What is Bunbuku Chagama?
Bunbuku Chagama is the legend of a magical tea kettle handed down at Morinji Temple in Tatebayashi, Gunma Prefecture. It never ran out of hot water however much was drawn, and because it shared good fortune (fuku wo wakeru), it was named “Bunbuku Chagama,” it is said. As a folktale, it is also known as the story of a tanuki that turned into a tea kettle and became a show, and it is the representative story of Japan’s shapeshifting tanuki.
The monk Shukaku of Morinji
According to the temple’s tradition, in the Muromachi period a monk named Shukaku, who had followed the temple’s founder, prepared a tea kettle for a great ceremony attended by many monks. However much hot water was drawn from it, it never ran dry, astonishing everyone.
Shukaku served the temple for many years, until one day, while he was napping, he was seen in his true form: a tanuki. Shukaku confessed that he was a tanuki who had lived a thousand years and had even heard the Buddha preach; after showing the people visions such as scenes of the Genpei War, he left the temple, it is said.
Bunbuku Chagama as a folktale
The version spread by collections such as those edited by Iwaya Sazanami in the Meiji era goes like this. When a monk put a tea kettle he had bought at a secondhand shop over the fire, it grew a tanuki’s head and limbs because it was too hot. The secondhand dealer took the creepy kettle off the monk’s hands and opened a show in which the tanuki kettle performed tricks such as tightrope walking; it was a great hit, and the tanuki and the dealer both lived happily.
Morinji Temple still keeps a tea kettle said to have been used by Shukaku as a temple treasure, and many tanuki statues line its approach.
