1749 to 1799, and Kashiwa’s preface of 1783 falls inside them.³⁷⁸³

In Kashiwa’s record and in the Tōtei scroll the visitor says that Heitarō was due a misfortune that year and that he made the disturbances because of it, then leaves.⁵ The count of eighty-five victims comes in the Sanji account and the Hotta scroll.²² Fujiwara’s table spells the visitor’s name Gorōzaemon in all four of its columns, the Sanji one included, while the Aozora Bunko text of the Sanji account has Tarōzaemon and calls his rival Shin’no Akutarō.³⁸²¹ We have not seen the print the Aozora text was typed from, so we cannot say which is right.

The Miyoshi museum describes the pattern this way: as the story spread, its main elements sometimes dropped away, and new content, the mallet among it, was added.⁶ The city says of the Hotta scroll that elements found in no other line suggest large later additions.⁴⁰ Tanaka Kōtarō’s retelling, which Aozora Bunko takes from a collection of 1934, has the visitor leave for Kinkazan after giving Heitarō a scroll for healing the sick; the word 槌 does not occur in it.³⁹ Which text is older, Kashiwa’s or the Sanji account, no source we read says.¹⁰

Scrolls

The best known of the picture scrolls is the Hotta scroll.⁴⁰ It has three rolls, copied in 1859 and mounted in 1860.⁷ Miyoshi designated it an important cultural property in 1995 and accepted it as a donation in 2024.⁷ The Hino museum puts it in the Sanji line, and Fujiwara, after Sugimoto, calls it the oldest known scroll, though the copy itself is dated 1859.⁷

The Miyoshi museum owns a scroll that follows Kashiwa’s text, with no captions, which it says survives in few examples.⁴¹ In 2024 the museum showed all five known scrolls of the Tōtei line together for the first time.⁴² The Hino museum’s own scroll, 三十日の月, “the thirtieth-day moon”, was given to it in 1998. It is almost the same as the Hotta scroll, with three opening scenes that scroll lacks.⁴³ The Hino museum counted the known texts about 2010.⁴⁴ They came to 34 manuscripts, 6 picture books and 12 scrolls.⁴⁴

What the story became

Fujiwara, citing Shigehara, says the Sanji account has 50 appearances of monsters, and suggests that the month of disturbances is the content of the hundred stories told on the mountain; she calls the idea open to examination.⁴⁵ She also quotes the Miyoshi City History (2004) for a reading of the story as a warning to idle samurai left in Miyoshi after the domain was abolished, and as a test of courage in the year of coming of age.⁴⁶ Both are secondhand here.

From Meiji on the story was used in kōdan, novels and plays, and recently in manga, opera and kagura.⁴⁷ The Hino museum lists Orikuchi Shinobu, Izumi Kyōka, Inagaki Taruho, Tanaka Kōtarō, Iwaya Sazanami and Mizuki Shigeru among those who took it up.⁴⁷

What can be checked

Inō Butayū belonged to the foot guards of the Miyoshi domain.²⁹ He died in the twelfth month of 1803 at the age of 70.²⁹ The domain, a branch of the Hiroshima Asano domain, had been abolished in 1720, twenty-nine years before the story.⁴⁸ His family still lives in Hiroshima.²⁹

His birth year is not settled. The Aozora Bunko card gives 1735 to 1803.⁴⁹ The Miyoshi museum’s exhibition of 2024 marked the 290th anniversary of Heitarō’s birth, which points to 1734; that is our arithmetic.⁵⁰

The places are harder. The museum says that the grave of Miyoshi Wakasa-no-kami and the cursed tengu cedar that Kashiwa-line works put on Mt Hikuma cannot be found now, and that the Inō Butayū monument of 1928, set where a later Inō family house stood, carries an inscription taken from modern kōdan.⁵¹ The site of Butayū’s own house is unknown.⁵¹

At Kokuzenji the ledger’s last item leaves the mallet with the temple in 1802.⁸ The Hino museum says a mallet is shown there each 7 January.¹¹ No text we read says that the mallet shown now is the one in the ledger.