A mysterious tea kettle linked to Shukaku, the shape-shifting tanuki of Morinji recorded in Kōshi Yawa. The kettle poured endless hot water to serve tea to monks—said to be Shukaku’s sorcery. Shukaku’s true form is an ancient tanuki who heard the Dharma in distant India and came to Japan via China. The tale is regarded as the prototype of the later folktale "Bunbuku Chagama" and became entwined with the temple’s treasures and local lore.
Folklore & Legends
During the Ōei era, the monk Shukaku at Morinji in Jōshū used a tea kettle that never ran dry, serving tea at gatherings. One day, another monk glimpsed Shukaku napping and saw a tanuki’s tail peeking from his robes, revealing him as an old raccoon-dog spirit. By his arts the kettle showed wonders, and on the day of parting it conjured visions of the Battle of Yashima and the Buddha’s parinirvana. This legend later inspired the folktale known as "Bunbuku Chagama."
ShōmadōYokai Soul Match
Are you anything like The Kettle of Morinji?
From about ten questions, the mirror of Shōmadō reads your aura and shows you the one yokai, out of more than five hundred, closest to you.
A portrayal based on the tale of the Guardian Crane at Morinji Temple in Jōshū. The ever-boiling teakettle symbolizes almsgiving and joy in the Dharma, and sharing tea with monks and visitors is understood as spreading virtue. The guardian is a long-lived tanuki who lives among humans while bound by Buddhist ties. When its true nature is exposed, it leaves the temple, but at parting uses illusion to show scenes of ancient battles and Buddhist rites, teaching people impermanence and the virtue of the Law. Later, this tradition split into two strands: one reshaped into the folktale Bunbuku Chagama with showy acrobatics, and one remaining within the temple’s origin legend. Locally, it is told in connection with the temple’s treasured kettle, influenced by tanuki worship, storytelling, and essays, yet its core reduces to two points: the inexhaustible hot water and the departing wise tanuki.
Character Profile
This section is our own creative profile for storytelling. It is not historical fact or scholarship.
