RICHARD FREEMAN: Yokai of the Week

Tesso
Raigō Anjari was a priest of Mii-dera, a Buddhist temple located at the foot of Mount Hiei, in the city of Ōtsu, in Shiga Prefecture. He was snubbed by the emperor, who favoured the Enryaku-ji Temple, a monastery on Mount Hiei overlooking Kyoto. Raigō had prayed successfuly for the birth of a prince and as a reward had requested the erection of a Buddhist ordination platform at the Enjoji Temple. But rival monks from the Enryaku-ji Temple sucessfuly petitioned the emperor to stop its construction.

Raigō Anjari starved himself to death then transformed his spirit into a plague of rats and laid waste to the Enryaku-ji Temple, knawing up its scriptures. Tesso is depicted as a pack of rats with a kind of were-rat or rat / human hybrid as its leader. Tesso and his roden minions were finaly lured into a pit and buried alive. The mound of earth that covered them is said to be in the city of Oyama in Tochigi Prefecture but its exact wereabouts have been forgotten.


In Kosai Ishikawa’s 1889 book Yaso Kidan (Strange Stories from a Night Window) a story is related of how a samurai is attacked by a group of tiny well dressed men. After slaying them he finds that they were all rat yokai in disguise. Were-rats were known to the Ainu as well. A story tells of how a childless couple found a young boy in the forest and took him home. At that time they could catch no deer or fish so the woman travelled to the next village to buy some. She took the boy with her.


The chief of the village gave them food and allowed them to sleep overnight in his hut. During the night the boy transformed into a rat and scurried about, gnawing at the venison and fish. In the morning the chief said “Look, a huge rat must have come in the night and nibbled at our food.” The woman brought some food and put it in a sack. On the way home she thought she heard the sound of a rat gnawing at the sack. Looking round she only saw the boy smiling innocently.


Back at her own village, the woman put the food in a store room and the husband set a trap. The next day there was no sign of the boy but a massive rat lay dead in the trap. A person of divine aspect appeared and said “On hearing you were childless a wicked rat transformed himself into a boy and fooled you into taking him home. He polluted the area with his presence and so you could not hunt for fish. But all shall be well now.”


The deer and fish returned and the couple were blessed with a real child.