Hirata Atsutane was a scholar of Kokugaku (National Learning) in the late Edo period. Calling himself a posthumous disciple of Motoori Norinaga, he studied Japanese classics and Shinto, and was known for his strong interest in the fate of the soul after death and the unseen world.
Around 1820, when a boy named Torakichi became famous in Edo for saying he had been carried off by a tengu and trained in another world, Hirata invited him to his home, recorded his story in detail and published it in 1822 as Senkyo Ibun (Strange Tidings from the Realm of the Immortals). It remains a valuable record of an account of being spirited away by tengu.
