423: Japanese folkore: The Illusionists

This week on Myths and Legends, we're back in Japan with a story of a cold and lonely forest temple and how you should maybe turn down that date that wants to take you to a lonely forest temple, especially if your date's idea of a good time is dancing and decapitation.

The creature this time is a monster with backwards feet, whose poison urine isn't even the most noteworthy thing about him.

This is Myths and Legends, episode 423, The Illusionists.

This is a podcast where we tell stories from mythology and folklore. Some are incredibly popular tales you might think you know, but with surprising origins.

Others are stories that might be new to you, but are definitely worth a listen. Today we are back in Japanese folklore with something of a legend? Kind of.

The story is set in the years following the Meiji Restoration.

Real quickly, for hundreds of years Japan, during what we now call the Edo period, was under a sort of a feudal military dictatorship, where the shogun, the commander-in-chief, ruled a patchwork of something resembling lords, aka Daimyo, while the emperor was largely ceremonial.

This all changed after America showed up in the 1850s and exposed the dangers of things continuing as they were.

My understanding of the period is that powerful people who wanted change so Japan didn't fall prey to the colonial powers of the world at the time used the emperor to rally support, leading to a coup in 1867 when the pro-imperial leaders forced the shogun to surrender.

We've talked about how almost humorously broad and sweeping the powers of the samurai and those above them were during the Edo period. I think like, I want to kill you, so therefore I kill you.

Well, the issue with changing things here is that the guys with the money and the weapons don't want things to change. They were doing great.

In certain parts of Japan, this led to rebellions, revolts, and civil war.

The story today, which could exist in any part of the Yedo period, makes a curious reference to Satsuma's Rebellion, which, yes, was portrayed in 2003's The Last Samurai, a movie I haven't seen in decades, so I can't really vouch for.

Anyway, all that has, well, I'm not going to say nothing to do with the story, but it all exists in the background. Basically, there's change in the air.

The samurai have been, well, not outlawed, it's coming. And there are no more rigid classes.
People are equal, at least on paper. The old ways are changing.

And not even the monsters in the woods are safe.

The old doctor knelt outside the dilapidated temple and set the bottle down, taking a rest on the large rock outside. The doctor had spent his entire long life in this village.

As he looked up at the rotting wood and the broken tiles and the torn walls, he thought,

there had been a once thriving temple here, maybe as late as his early 20s? When he returned from his studies, everyone was gone, or the people stopped talking about them.

Then when the wars ended and with all the changes taking place, everyone just assumed they fled, or hoped they fled. The forest still held many secrets and not all of them good.

The temple was in remarkably good condition though, if it was abandoned. It was, to be clear, in terrible condition, but it was still standing.

The rock was uncomfortable, and the day was quickly fading, and he was annoyed that this thing, this monster, whatever it was, hadn't come to try to lure him in too.

Maybe leaving him sitting on a rock at his age was its way of luring him in.

Rising and stretching the ache from his back and legs and everywhere, the doctor found his way into the temple grounds and followed the path to the priest's house.

He knew he had to be wily, that there were countless snares these

things used in their dealings with people. The wise, though, accepted the impossible.
They would be deceived.

There was no way to trick this thing, and they tried to exist within the bounds, and they tried to work with that.

Case in point, the others, when they came, brought bait, even if they didn't realize it, while he brought dinner. He set the food out.
Even after the trip, it was still warm to the touch.

Two clay cups knocked gently on the wood stand the doctor had found, and he sat back. While he waited, he studied the room.
The wood was darkened and rotting in places.

The mats were frayed and the paper of of the wall was mismatched, but it didn't boast the same ruin as the outer temple. It was clean and ordered, if austere.

The moonlight came in through the doorway, and the doctor decided that well, since he was in a temple he might as well meditate while he waited. After about an hour he opened his eyes.

Well, he felt more relaxed in the den of a monster, so that was something.

Still no sign of the Yokai who haunted this place. Might as well have a bit of dinner, and if that was all that happened tonight,

maybe the thing that lived here thought that he met his match.

