Legends
After Sotoku's abdication and exile, he devoted himself to monastic life. He copied numerous scriptures and offered them to the court. Fearing that the scriptures were cursed, the court refused to accept them. Snubbed, Sotoku was said to have resented the court and, upon his death, became an onryō. Everything from the subsequent fall in fortune of the Imperial court, the rise of the samurai powers, draughts and internal unrests were blamed on his haunting.
Alternatively, he was said to have transformed into an Ootengu (greater tengu), whom, along with nurarihyon, the nine-tailed kitsune Tamamo-no-Mae and the oni Shuten-dōji, are often called the four greatest yōkai of Japan.
Read more about this topic: Emperor Sutoku
Famous quotes containing the word legends:
“Farm boys wild to couple
With anything with soft-wooded trees
With mounds of earthmounds
Of pine straw will keep themselves off
Animals by legends of their own:”
—James Dickey (b. 1923)
“Therefore our legends always come around to seeming legendary,
A path decorated with our comings and goings. Or so I’ve been told.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“a child’s
Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother
Through the parables
Of sunlight
And the legends of the green chapels
And the twice-told fields of infancy”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)