Shippeitaro

rdf:langString Shippeitaro

rdf:langString Shippeitaro or Shippei Taro (also given by the German spelling Schippeitaro) (しっぺい太郎, 竹篦太郎, 悉平太郎, 執柄太郎) is the name of a helper dog in the Japanese fairy tale by the same name. Translations include "Schippeitaro" in Andrew Lang's Violet Fairy Book (1901), taken from a German copy, and Mrs. James's "Schippeitaro" (1888), which share the same plotline: The mountain spirit and its minions (in the guise of cats in this version) demand a yearly human sacrifice of a maiden from the local village. A young warrior overhears the spirits hinting that their would-be bane was "Shippeitaro", which turns out to be a dog. This dog is substituted for the maiden to be placed inside the sacrificial container, and when the spirits arrive, the warrior and dog attack the cats and vanquish them. The evil spirits appear as monkeys in most instances of the tale, as in the version of "Shippei Taro" given in Keigo Seki's anthology (translated into English 1963). In fact, this folktale is classified as "Destroying the Monkey Demon" (Sarugami taiji) tale type by Japanese folklorists. In variants, the dog may have Suppeitarō, Suppetarō or a variety of other names, for example, "Hayatarō of Kōzenji temple in Shinano". The dog may not be given any name at all. Monkey God tales preserved in the medieval anthologies Konjaku Monogatarishū and Uji Shūi Monogatari have been suggested as being the original sources of the orally disseminated versions.