Removing the food from his bag, he took the bottom container and began to pick at the beef, eating small bites carefully so as to not scarf the whole thing down and have nothing to eat with his guest or host, however dining with a monster in his lair worked.

Then, from deeper in the temple, the doctor heard footsteps. But they weren't the soft clicks of the women he had heard stories of or the lumbering footfalls of a giant.

They were steps not unlike his own.

Slow and shuffling. He himself couldn't move any differently, but wouldn't choose to even if he could.
He had done enough in this world, for this world.

The world could wait on him for a bit. The squinting eyes and the balding head of the priest peeked out from behind a screen before he breathed a sigh in relief.

He never thought it was anyone and hadn't been for months, except for that boy, but you never know.

So you're the monster that lurks in the temple, the doctor smirked.

That got a laugh out of the old priest, who emerged and jokingly bared his teeth and made claws with his wrinkled and spotted hands, before waving them as he shook his head.

Worn but tidy robes hugged his body as he made his way over to his guest and took a seat before rummaging in a nearby box.

The steel striker kissed the flint, and the sparks showered over the wood shavings that the doctor hadn't seen in the sunken hearth.

The priest blew on the wood while strings of smoke replaced the sparks, and then flame overmatched them both. Putting a log on, the priest settled in.
And what could he do for the man?

The priest filled a clay kettle and placed it on the metal that held it above the growing flames. I'm, like I said, I'm here looking for the monster.
The doctor chuckled. Oh, you're serious?

The priest's eyes widened. Oh, well, then maybe the priest couldn't help him.
The only monsters here were Time and the Rebellion. One of those was over.

The other one was still at work, an adversary of us all. The doctor explained that that wasn't what he meant.
The priest had other guests lately?

The priest laughed again. The samurai.
And the fencer, was it?

Yes, the doctor took a bite of his food. And they had quite the stories to tell about this place.
I would hope so.

The priest pinched out some tea and placed it in another pot, after the way they acted.

What do you mean? The doctor couldn't understand.

The priest sighed. He was still waking up after hearing someone in his home late into the night.
How about this? How about the doctor say why he thought there was a monster here?

Well, he made tea for both of them. The doctor took another bite.

Seemed Seemed reasonable enough. Okay, for some context, he heard the first part secondhand.
But the second story, well, that one, came from a friend.

So he started in on the story of the monster from the forest.

For a world that had taken so much from him, it was nice of it to give something back.

He was a samurai, so he knew the value of living like you were already dead and devotion to your lord and all that.

On days like today, though, he was reminded that there was more than courage and honor and death.

There were warm lakes and long, blissful hours of reclining in a boat and waiting for the fish to bite. And bite they did.

The basket was strapped to his back, and he had to be extra careful in order to not have one one fish go flopping out into the dirt. This had been a good day.

He didn't know this land, or rather this part of this land. He was in the south with his lord, if the man could still be called that.

He was recovering from his travels, and so the samurai had the day to himself, like the rest of them. The lords were more giving these days.

knowing that their positions and the samurai's devotion to those positions weren't given anymore. But for some reason, the samurai found himself thinking of the night when he saw her,

a young woman standing by a gate.

It it took the samurai longer than he would ever admit to notice that the woman, just a little younger than himself, stood by a gate that just barely hung on its hinges, before a winding path that led up a small hill to a dilapidated temple.

She was demure, but she remained. And the samurai recovered his wits to point behind her.
Did she live there?

The woman smiled. It was more than it looked like on the outside.
Sometimes what was underneath could be beautiful. Did the samurai agree? The samurai did not know what to say.

Besides, she needed a place to sleep. The samurai could understand needs, right?

Even such a brave, strong, powerful man must have needs.

Didn't he? I have fish,

the samurai managed. I'll get back, I should get back to the city.
It's a short walk back and the summer days are long. You can come in for some tea, right?

If the samurai rationalized it by thinking about what his compatriots were doing back in the city and how tea with a nice young woman was almost nothing, he rationalized it on the walk up to the temple, which looked somehow even worse close up.

