Folklore, retold
The story as it is told
A retelling, not a citation. What follows is the story as the most widely circulated popular accounts tell it — folklore encyclopedias, translations, and the versions that have travelled furthest. It is synthesized rather than keyed line by line to the dated primary texts, and popular versions drift from what those texts actually say. The cited, source-by-source record begins further down this page, and where the two disagree, the record wins.
A broken koto — the long thirteen-stringed zither — with eyes and a mouth opened in the wood, and its snapped strings hanging down like loose hair.
And its grievance is the most specific in the entire catalogue.
It's angry about a music reform
Sekien's caption, from 1784, says this:
Since the blind master Yatsuhashi Kengyō reformed koto music, the old Tsukushi-goto style survives in name only. Almost nobody alive knows what it actually sounded like.
So the instrument took this form to make its resentment known.
That is not a neglected object. That's a neglected repertoire.
Every other awakened thing in this tradition is upset about how it was treated — thrown out, worn through, forgotten in a corner. This one is upset about a change in musical fashion. It's a footnote in the history of Japanese performance practice, risen up with a face on.
And the grievance is real. Yatsuhashi Kengyō's reforms in the seventeenth century genuinely did displace the older courtly-temple Tsukushi tradition, and genuinely did become the foundation of everything after — if you have ever heard Sakura Sakura, you have heard the winning side of this argument.
The koto in the picture is the losing side, and it wants you to know.
The string section has been marching for centuries
There's a lovely bit of continuity here.
The medieval night-parade scrolls — the uncaptioned Muromachi paintings that everything in the catalogue tradition descends from — already show a koto-yokai being dragged along by the biwa-yokai.
So the string section was travelling together for three hundred years before Sekien formally seated them in 1784, when he drew the koto, the lute, and the shamisen as a set.
The instruments have always been in the parade. He just gave them a section.
Which makes the music wing's argument
Put this beside the tradition's other great music story and something clicks.
The blind lute-priest Hōichi is summoned night after night by the dead, who want to hear the old war epic performed properly, and who weep at their own defeat.
And here, the instruments themselves resent the new tunings and want the old style back.
The dead demand the old repertoire. The objects resent the reform.
Japanese musical folklore is conservative all the way down — every supernatural party in it is on the side of the older music.
Which gives the site an idea it would be a shame not to take: Tsukushi-goto still exists, barely, in recordings. Playing the grievance itself — the actual sound the yokai is complaining about the loss of — would be the most erudite thing on the whole site.
Field guide
At a glance
- Behavior
- A broken koto sprouts eyes and a mouth, snapped strings hanging like unbound hair, risen "to make its resentment known."
- Powers
- The tradition's most specific grievance: since the great reformer's new tunings, the old Tsukushi-goto style survives in name only — the yokai is a music-history footnote, animated.
- Weaknesses
- Presumably, someone playing the old repertoire.
- Oddities
- Not a neglected object but a neglected repertoire — and the Muromachi scrolls already show a koto-yokai dragged along by the biwa, marching three centuries before Sekien seated the trio.
- With Hōichi's dead demanding the old epics, proof the tradition's music is conservative all the way down.
Overview
A broken koto sprouts eyes and a mouth, its snapped strings hanging like unbound hair. Sekien's caption (1784) gives it the tradition's most specific grievance: since the blind master Yatsuhashi Kengyō reformed koto music, the old Tsukushi-goto style survives "in name only," its actual sound known to almost no one — so the instrument took this form "to make its resentment known" [ja-kotofurunushi], per Inada/Tanaka 1992. Not a neglected object: a neglected repertoire. The yokai is a music-history footnote, risen.
The record
- The Kenkō file reaches six: Sekien also touches Tsurezuregusa essay 16 ("what one always wants to hear: the biwa and the wagon") [ja-kotofurunushi] — Kenkō now supplies warnings, gripes, lists, jokes, gossip, and playlists to the catalog tradition.
- The emaki model: the Muromachi Hyakki Yagyō Emaki shows a koto-yokai being dragged along by the biwa-yokai [ja-kotofurunushi] — the string section marching together for three centuries before Sekien seated them; with biwa-bokuboku and shamichōrō the trio is drafted (shamisen elder pending its own page).
- The Hōichi resonance completes the music wing: the dead demand the old epics; the instruments resent the new tunings — the tradition's music is conservative all the way down. The music-wing page has its thesis.
Two-track labeling
The image
Citations
The record
- [ja-kotofurunushi]「琴古主」ja.wikipedia raw (retrieved 2026-07-25), citing Inada/Tanaka (1992). Tier C carrying Tier B.modern reference Japanese Wikipedia's article on this subject, as retrieved in 2026 — often carries regional detail the English article lacks.All-source record
- [sekien-1784]per 02-HISTORICAL-CATALOGS.md.Edo, 1784 Sekien's fourth and final catalog (Gazu Hyakki Tsurezure Bukuro) — the tsukumogami volume: household objects come alive.All-source record
Where the evidence thins
Open questions
- Yatsuhashi Kengyō's reform history (the "Sakura Sakura" lineage).
- Tsukushi-goto recordings for the audio feature.
- The music-wing page ("conservative all the way down").