Morinji-gama (Gunma)

Morinji-gama ("the Morinji kettle") is a tea kettle held at the Soto-school Morinji temple in Tatebayashi, Gunma, said to be inhabited by a tanuki. The kettle is also known as Bunbuku Chagama. By temple tradition the priest Shukaku, who served Morinji in the Muromachi period, used at a thousand-monk service a kettle whose water never ran out; later his true form was revealed as a tanuki. Shukaku is said to have unveiled his identity and departed at the end of his life. From the Edo period through the modern era the story was retold in Otogizoshi, yomihon, and Iwaya Sazanami's Nihon Mukashibanashi (Meiji 27, 1894) as a children's tale of a tanuki who walks the tightrope and dances. The Morinji record (Morinji-ki and related temple documents), Otogizoshi "Bunbuku Chagama," Edo gazetteers, Iwaya Sazanami's 1894 retelling, and Murakami Kenji's Nihon Yokai Daijiten (Kadokawa, 2005) carry the tradition; the International Research Center for Japanese Studies Yokai Folklore Database treats it as a discrete entry.