The boards were warped and uneven, and the lacquer was flaking off the wood. The roof was sagging, and as he got closer, the sun seemed to dim.

Still,

she was so radiant he barely even noticed. Is

there's not a priest here, right? The samurai wondered, worried if they were going to have any unwelcome interruptions for their tea.

Oh, no, or at least none that I know of. I myself have only been here for a day or two with my mother.
She went into town, though, and won't return tonight.

That's why I was so glad for some company, she said, as they passed through the entryway and followed the stones that were half eaten by the ground. We're sleeping in the priest's house.

We cleaned it up, the woman said, and opened the door that actually managed to slide and reveal

wow The room was warm and soft, it was clean. There was no musty, moldy odor or a carpet of dust.
And the tatami were still in one piece, mostly. She waved over near the alcove and bade him sit.

If he would rest a moment, she would return with tea and they could relax together. The door slid shut on her smile, and when he sat there, the only thing he could think about was her face.

Was this happening?

This this was happening, all right.

While he waited, he appreciated the warm, soft, and serene room, with its glowing lanterns, and the sweet bird song wafting in from the evening warmth outside. The samurai blinked and snapped awake.

The lanterns were still burning, but the birdsong was gone.

So was the evening and the warmth for that matter. And where had the beautiful young woman gone?

Standing, he heard a sneeze behind one of the screens, blocking his view from another part of the temple. Then heavy footsteps.

It was as he rose that he realized that wasn't the sneeze of a woman who was a foot shorter than himself.

That was an old man's sneeze. And you know exactly what I'm talking about when I say that.
I'm part of the way there myself.

What are you doing in my temple? How dare you enter my house without permission? A voice bellowed, in the form of a giant.

A priest, seven feet tall, whose head nearly grazed the ceiling of the house, lumbered out from behind the screen.

The man reached back behind the screen and pulled out a club, saying that the samurai better run,

or he would beat the man until he was dust, the spit sprinkling out past the priest's rotted teeth.

The samurai might have thought that the only hit to his honor and courage would be known by a hermit priest, who was so unknown that even the beautiful squatters had no idea he was there, and thus he could run without shaming himself publicly, or with all the recent changes, there not only would be no honor in beheading such a strange and reclusive old man, but he might be disciplined for it.

He might say that he thought over those things, but he was in so much terror by the shock of it all after expecting a very different type of night that he nearly ran through the door of the priest's house and sprinted into the moonless abyss, catching a route and tumbling down the hill.

When he hit the bottom, a maze of lacerations tearing his cloak and skin, and his back and arms a growing topography of bruises. He heard laughter, but not just the old priest.

There were multiple voices ringing out into the night. He realized one thing in particular that hurt even more than the fright and the fall.
The one tangible good thing from today,

his basket of fish, he had left in the temple, and he wasn't about to go back and get it.

Hmm. Interesting.
The priest sat back, sipping the last of his tea out of the clay cup. It would make sense that that would be the story he told, but I'll wait.
You said there were two parts.

I'll let you continue. The priest waved him on before pouring more water on the tea leaves and waiting for part two.

We'll get to the next encounter with whatever is going on in the forest, but that will be right after this.

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A whole group of samurai sat in the bar. And your sake flask, how empty was it? The samurai heard the following night, followed by laughs.
He sighed.

Having to tell someone, he confided in a friend he had made on the way over. The rest of the retainers knew before their midday meal.

Now, as they congregated at a local restaurant, shoes clattering to fill their cups, the samurai chided the man. I hadn't been drinking.

Oh okay, I mean, I did have most of what I brought when I was out fishing, but it was gone by then. It was hours later.

Uh, it sounds like you passed out drunk after having visions of a beautiful woman, and then a priest chased you out of his home, and you turned him into a giant so no one would think you a coward for not beheading him for his insult.

One samurai stood, his hand hovering not close to, but not far from, his blade. blade.

Our samurai from the night before knew where this would go, and that one of them would pay in blood, but did exhale in relief, when a voice went up from the other side of the restaurant.

