Amaya Storm

In Japanese folklore, many stories include spirits, supernatural creatures, and demons called yokai. And of all the yokai, the tengu is the one that might seem most familiar to a modern Westerner. At first glance, it's a lot like a superhero: the ability to fly, great physical strength, magical powers, and secret martial arts skills. But the tengu is no comic book creation - it has a long history and deep connections to Japanese culture and religion.

天狗（てんぐ）
tengu, long-nosed goblin

Like the kitsune and tanuki, the tengu started out as an animal, but its evolution has taken more twists and turns. And like the kitsune’s connection to Shinto, it has a close relationship to another Japanese religion, Buddhism. The relationship is not a happy one, though. Tengu are sworn enemies of the Buddhist faith, and much of their history has been spent trying to lure people off the road to enlightenment. Tengu are more like minor gods than other trickster yokai - and they expect you to treat them as such.

Types of Tengu

Though you may be familiar with the red-faced long-nosed tengu, it may surprise you to learn there are two different types. And the one that came first is considered lesser than the newer yokai.

1. Daitengu

The Great Tengu or daitengu 大天狗 is an imposing semi-human whose most prominent feature is a long nose and large wings. You've probably seen pictures of the bright red, long-nosed mask that represents the face of the daitengu. When we say "tengu" nowadays, this is the one we mean. They live in deep mountain forests, and particular mountains are said to be the homes of particular, named daitengu. Some of their powers, like possession, are shared with other yokai, but their special skills include control of wind, swordsmanship, and flight. Daitengu often abduct humans, sometimes to torment them, but other times to teach them magic. Humans may even seek out daitengu to learn their secrets, but as we’ll see later, they often regret it.

2. Kotengu

The other type is called kotengu 小天狗 (lesser tengu) or karasutengu 烏天狗 karasutengu. Karasu means crow, but these tengu may also take the form of birds of prey, especially the black kite (tobi 鳶). They also wear monk's robes, but kotengu are much more animal-like both in their appearance and their behavior. While daitengu contemplate disrupting human society and interfering with religion, the kotengu are smaller scale. The main thing you have to worry about is that they’ll eat you. In some folktales, they’re depicted as easy to fool, something you don’t want to try with a daitengu.

Nowadays the kotengu are sometimes considered servants of the daitengu, but that’s not how it started out. The kotengu is actually the old-school version of the tengu. In other words, originally the bird-like tengu was the only type there was. But as the goblin's significance changed and developed, they became more human, with the long nose becoming a humanized beak.

But even as the new human-like tengu emerged, the old bird-like image stuck around. So we ended up with two kinds of tengu in the modern era. Even though the kotengu is the original, it’s now secondary. The most interesting stories are about the powerful, intelligent, dangerous, proud, human-like daitengu.

Early tengu stories share a lot of features with other yokai tales. In the 9th and 10th centuries, they are trickster mountain demons, doing regular yokai things: luring people into the woods with the sound of music, throwing pebbles at houses, and appearing as will-o-the-wisp. Tengu possessed illiterate people, which became obvious when they suddenly gained the ability to write kanji. They were also big on causing fires. As one writer puts it, "Everything strange and mysterious is attributed to them," which is pretty much your basic definition of yokai.

That isn't exactly the powerful demon we know today. In the earliest tales, tengu were easy to defeat. In one story that showcases their shapeshifting powers, a Buddha appears in a tree surrounded by a bright light and a rain of flowers. A clever minister suspects the trick, sits down, and stares at it for an hour. The tengu's power withers and it turns into a kestrel and falls out of the tree with its wings broken. Not too difficult. If staring at something for an hour were a martial art, who wouldn’t have a black belt?

Disclaimer: I do not own any of this information. Its copied from Tofugo.com.