Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 5.djvu/245

 ercise of spirit power. The passion of hatred or revenge may become so intense as to liberate the soul from its bodily tenement, and despatch it upon a mission of hostility. All these beliefs have left their mark upon the literature of the nation and upon the canvas of the artist. In a deeper stratum of superstition may be found still stranger fossils of tradition — the wild man, the wild woman, the female ogre (kijo), and the mountain genius (sen-nin). The wild man and the wild woman — literally, the "mountain man" and the "mountain woman" — are harmless curiosities.

There is a story of a wild woman caught in a spring trap in Hiuga province. Her body differed from that of an ordinary female only in being covered with white hair. The wild man is said to abound among the mountains of Kiushiu, where the people call him yama-waro. He is described as a large black-haired monkey, possessing enormous muscular strength. He steals food from the villages, but is always ready to help woodcutters to transport timber in return for a ball of rice. Any attempt to capture or kill him brings dire calamity, insanity, plague, or sudden death upon his assailants. The female ogre (kijo) figures frequently in the pages of romance. She is a cannibal capable of flitting about like a moth and traversing pathless mountains. Once in every circle of sixty years, when the "senior fire element" is linked with the zodiacal horse, a female man-eater is born, but it does