Konjaku Monogatarishū (今昔物語集, lit. Anthology of Tales from the Past) is a Japanese collection of over one thousand tales written during the late Heian period (794-1185). The entire collection was originally contained in 31 volumes, of which only 28 remain today. The volumes cover various tales from India, China and Japan.
The work is also commonly known by the name "Konjaku Monogatari"; since it is an anthology rather than a single tale, however, the longer title is more accurate.
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The tales contained in the work are divided according to the region in which the tales take place. The first 5 volumes contain tales from India, the next five tales from China and the remainder tales from Japan. The subject-matter is drawn from Buddhism and secular folklore.
All of the tales in the collection start with the phrase Now long ago (今は昔 ima wa mukashi). The Chinese-style pronunciation of this phrase is Kon-jaku, and it is from this that the collection is named.
The Buddhist tales cover a wide range of topics, both historical tales about the development, transmission, and spread of Buddhism, and dogmatic tales which emphasize karmic retribution.
The folkloric tales mostly depict encounters between human beings and the supernatural. The typical characters are drawn from Japanese society of the time — nobility, warriors, monks, scholars, doctors, peasant farmers, fishermen, merchants, prostitutes, bandits, beggars. Their supernatural counterparts are oni and tengu.
The work is anonymous. Several theories of authorship have been put forward: one argues that the compiler was Minamoto no Takakuni, author of Uji Dainagon Monogatari, another suggests the Buddhist monk Tobane Sōjō, a third proposes a Buddhist monk living somewhere in the vicinity of Kyoto or Nara during the late Heian period. So far no substantive evidence has emerged to decide the question, and no general consensus has formed.
The date of the work is also uncertain. From the events depicted in some of the tales it seems likely that it was written down at some point during the early half of the 12th century, after the year 1120.
The oldest extant copy of the Konjaku Monogatarishū is the Suzuka Manuscript (鈴鹿家旧蔵本). Designated as a National Treasure in 1996, it was assembled by a Shinto priest named Tsuretane Suzuka in the Nara period. The manuscript was then brought to Kyoto University by a descendant who was a librarian at the university for donation and archiving. The manuscript has been scanned and made available in digital format on the internet.
In this work, specific human traits and characteristics such as the ability to think, feel, and speak in a human method of cognition are assigned to various types of animals.
By assigning human traits to the animals, and through the utilization of these anthropomorphic animals, the authorship was more effectively able to communicate the various motifs, which impart a variety of moral teachings. To be able to implement such a paradigm, the authorship would have utilized pre-conceived common traits which were attributable to specific animals. The animals and their respective traits would have been common and implicit knowledge in ancient Japan, and therefore known ubiquitously. The types of tales in Konjaku which include the use of anthropomorphic animals can be broadly classified into categories, in which a particular moral is accentuated.
Many of the tales which appear in the Konjaku are also found in other collections, such as ghost story collections; having passed into the common consciousness, they have been retold many times over the succeeding centuries. Modern writers too have adapted tales from the Konjaku Monogatarishū: a famous example is Akutagawa Ryūnosuke's In a Grove (well known in the West from Kurosawa's film Rashomon). Other authors who have written stories based on tales from the Konjaku include Jun'ichirō Tanizaki and Hori Tatsuo.
A cryptic line in Akutagawa's classic Rashōmon says「旧記の記者の語を借りれば、『頭身の毛も太る』ように感じたのである。」(lit. To borrow a phrase from the writers of the chronicles of old, he felt as if 'even the hairs on his head and body had grown thick'.) This is a reference to a line from the Konjaku Monogatarishū; figuratively the phrase means He was scared, he felt as if his hair was standing on end.
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