Then why don't you go? An older man rose from his rice and sake, standing a half a head taller than either of the samurai. A chuckle went up from some of the other retainers.
Excuse you?

The samurai turned. The man was probably fifteen to twenty years his elder, and was wrinkled, but stood less aged and more so wiry.

Our samurai observed that, in standing there facing possibly his own imminent execution, the stranger didn't shake. His hand was completely still.
That sword you wear. You a samurai?

Who's your master? the antagonistic samurai demanded, but the old man merely shook his head. No master, not a samurai.
Not lucky enough to be born into it. He had to earn his skills and blood.

Then you're not allowed to wear that sword, the samurai said.

Well,

that might be true, but same could be said about you nowadays, right? Or it will be. The man smiled.

Thing was, he had been wearing this sword since the bad times, since the war, since everyone didn't just get to, but had to arm themselves, because he didn't know if it was going to be a normal day or if blood would run in the streets.

So he would obey the new law when they both could,

or when someone could enforce it. But so far no one had the desire or skill to take his sword.
So he would keep it. The fencer, as he's called, said that the temple was abandoned.

It was half burned in the war and left to rot. Nothing or no one lived up there, well, nothing natural.
Nothing that they had seen in their play acting and bullying.

The samurai seemed temporarily cowed, and the old man sighed. He believed the one who had been there.
The young samurai didn't seem like a coward. There was something up there.

Places like that attract these creatures.

Oni, Tanuki, Kitsune, you can't let them establish a foothold. The samurai, they might not care, but the temple wasn't far from his home.
If they grew in power enough, the village might be next.

They needed to do something. At At this, the antagonistic samurai broke out laughing, and the others soon followed.
Wiping his eyes, he said, oh,

all right. He thought he was going to have to kill this old peasant.
But the man couldn't be held responsible.

Spotting nonsense, it was obvious the old coot was crazy, not just talking about scary monsters that go bump in the night, but trying to send samurai out to fight ghosts.

The old man might have replied that he couldn't send samurai

here, but he left without another word, sword still hanging at his belt.

The fencer's aging body ached under the weight of the fish.

He remained strong, but after a long day's work, And haggling with the fishmonger that no, it wasn't him trying to get a bunch of reduced-cost fish, he was actually gonna fight monsters on behalf of the village, he was tired.

And it wasn't like that was it.

This was the prologue to what could either be a tense and threatening back-and-forth with a demon who eventually surrenders, or him having to kill a menacing yokai that chased off a samurai.

The forest held no fear for him. So, the only challenge of the hike was the hike.

Like how a drafty room will never feel cold after you've nearly frozen to death, the memory of the bad times brightened even these.

He stopped and squinted. Up on the hill, through the haze, a light glowed in the old temple.
A hand went to his sword. It had bumped on his leg for the whole walk up.

He knew it was there, but touching it now brought a small comfort because the samurai was right. Something lurked up there.

And he couldn't be so sure it would treat him with the same levity.

Giving a small jump and raising the fish basket on his back, the fencer found the stones of the path and began his walk up to the temple. It will find him at least part of the way, lure him in.

It was likely watching him already. Everything it did would reveal something about what it thought of him.
Every action carried a message, even if your enemy didn't intend it. He smiled.
Women.

He was an old man working late in the forest.

Of course it thought he would be swayed by three beautiful young women, beckoning him inside, like he was some hot blooded samurai he had seen people used as bait for traps, and this was amateurish.

A samurai was here earlier, but we chased him off. Too young.
We love a man with experience. One of the women smiled.
The other two giggled. The fencer said, I think you'll find me very experienced.

Not even looking at them, he hefted the fish through the gateway and toward the priest's house. Looking around, it was nice, like really nice.

The women were very traditional and bade him sit on the mat and brought him cakes and tea and sake. He simply sat there and studied them.
It was amazing what these creatures could do.

I drink neither tea nor alcohol. Tea because I never developed a taste for it.
We couldn't afford it during the wars. Alcohol because, well, I always had to be ready, he said.

