Shōjōji no Tanuki Bayashi

証城寺の狸囃子

証城寺の狸囃子は下記のアルバムに収録されています

	アルバム	アーティスト
	Collection of Shakuhachi Solos by Muraoka Minoru	尺八 : 村岡実
	Music of Japan	歌 : Strings Emanon
An orchestration from a children’s song. Tanuki is a kind of a badger inhabiting east Asia and Japan. There are in Japan many folk-stories about tanuki: it is believed that it can take various forms, such as a man, a woman and any other thing, and that it often bewitch men. A tale "Mujina" in the famous "Kwaidan" or a ghost story by Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) is based upon one of these folk-stories about tanuki (Mujina is another name for tanuki.) Hearn's tale is a ghastly one. but, generally speaking, most folk-stories about tanuki have some comical elements. The present children’s song deals with one of such comical tales. Tanuki is also believed to play drum music by drumming its belly. Especially, a story told at a temple named Shojoji says that at moonlight nights a number of tanuki appear in the temple garden and, forming a tanuki-percussion-band, so to speak, play their drum music competing with the temple priest who chants a service percussing a mokugyo or a wood- block. The original song even is very rhythmic, and the rhythmic and percussive side is still more emphasized in the orchestration recorded here. The same song was once taken up by Eartha Kitt and was arranged into a jazz piece.