Kibitsu Ura Legend

The Kibitsu Ura tradition is a quelling and pacification tale in which Kibitsuhiko-no-Mikoto (Ohokibitsuhiko-no-Mikoto), prince of Emperor Korei, subdues the demon-deity Ura who held Kibi Province (modern Okayama). Ura is said to have been a Paekche prince; he set up his stronghold at Kinojo of Kibi and afflicted the people. In the reign of Emperor Sujin, Kibitsuhiko-no-Mikoto was sent as one of the four shogun and exchanged arrows with Ura; their arrows struck each other in mid-air and fell, and after a long battle Kibitsuhiko slew him. After Ura was killed, his severed head was set up but did not stop crying, and in a dream he begged Kibitsuhiko to bury him beneath the kamado (cauldron) of Kibitsu Shrine; from then began the Naruru-kama rite that reads good and ill fortune by the sound of the rice being cooked on the cauldron. The story has three stages: the establishment of the foreign demon-deity Ura at Kinojo and the people's suffering, the exchange of arrows with Kibitsuhiko-no-Mikoto and the quelling, and the haunting of the head and the pacification by the Naruru-kama rite. Held as the prototype of the Momotaro tale, the figure has the modern folk-tale reading in which Kibitsuhiko-no-Mikoto is Momotaro, Ura is the demon, and the dog, monkey, and pheasant are vassals. The two-stage structure of quelling and pacification is typical of the goryo belief. The center is Kibitsu Shrine in Kibitsu, Kita Ward, Okayama (Bicchu first shrine) and Kibitsuhiko Shrine in Ichinomiya, Kita Ward (Bizen first shrine), with Kinojo, the stronghold of Ura, at Okusaka, Soja, an ancient mountain-castle site now arranged as a National Historic Site. The Naruru-kama rite is performed at the Okamaden of Kibitsu Shrine to the present day, and it is the setting of "The Cauldron of Kibitsu" in Ueda Akinari's Ugetsu Monogatari (Anei 5, 1776). The Nihon Shoki, Sujin chronicle "four-shogun dispatch" segment, the Kojiki, middle scroll, Emperor Korei segment "Ohokibitsuhiko-no-Mikoto," and the Kojiki's Emperor Korei prince-myth form the literary basis. The medieval Kibitsugu Engi and Bicchu no Kuni Sosha Jinja Engi, and Ueda Akinari's Ugetsu Monogatari, transmit the figure; the tradition of Kibitsu Shrine and Kibitsuhiko Shrine, the Okayama Prefecture and Okayama City cultural property materials, and historical-site materials of the Kinojo ruins are basic references.