The women looked at each other and then allowed themselves a chuckle. He was a fun one.
Okay, well, if their food and drink couldn't relax him, maybe something else could.

He was about to object to that and reach for his swords when the fans came out.

It had been a long time since they had done this, and they were likely rusty, but he looked like a man who could look past it, one who delighted in the old ways.

We've had women doing fan dances on the podcast before, or rather, me talking about women doing fan dances on this podcast. It's an audio medium.
It would be silly to do something like that.

It's like when I gesture or act stuff out. No one can see anything.
Anyway, this was something that was done during this time period, and I don't think we're meant to see it as

exciting for the male character, but he did become entranced. His back was to a wall, and the women were in front of him, so he felt no danger.

If they tried anything, his sword was at his belt and could be drawn and used faster than most people could realize what was going on. So that meant he could enjoy the show.

He had been raised the son of a farmer, and though he had become more in life, that's all he would ever be to anyone who mattered.

Even in times when Daimyo and Samurai were being reduced to nothing, a beautiful fan dance in a luxurious room with sake and food.

Well, that was more than was ever on offer for him, and for a moment, he felt like he could sit and enjoy the world he had fought for. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

And then a severed head ended up in his lap. Even he, with all he had seen, shrieked as the woman's dead eyes stared up at him, her mouth agape and her neck bloody.

Then the laughter, not just from the other two, standing over the third's slumped form, decapitated on the mat, but from the head, the one in his lap, its eyes turned to face him and its mouth curled into a smile.

It was laughing at his terror. They had gotten him.
For a moment, he had forgotten where he was and it took advantage of that. He threw the head off of him and it rolled back to the body.

The other two women, with jerking cracks, tore their own heads off. Still laughing, all three women merged into a swirly mass of soft fabrics and fans, still dancing at the far end of the room.

Oh, that's a bad move, the fencer thought as he clicked his sword free. Now he just had one target.

He rushed the thing, the being, juggling its own heads, at the far end of the room and, with a slash, brought his sword down through the center.

Pausing only for a moment to survey the killing blow, he saw that in the instant he touched it with his weapon, it became three women again, and the sword passed harmlessly between them.

The only thing it moved through was their laughter. Knowing somewhere deep down what would happen, he couldn't call himself a warrior and not try again.

But each slash only found them standing separate from each other. I am here, one said as she pulled her head off and thrust it toward him, literally laughing in his face.

Can you not reach me this time? He cut the arm holding the head, but in that instant they were, once again, standing three and whole, just out of his reach.

Glancing again to his fish by the door, he looked back to the women and they were gone. Except they weren't.

The three of them were crawling up the walls like spiders, twisting and turning their necks, still with those ghoulish, otherworldly smiles.

But they had separated. Maybe there was a limit to their power, and one was lingering lower than the others.

He kept his eyes off of her, staggering back in mock terror from the other two, and when he was just at the right distance, he drew his sword with a spin and impaled the woman on the wall.

She screeched in agony that quickly faded into yet another laugh. Ah, you serious types, you're even easier than the others.
You lack imagination, creativity.

You can't see our traps until they're closing around you. The woman's eyes slowly turned black.
Be glad I'm just hungry, she hissed. Before, like a mist, she faded.

The light and the warmth fled with her. And the fencer found himself in

a cold and dilapidated priest's house on the edge of the forest. Moonlight coming in through the tatters illuminated what he already knew to be true.
His fish were gone. its basket shreds.

Whatever it was that haunted the temple had taken him off somewhere to feed. His arrogance had turned bait into an offering.

Thankfully, the samurai were gone the following night, like lapdogs barking after their master, and no one else in the village would chide him for his failure.

There There was a palpable unease, though, among the patrons. Something was in the forest, something he could not dispatch in a night with preparation.

It seemed harmless, only scaring off the samurai and leaving the fencer to plot his way home in the dark, pondering how he was going to pay this new fish debt.

But the same game was only fun for so long.

He had seen this play before, and knew it was only a matter of time before people stopped coming home. Which temple is this again? the village doctor said, taking a seat beside the fencer.

