Higo Kudan Legend

The Higo kudan legend records a Kyushu cycle of the prophetic ox-creature kudan, said to be born of a cow with a human face. Within days of its birth, the kudan foretells imminent famines, epidemics or wars and then dies; its prophecies prove accurate, giving rise to the idiom 'as the kudan says.' From the late Edo period into the Meiji, Taisho and wartime Showa periods, broadsheets reporting kudan sightings circulated nationwide and the image of the kudan was pasted on houses as a misfortune-deflecting talisman. Higo was a representative birthplace; multiple cases are recorded in domain papers. The structure has three parts: anomalous birth (a human-faced calf); short-lived prophecy (the accuracy of famine, epidemic or war predictions); and the spread of the image and its use as a misfortune-deflecting talisman. The pattern of the 'anomalous prophetic creature' is a standard early-modern yokai type, but unlike other yokai it expanded in step with the development of mass print culture in the broadsheet form. The idiom 'as the kudan says' is widely held to derive from this cycle; in wartime Japan, kudan images were reactivated as misfortune charms on houses, joining the modern sense of disaster. The setting is the former Higo Province in Kumamoto, in Kumamoto, Hitoyoshi and the Amakusa islands, with related broadsheets in Fukuoka, Miyazaki and Oita. Late-Meiji broadsheets are also recorded for Okayama and Shimane, indicating the nation-wide spread of the cycle. Sources are primary in the broadsheets and bira held in libraries and local museums; secondary works include Yumoto Koichi's Nihon Genju Zusetsu and Meiji Yokai Shimbun, Kyogoku Natsuhiko and Tada Katsumi's Yokai Gahon: Kyoka Hyaku Monogatari, Kyogoku Natsuhiko and Murakami Kenji's Nihon Yokai Daijiten, the Kumamoto prefectural folklore reports, and the regional history collection of the Kyushu University Library.