Japanese mythology includes a vast number of gods, goddesses, and spirits. Most of the stories concern the creation of the world, the foundation of the islands of Japan, and the activities of deities, humans, animals, spirits, and magical creatures...
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Shuten-dōji (酒呑童子, also sometimes called 酒顛童子, 酒天童子, or 朱点童子) is a mythical oni or demon leader of Japan, who according to legend was killed by the hero Minamoto Raikō. Although decapitated, the demon's detached head still took a bite at the hero, who avoided death by wearing multiple helmets stacked on his head.
Shuten-dōji had his lair at Mt. Ōe (大江山) northwest of the city of Kyoto, or Mt. Ibuki, depending on the version. It has also been theorized that the original mountain was Mt. Ōe (大枝山) on the south edge of the city of Kyoto.
Texts
The oldest surviving text of the legend is recorded in the 14th century Ōeyama Ekotoba (大江山絵詞 "Tale of Mount Ōe in Pictures and Words"), a picture scroll held by the Itsuō Art Museum. It was later incorporated into the corpus of Otogi-zōshi ("Companion tales"), and became widely read in the woodblock-printed versions of them called the Otogi Bunko(Companion Library), especially Shibukawa Seiemon editions (ca. 1720). There is also a set of texts which localizes the Shuten-dōji's fortress at Mt. Ibuki. The Mt. Ibuki group texts reveal the villain's honji (avatar identity) as "the demon king of the Sixth Heaven" (Dairokuten maō (ja)), whereas the Mt. Ōe-localized group texts generally do not, with the exception of Ōeyama Ekotoba which is oldest.
Localization
There are two different mountains named Mt. Ōe in Tanba Province. The localization is clear in the Otogi Zōshi text of the later period that Ōeyama (ja) (大江山) northwest of the Kyoto capital is meant, since it specifically mentions Senjōdake which is part of this mountain chain.
But recent scholarship assigns the original mountain to have been the Mt. Ōe (大枝山) further south (on the southern edge of Kyoto city and extending to Kameoka, Kyoto). This other Mt. Ōe also has a piece of acclivity named Oi-no-Saka (老ノ坂, "Slope of Aging").
There are in fact some comparatively recent versions that actually place the demon lair at the southerly Mt. Ōe, or portray the Senjōdake as the main and Oi-no-Saka as the secondary fortification for the demons, according to religious scholar and folklorist Takeda Chōshū (ja).
