The Cultural Meaning of Setsuwa: Ono no Takamura’s Journey to Hell and Back

This article explores the cultural meaning of the historical transmission of setsuwa tales in Japan through an examination of the journey to the underworld of ninth-century courtier Ono no Takamura. First recorded in setsuwa anthologies compiled in the twelfth century, this tale would eventually move beyond the framework of tale anthologies during the medieval era and come to be interwoven within local oral transmissions in Kyoto, where the story continues to be told today. In this article, I consider numerous textual variants of the story of Takamura’s visit to the underworld. By highlighting the relationship between the historical transformation of the story’s content and the local religious cultures within which variants of the story were passed down, I investigate the larger cultural role played by this tale in shaping the imagination of life and death and consider what Takamura can teach us about the boundary-crossing dynamics of setsuwa and transmitted oral literature.