page_title: Shippeitaro
section_title: Old printed book
hierarchical_section_title: Shippeitaro / Variants / Old printed book
caption_attribution_description: English: Close-up detail of Zoho-shippeitaro18-50%.jpg, showing Shippeitaro destroying the wolves.
context_page_description: Shippeitaro or Shippei Taro is the name of a helper dog in the Japanese fairy tale by the same name.
  Translations include "Schippeitaro" in Andrew Lang's Violet Fairy Book, taken from a German copy, and Mrs. James's "Schippeitaro", which share the same plotline: The mountain spirit and its minions demand a yearly human sacrifice of a maiden from the local village. A young warrior overhears the spirits hinting that their would-be bane was "Shippeitaro", which turns out to be a dog. This dog is substituted for the maiden to be place inside the sacrificial container, and when the spirits arrive, the warrior and dog attack the cats and vanquish them.
  The evil spirits appear as monkeys in most instances of the tale, as in the version of "Shippei Taro" given in Keigo Seki's anthology. In fact, this folktale is classified as "Destroying the Monkey Demon" tale type by Japanese folklorists.
  In variants, the dog may have Suppeitarō, Suppetarō or a variety of other names, for example, "Hayatarō of Kōzenji temple in Shinano". The dog may not be given any name at all.
context_section_description: There is also a kibyōshi type printed book from the Edo Period, the Zōho Shippeitarō (1796) meaning the "expanded version" that was written by Nansenshō Somahito (南杣笑そまひと) with illustrations by ukiyo-e artist Toyokuni. This book illustrates spirits of the monkey, fox, kappa, tanuki (raccoon dog), hare, and wolf kind devouring the human sacrifice, and in the culminating scene depicts Shippeitarō defeating wolves.
caption: Shippeitaro breaks out of his box and destroys the wolves.
   —from Zōho Shippeitarō (1796), printed from a drawing by Toyokuni.
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