Other legends about Koji include the time he was drinking with Akechi Mitsuhide — who betrayed Nobunaga and forced him to commit suicide — when he summoned a ship from a painting in the traitorous samurai’s possession, flooding his house.
Love this visual, vaguely reminds me of when the painting of the ship, the Dawn Treader, in the chronicles of narnia comes alive.
Interesting to see a trickster/coyote legend from east asia, and fairly recent (last few hundred years). I wonder if there’s a longer tradition in Japan of people like this.
Some of these stories reminded me a bit of the stories of the religious scholar, trickster and scoundrel Nasreddin Hodja, who uses his wits to get the better of kings and sultans.
Nasreddin is AIUI originally a Turkish figure but whose legend exists over the whole Turkish-influenced world from the Balkans to China. Some of the stories have been translated to other cultures- I've definitely heard the one about the time he offers to teach a horse to sing told about a rabbi and the Tsar.
Love this visual, vaguely reminds me of when the painting of the ship, the Dawn Treader, in the chronicles of narnia comes alive.