The fencer smiled. The doctor had been here longer than anyone, and though his wrinkles and jowls gave him a near-permanent frown, he was the easiest, happiest man in the village.

Without him, they wouldn't have survived the war, but he wore his burdens lightly.

A few curious ears turned toward the doctor and the fencer, as the swordsman told his friend what happened the previous night. But the fencer didn't care about the audience.

The doctor sat back at the end of it, before reaching into his pouch and counting out several coppers for the fencer for the fish.

The fencer tried to refuse, but the doctor ignored him as he rose and patted his friend on the back. Now, you leave this to me, he said, shuffling toward the door.
You can't

I will, the doctor replied. Oh, but I'm old.
Give me three days' time. He laughed and headed for home.

Over the next two days the doctor wasn't seeing patients, save for emergencies and there were no emergencies. He shut himself up in his home and set a servant to go to the market.

No one could really guess what he was doing, because the servant, according to himself later, came back with nearly everything at the market, leaving it at the doctor's door.

They almost missed him leave late one afternoon, giving himself plenty of time to head up the hill.

From glimpses, they could see two dishes steaming from inside his basket, and from the smells, they knew it was bell peppers and beef. Rice, too.

And the doctor had a bottle of sake tucked under his arm. People watched and wonder at the old man and fear that they wouldn't see him again.

We'll see how everything ends up at the temple, but that will, once again, be right after this.

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Oh, you have a flair for the dramatic, too, the priest said. He was right, though.
There wasn't anyone here. Not anymore, not for years, evidently.
Evidently? The doctor asked, sipping his tea.

Yes, the priest said it. He would give an account of himself now and answer the charges that he was a monster.
He had been born somewhere to someone.

Those people, maybe to do the right thing, maybe because they saw something in him and knew he could get a better life in the temple, learning and eating,

than with them, they dedicated him to the Buddha. He was not even seven years old.

It was when his older brother came home one day, with a full belly and a beautiful lacquered box, that his parents saw the opportunity.

He, the priest, never had children, but for years he tried to imagine how difficult it was.

Saying goodbye, or how difficult he hoped it was.

Anyway, he had been trained and educated in this temple, but not even the refuge of the priests were safe from the changing tides of the world outside.

Those tides became a wave destroying everything he knew. A wave in a figurative sense.
His temple, after his training at this place, burned down in the siege of Kumamoto.

He, like the doctor's fencer friend, was forever changed by the wars. But the priest, well, he fell on hard times.

He wandered, subsisting on the generosity of those who couldn't afford it themselves, all while the samurai fought an emperor. But the wars long over, he decided to come home.

Well, the closest thing he had to a home. It seemed he sighed and looked with eyes welling with tears at the decay, the deterioration that surrounded his tiny enclave of order.

It seemed he wasn't the only one who abandoned the temple.

Still, just being here, doing what he could while he could do it to improve the place he had loved as a boy, it filled him with something resembling joy.

He would love to collect money and rebuild, but there was a lot of rebuilding to be done, and an old forest held more fear than hope. Besides, the work of raising new walls was for younger men.

His was managing the descent. He struggled to his feet and limped over, legs still asleep, and ran his fingers along the mismatched wall.
No, his plan now

was to die here. The doctor dabbed his robe on his eye, but before he could ask, the priest answered his original question.

As for your

monster, you and I both know better than to trust the words of drunken young men. I remember the samurai if they could even be called that anymore, or rather I remember his snoring.

Knowing the temper that some of them could have, I tapped him with a stick to wake him up. I'm still sore from falling backwards, when I was as startled as he was.

By the time I regained my senses, he was screaming on the road back to the village. If I were him and I wasn't a priest, I would have told the same story, the priest laughed.
The doctor laughed too.

He could understand that, but his friend, the fencer? I knew better.

The priest said, I knew something was going on, and that hand and the sword and the glowering was all the convincing I needed to let him sit for as long as he needed to, just alone, before he headed back.

