Superstitions of the Clans

On the Superstitions of Rokugan’s Common People by Yasuki Masahime

Yasuke Masahine was, by all accounts, ahelper to all, a lover to some, and an enemy of none. “The friendly little Crab” – a curious appellation for a womanw ho idolized her Kuni mother – has a legacy at court as a confidente who stopped a potential war between Crab and Crane.
 
Though not a shugenja herself, in her later years, she devoted her time to recording peasant superstions for the Kuni school, convinced that some of them had basis in fact. “A lord never worries in front of his samurai,” she once said, “but the table-made knows who Is eating.”
Regrettably, her tests led to her death by an oni in Lion territory, but some of her notes survive in draft form. The ronin still speak of her as one of the otokodate – brave heroes who stand up to injustice

• Seikansho


• I had thought Phoenix peasants might be better educated than most, but this is not the case at Holy Home Village. They know no glass or crystal and cannot afford jade, so they make do with copper. The so-called “copper test” pierces a body part with a wire which is supposed to tarnish to Tainted. The practice is common among women who pierce their navels to make sure their children will be born free of dark influence.
  
  
• The tea plantation workers of the Crab bear more burn scars than most. It is said when children are born with birthmarks, it is a sign of their potential for evil. The mark is burned off and rubbed with chalk when they can get no sea salt.
  
  
• A Tainted geisha in Crane lands took small amounts of kirei-ko eye powder in her sake, keeping her pale and preventing tumors from growing.
  
  
• A large stock of “tea house stories” reveal dozens of ways to detect if a client is a shape-changed oni or maho-tsukai.
      -  If a samurai has particularly white teeth and looks in the mirror often, he may be an oni checking that his human form is worn correctly. If his toes are hairy, he may be an ogre. If he seizes upon the first girl the oka-san offers, make certain he does not look only at her heart or eyes, for oni eat those first.
     - If he tries to touch too soon, he may be trying to spread the Taint. Salt water burns oni with its purity, so prepare his bath with salt.
     - Most oni breathe noisily through their noses.
     - If he takes her walking, she should turn left and distract him until they make a wide circle. Once she returns to her starting point, his true nature will manifest.
     - Decline if he insists you come to his castle, for he will take you off to be eaten.
  While these stories are most common in Crab holdings, I found almost as many near Yogo Shiro and among the burakumin of Ryoko Owari. This was flabbergasting, for I found few reports of Shadowlands of activities there. In nearby lands such as the Matsu and Iuchi, the geisha are at least as cultured, but lack these prohibitions.
  Curiously, the traditions do not mention oni taking the shapes of samurai-ko, only samurai, predominately of the Crab and Scorpion clans.

 

• A most disturbing story regarding an oni arose near the Iron Rings Cascade. It is said that faithless men struck it with pure jade and nothing occurred. A Phoenix shugenja consulted the Oracle – in some tales the Oracle of Water, in some the Oracle of Air – and it said that only a samurai who killed before he could walk could slay the oni. It was finally vanquished by a bushi just past his gempukku whose mother had died giving birth to him.
  
  
• A creamator in Toshi no Inazuma tells me that once in a burned village, the creamators found the body of a woman who died in childbirth. Yet the infant lived inside the coffin, nursed by her ghost. One of the samurai adopted the child for his own and named it Yorei-ke, “ghost hair,” for its translucent hair.
  Years later, an oni arrived, and demanded the flesh of all the children in the village, one at a time. The samurai where no match for it, except Yorei-ke, who substituted himself for another child. When the oni bit him. It screamed in pain. He dipped his sword in his own blood and slew the thing easily.
  I suspect this to be a devolved re-telling of the previous legend besmirched with the idea that ghosts can be hurt by weapons with human blood on them. 
  
  
• Among the peasants of the Dragon and Phoenix, sixth sons are considered unlucky, for the Fallen One was the sixth son of Heaven. Often parents of six sons will give the sixth to another family to raise in the hopes of sparing them from the Dark One’s fate. 
  
  
• The palace at Otosan Uchi has a number of Tainted supplicants seeking audience with the Emperor in the hopes that his forgiveness can cure them. The guards drive them away, but some beg at the four Hub villages. 
  
  
• The merchants in Mura Sabishii say that every spring, an enormous ogre called the namahage descends from the mountains, dressed in a grass hakama, carrying a boken. While completely resistant to arrows, spears, and prayers to the Fortunes, he is incredibly foolish, and terrified of oni, so they have an annual festival to drive off the ogre by wearing oni masks and beating on drums.
  
  

• The farmers of Friendly Traveler Village speak of onigo, demon children born with teeth in their mouth. The mother is usually cast out in shame and is expected to walk into the sea carrying the demon until they both drown.
  The burakumin of that same village call their young men by unpleasant names (such as “dung” or “animal flesh”) so oni listening from the spirit world see their sons as worthless and do not attack them.
  
  

• The folk of the Plains of the Golden Sun collect live silkworms and keep them in cages by their bedsides or around their necks. The silkworm, protected in its cocoon, can protect its charge from evil thoughts, and sleeping under silken sheets is said to prevent baku and gaki from eating dreams.