Japanese folklore

The saints who are alluded to above are the saints of the whole country, as distinct from those who, for special deeds, are locally worshipped.

Touching the remedy of the fox's liver prescribed in the tale, I may add that there would be nothing strange in this to a person acquainted with the Chinese pharmacopoeia, which the Japanese long exclusively followed, although they are now successfully studying the art of healing as practiced in the West.

When I was at Peking, I saw a Chinese physician prescribe a decoction of three scorpions for a child struck down with fever, and on another occasion a groom of mine, suffering from dysentery, was treated with acupuncture of the tongue.

The art of medicine would appear to be, at the present time in China, much in the state in which it existed in Europe in the 16th century, when the excretions and secretions of all manner of animals, saurians, and venomous snakes and insects, and even live bugs, were administered to patients.

The swan maiden is one of the most geographically widespread story types in world folklore.

Over 400 versions have been documented in Norse, Celtic, Slavic, Hungarian, Japanese, Chinese, Mongolian, Siberian, and indigenous North American traditions.

The bones of the story are consistent across all of them.

A man comes upon a group of women who have removed their feather cloaks and are bathing in their human form.

The cloak ceiling is implied in the Norse version rather than stated outright, but the structure is there.

Women, between their two natures, grounded by the theft of one of them, return to themselves when the conditions allow.

The Japanese tradition carries the same thread through the tenyo, the celestial maiden.

A man finds a hagaromo, a feather robe, hanging on a branch or left at the shore, and he takes it.