The priest's wide eyes shook with a shiver. He's an honest man, the doctor said.
Everyone's honest. Until they're not, the priest tilted his head.

He had been here a few months, maybe, but there were rumors from the world beyond their village. Rumors that the emperor's new government was going to make it illegal to carry weapons.

The fencer's story, that was a tragic one. Too skilled and smart to thrive as a peasant in the time of masters, too specialized in death to thrive in the time of commoners.

The priest finished up his tea. As the doctor no doubt knew, people tell you who they are.
All you have to do is listen. In the Fencer's story he was the powerful daimyo watching a fan dance.

You can almost see the samurai's robes on him, the way he described the whole situation. The poor man has dreams he didn't even know he had.
That world is gone, and he never got to be a part of it.

The doctor sat back. That did make sense.
His friend was nearly consumed by his grievances, even if he never acknowledged as much. The doctor smiled and then stopped.
There was one more thing.

The priest said he had a brother.

His whole reason for joining the temple, but then

why didn't the priest just go to him in his time of need instead of dying alone in the forest? Taking a deep breath, the priest gave the doctor a knowing nod. He died.
His third week here.

He became sick. Driven, smart, wise, brave, his brother wouldn't have left.
When they pushed everyone to evacuate, things would have been different. The doctor swallowed hard.

Then it was his chance to be surprised. Oh, he was so rude.
Here. He rifled through his basket before pulling out the clay container of meat and peppers.
The priest must be starving.

Literally, yes, the priest said, before taking the plate. The doctor rose and thanked the priest for the tea.
He looked to the ground. He was sorry.

Sorry he believed the lie that there was a monster here. The world was changing, and all the more reason for them to put away the fears and prejudices of the past.

If the priest didn't mind, could the doctor tell some people in town? He knew building was for young men, but they have plenty of those in the village for whom a day's work would be good.

This land needed a temple, and it was an honorable dream. The doctor would do everything in his power to ensure it came to fruition, even if the priest didn't live to see it.

The priest, tears in his eyes, gave a brief and grateful nod. The doctor said he would be back tomorrow, with more provisions.
You can stay, if you like, the priest offered.

So you don't have to walk back in the dark, the doctor pointed up to the waxing crescent. He was a boy when the priest was a young man.
He knew these paths.

Like he could walk around his house in the dark. These woods were as familiar and harmless.

He told the priest goodnight and made his way back down the hill to the sound of the starving man ravenously eating the food behind him.

I know what I saw. The fencer wasn't budging on his story in the warm light of the morning as the dew wetted the robes of both men after a short walk through the forest.

Certainly, the doctor followed behind him. I'm not crazy, and I'm not a coward like that samurai.
I tried to kill it. I tried to win.

You've been trying your whole life, the doctor said with a bemused smirk. The old priest had been right about that.
I'm back, the fencer said, drawing his sword as he strode up to the priest's house.

Okay, there's no one here to yell at. Not anymore, the doctor stopped him.
What about your priest?

The fencer slid open the door with a slam and held a sword in front of him, pointing into the darkness. He's dead, the doctor pointed into the room.

As their eyes adjusted, in the spot where the priest had sat the night before, a giant tanuki, fur more gray than brown, lay still with mouth and eyes open next to a plate where only a few scraps of meat and vegetables remained.

You

beat it? The fencer sheathed the sword. The doctor nodded, yeah.

Well, more specifically, he poisoned it, which wasn't really beating it, but he would be honest. He was nearly taken in by its story.
It was affecting.

The old goblin was truly a master of his craft, and he met each adversary with their match.

So how do you beat him? The fencer said. Honesty, the doctor said.
Well, that wasn't, strictly speaking, true, as he did trick and poison the Tanuki, but it was the Tanuki's honesty that revealed him.

Of

everything he spewed, there was only one grain of truth. Back when the doctor was a boy, it couldn't have been more than five, there was a panic at the temple.

A boy from an impoverished family, he came in during a festival and, seeing his interest in the Buddhist doctrine, the head priest took him in and showed him the scriptures.

