Edo Jinmenju Legend

The Edo Jinmenju tradition concerns a strange tree said to grow in deep mountain valleys bearing fruit shaped like human faces. The fruit is shaped like a person's face; when a passerby speaks to it, the face smiles, and if it laughs too much, it falls to the ground and rots. The tradition derives from the Daishokoku (the Country of Great Eaters) and the Shanhaijing and Youyang Zazu in Chinese natural-history works, taken into Japan in the natural-history (honzo-gaku) and curiosity culture of the Edo period and given pictorial form in Toriyama Sekien's yokai compendium. Typical scenes are three: the discovery of the strange tree in the deep mountains, the fruit forming human faces and laughing, and the falling and rotting of fruit that has laughed too much. The case is a typical example of a Chinese-transmitted natural-history strange tree reorganized as a Japanese entity within Edo natural history and yokai culture, taken up around Hiraga Gennai's Butsurui Hinshitsu and Kurimoto Tanshu's natural-history pictures. The Shanhaijing (pre-Western Han) Hai-wai Nankei and Da-huang Nankei, Duan Chengshi's Youyang Zazu (Tang), and Toriyama Sekien's Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki (Anei 8, 1779) "Jinmenju" are the textual core; Inoue Enryo's Yokai-gaku Kogi and Komatsu Kazuhiko-edited yokai studies organize the figure.