The Child Wearing The Tengai (Popular Shakuhachi Beliefs)

In the book Komusō Tani Kyōchiku (edited by Inagaki Ihaku, Komusō-kenkyū-kai 1986) Tani Kyōchiku reports some popular beliefs about the Shakuhachi and the Komusō which I present here. (1)

"Mr. Komusō, would you please let that child wear your tengai for a moment?" As I was stopped like that, I turned around and saw a women holding a little child. She's making fun of me, trying to trick me into taking off the tengai so that she can see the Komusō's face. When I looked silently at her, she said very earnestly: "Could you please be so kind and let the child wear it?" There was no laxness in her voice whatsoever. 

"And what will happen, when the child wears the tengai?" I asked insistently, because I did not now what was going on, and that was a somewhat fishy situation. When I listend to her explanation I understood.

"That child has something with its brain✢ and we are in trouble." She also said that she herself had headaches from time to time and asked me to let her put on the tengai as well. Anyway, if it helps, I thought and let them wear the tengai for a moment. They tanked me very much. 

Superstition concerning the tengai which the sturdy Komusō wears on his head probably only exists in the area of Kyūshū. (p. 9-10)

✢ Here the very unusual expression nōmochi 脳もち ("having something with the brain") is used to describe the child's condition, and I can only suspect that this is some kind of discriminatory term and is therefore not listed in dictionaries and lexicons, or that it might be Kyūshū dialect. Anyway, at the present moment I cannot confirm what the actual problem of the child was.

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Just like the Shakuhachi, the tengai was also regarded as an auspicious object and some believed that even wearing it briefly could bring health and sanity.

A modern Tengai made from bamboo

Those kinds of folk-religious beliefs in Buddhism root within the Lotus-Sutra, one of the most popular text of Central- and East-Asian Buddhism. In its second chapter (Upāya "Skillful Means") there are many examples that "getting in touch" with Buddhism even in a casual manner (like children building Buddhist stupas with sand while playing, etc.) could plant the seed for future salvation.

The mendicancy of a Komusō is, after all, know as gyōke 行化, what literally means "going and transforming". The idea is that the Komusō goes to the people and by bringing them in touch with the Buddhist dharma through the sound of his Shakuhachi transforms them into future Buddhas.

(1)

These texts are collected in the chapter "Shakuhachi and Superstition" (Shakuhachi to meishin 尺八と迷信) and had appeared first in the February edition of the magazine Sankyoku in 1927. The stories, which are introduced as Kyōchiku's own experience, shed some light on the way the Komusō were viewed in the last century. That is, after all, not the Edo period anymore and Komusō in that time were no longer masterless samurai or suspected to be criminals in hiding. For many Japanese meeting a Komusō or any other Buddhist monk was - in many cases - on the contrary a happy omen. I find it interesting, that Tani Kyōchiku has quite a rational view on the people's superstitions concerning the Komusō and the Shakuhachi.