He read feverishly well into the afternoon, and the priest stopped him to insist that he eat.

The boy finally slowed when he ate three times the amount for a full-grown man, to the astonishment of the priest. Glancing at the sky, he bowed and said he must be getting home.

But the priest was honored by the boy's respect and reverence and knew he was speaking with someone special.

Returning the honor, he gave the boy an inro, a lacquered box he could wear, and the boy was wearing that box, or rather, the Tanuki was, when the temple servant sweeping the graveyard found him dead, his distended body visible under his clothes made of straw.

Gluttony, having been the end of him, that was the brother the priest, the Tanuki, spoke of the night before. It was that little bit of himself that he couldn't hide that gave him away.

The doctor shook his head. It was likely that the Tanuki had been in the temple for decades, that he sowed distrust and disquietude and likely led to it being abandoned.

But the actual creature is far older, probably hundreds of years. He let the fencer take it back to the village and would join them.

In the following days more stories would come out about everyone that now felt safe to tell the story about how they, too, were tricked by the Tanuki, the goblin badger, as one translation calls him.

But for a moment, the doctor took a short rest in the home of the priest that never was a priest, and even if it was a lie, that tanuki was part of the world that was fading like a morning fog and would soon be gone completely.

It was ultimately good.

But something had also been lost, and for them, tomorrow was suddenly different, bigger, and scarier than today.

The doctor wouldn't live long in it, but like his grief over the tinuki in the temple, he, too,

could mourn what was.

The story is interesting, and these are all part of the same tale, so I don't think it's a stretch to draw the conclusions that I did. There seemed to be a lot drifting there just under the surface.

Anyway, next time we're back in 1001 Nights with a Sultan who really should keep track of what forums his kid is going to, because the future of his realm hangs on his kid's wackadoo beliefs.

And if you'd like to support the show, there's a membership thing on the site and on Apple Podcasts.

For less than the price of Clocky, an extra loud runaway alarm clock, you can get ad-free and bonus episodes that, according to some of our more critical reviewers, are also annoying.

Check out mythpodcast.com/slash slash membership or find us on Apple Podcasts.

The creature this time is the Bororo, from the Tucano people in the northwestern Amazon rainforest.

For some reason, all talk of the Bororo leads with its backward-facing feet, which to me is the least dangerous and least interesting thing about the creature. What's the most interesting?

Well, that's a toss-up. Maybe it's the creature's tendency to urinate poison on anyone.
It sees as a threat and or meal.

The poison urine that kills you on contact, sidebar, if I'm being urinated on by a giant, pale-skinned, hairy man with backward feet, I'd almost be grateful that it kills on contact.

Anyway, as far as I can tell, he might, but he generally doesn't eat what he pees on. That's...
Not just a good rule for giants, it's a good rule for life. No, he hugs what he's about to eat.

In the running for the most interesting thing about the creature is that sometimes it doesn't urinate. I mean, I guess like everybody.

Sometimes it just grabs onto wayward humans wandering the forest and gives them a big old bone-crushing, organ-pulverizing hug. You might be like, okay, but Hercules did that.
And you'd be right.

And Hercules was naked, so that's weird.

Hercules did not, however, pop a straw through people's heads like we're a capri's son and drink out the meat smoothie he made inside, which is the third contender for the most interesting thing about the Burruro.

I'll leave it up to you which one is the winner, but they all beat the backwards facing feet. That being said, feet are weirdly the key to surviving an encounter with this creature.

The creature doesn't have knees, so if he falls down, it takes him forever to stand back up, and you can knock him down by apparently putting your hands in his backwards footprint.

That, or you look at the creature and run backwards, which is useful in two ways.

Not only are you running away, but it will be so confused by your frontwards facing feet going backwards while you're facing the wrong direction that it'll just decide you're not worth the trouble and find someone else to turn into a Capri Sun meat smoothie.

Myths and Legends is by Jason and Carissa Weiser. Our theme song is by Broke for Free, and the Creature of the Week music is by Steve Colms.

There are links to even more of the music we used in the show notes. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you next time.

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