NYUNAI SUZUME

Lore

Nyunai Suzume is a yokai whose very name describes its defining act: it slips into the central pavilion of the Imperial Palace and pecks at the rice set on the Emperor’s table. Its alternate name, Sanekata-suzume, leads straight to the legend’s source, for the yokai is believed to be the posthumous form of the court poet Fujiwara no Sanekata, who lived in the late tenth century. Renowned for his waka verse, Sanekata quarreled with the noble Fujiwara no Yukinari and was exiled from Kyoto to govern the distant province of Mutsu—a sentence that amounted to social death for a capital aristocrat. Three years later, so the story goes, Sanekata fell from his horse and died; the accident was read as divine punishment, layering retribution atop political injustice. Chronicles stress that in his final moments Sanekata still burned to return to the capital and restore his honor, so his spirit assumed the form of a sparrow, able to cover any distance and breach even the guarded palace walls.

Soon after the exile’s death, rumors began to circulate in Kyoto of an unusual sparrow that flew daily into the Emperor’s chambers and pecked at the rice on the ceremonial daiban tray—a stand used in Buddhist and Shinto rites. Rice offered to the sovereign was held sacred, so tampering with it constituted a spiritual insult to imperial authority. In this way the spirit returned and symbolically questioned the court’s power. A real natural detail lent credibility to the tale: in northeastern Japan, where Sanekata died, nests the russet sparrow (Passer rutilans). Each autumn these birds migrate south and wreak havoc on rice fields.