Nametoko Oni Legend

The Nametoko oni legend is a regional Ehime tradition attached to the Nametoko Gorge in Matsuno, in which an oni in the upper gorge harmed people in the villages and was bound by the power of a wandering monk. The polished granite slabs of the gorge are read as the 'oni's playground' and 'oni's footprint', interpreting natural topography as the bodily traces of the oni. The figure descends to the villages and frightens people and livestock, but is subdued in the context of the Shikoku pilgrimage by a monk of acknowledged power and sealed into the rocks of the gorge. The structure has three parts: the oni's presence in the upper gorge and the harm done in the villages; the monk's subjugation; and the identification of footprints and seats in the rock slabs. Shikoku mountain-oni traditions often join Shugendo, and the scale of the terrain is read into the scale of the oni; the petrified-footprint motif overlaps with the Daidarabocchi cycle and the Sanuki oni tales. The site is the Nametoko Gorge in Meguro, Matsuno-cho, Kitauwa-gun, Ehime, on the upper Meguro River, a tributary of the Shimanto, within the Ashizuri-Uwakai National Park; the Yukiwa Falls is the visual core, and nearby peaks include Onimen-zan. Sources include the folklore volume of the Ehime prefectural history, the Matsuno-cho gazetteer and Shikoku pilgrimage gazetteers; related Shugendo accounts appear in the En no Gyoja Honki line. The legend lies outside the Kiki corpus as an independent regional tradition.