No. 39 — Onchiko-henchiko

Record

Monjiya no Kichi, who had lost at gambling, gambled with a Jizo, a stone bodhisattva statue, in a field and won, receiving a vermilion-lacquered spatula from it. When one wiped one's bottom with it, the spatula made a strange sound, Onchiko-henchiko, for it was a charmed tool; Kichi used it to cause the same strange happening on the bottom of the daughter of the choja, then later cured it himself and received a reward of money. Since Kichi cured a strange affliction that neither doctors nor exorcists could cure, he received money and goods, gave up gambling, and lived happily.

Source

Ogasawara Kenkichi (ed.), Shiwa-gun Mukashibanashi-shu (1938) — National Diet Library Digital Collections (Japanese text)

Land

Shiwa District

Type

Yokai and the Uncanny, Strange Fates

Beings

Jizo

This is an English rendering of our short Japanese summary of the source tale — a summary translated from the Japanese, not a translation of the original text. The summary was drafted and translated with AI assistance, and names and numbers were checked against our records. Tale numbers for this book follow the order in which the tales appear; they are ours, not the book's.