Miho no Matsubara Hagoromo Legend

In the Miho no Matsubara hagoromo (feather-robe) legend, a heavenly maiden alights at Miho no Matsubara in Suruga, hangs her feather robe on a pine and bathes in the water; the fisherman Hakuryo finds the robe and tries to take it home. Unable to return to the heavens without it, she pleads, and Hakuryo returns the robe on the condition that she dance the heavenly dance. She takes back the robe, performs the dance held to be the origin of the Suruga-mai and the Azuma-asobi court dance, and ascends into the sky. The cycle is a heterotype visit narrative organised in four stages - the seizing of the robe, the plea, the dance, and the return to heaven. It belongs to the worldwide swan-maiden family of tales; in Japan it branches into a 'marriage after the bath is seen' type and a 'dance and return' type. The Miho tradition is of the latter, and the noh play Hagoromo crystallised it as the standard form from the early-modern period onward. The site is Miho no Matsubara in Shimizu-ku, Shizuoka, and the 'Pine of the Feather Robe' beside Miho Jinja; Miho no Matsubara was inscribed in 2013 as a component of the Mount Fuji UNESCO World Heritage site. Comparable hagoromo traditions of other lines are recorded for Lake Yogo in Omi and Mount Hiji (Manai Jinja) in Tango. The principal source is the noh play Hagoromo (Muromachi, attributed to Zeami or Kanze Motomasa). Earlier types include the 'Nagusasha' entry in the surviving fragments of the Tango no Kuni Fudoki and the 'Ika no Sho-e' entry in the surviving fragments of the Omi no Kuni Fudoki. The Miho cycle is widely known nationally through the spread of the noh play.