the.com/tengu
a long-nosed mountain demon who somehow became Japan's patron saint of swordsmanship.
means A tengu is a supernatural creature from Japanese folklore, typically depicted with a long nose or a bird's beak, dwelling in the mountains and associated with both mischief and martial mastery.
from The name is written with characters meaning 'heavenly dog,' borrowed from the Chinese tiāngǒu, a celestial canine-comet of disaster. Oddly, when the idea crossed to Japan it shed the dog and grew feathers: early tengu were bird-like beings, kin to the kite and the crow, before later art gave them the famous red face and long nose. So the written name and the creature it now describes drifted apart — a heavenly dog that turned into a winged mountain spirit.
- origin
- started as a dog-faced meteor in Chinese legend
- the nose
- red and absurdly long, symbolizing arrogance
- sword master
- legend says it taught samurai Minamoto Yoshitsune to fight
- two types
- bird-beaked karasu and humanlike daitengu
- festival faces
- its mask still haunts Japanese parades today
tengu of kurama — japanese folklore creature from mount kurama near kyoto, said to have abducted the young warrior minamoto no yoshitsune in the 12th century
daitengu of ikuchi — a legendary tengu said to haunt the ikuchi strait in hiroshima prefecture, japan, causing whirlpools and maritime disasters
tengu mask noh theater — red-faced carved wooden masks with long noses used in japanese noh theater since the 14th century to represent tengu characters