Kintarō (金太郎) (role )

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Biography:

"One of the most popular stories in Japanese mythology is not about the many great gods of the Shinto hierarchy, but about a superhero called Kintaro (Golden Boy), who possessed superhuman strength even as a child, and grew up to become a heroic samurai. Although Kintaro's career as a samurai may have been based on a real-life figure—the great warrior Sakata no Kintoki— he is essentially a figure of legend. Brought up in the forest, he became both a friend to the animals and a defender of the forest people against monsters when still young. Later on, in his exploits as a samurai, he protected Japan from several even deadlier foes."

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"Kintaro's greatest possession was his axe. It was both a tool for cutting down trees and a weapon that he could use to defeat the monsters of the forest."

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Kintaro's birth

"Kintoki was a warrior from Kyoto who fell in love with a beautiful young woman and married her. Soon afterwards, he became involved in a court intrigue and was banished to the forest, because of some malicious gossip that had been spread about him by certain courtiers jealous of his power. He died soon after arriving in the forest, where his wife give birth to a son. When the boy was born, his mother named him Kintaro. Even as a baby, Kintaro was prodigiously strong; by the time he was eight years old he could cut down trees as easily and as well as the most experienced of woodcutters, and he came to be valued highly by the people of the forest. Once Kintaro became accustomed to the ways of the wild, he protected his mother and the other forest dwellers from many monsters, including terrifying beasts such as the giant earth-spider."

Quotes from: Myths & Legends: An Illustrated Guide to Their Origins and Meanings by Philip Wilkinson, p. 228.

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The red Kintoki

"Kintoki's father is unknown; the yama-uba is sometimes only the foster-mother, but in most cases the real mother, who has seen a red dragon descending to her in a dream during a thunderstorm and become pregnant. She gives birth to the strong wonder-boy who shows, in his adventures centered on Mt . Ashigara , all the traits of the culture hero. In his red nakedness he measures his gigantic powers against the wild animals in wrestling matches, vanquishes them , and makes them his faithful companions . Inseparable from his masakari and sake bowl, he wanders about until he would then have been about twenty-one years old - Minamoto no Yorimitsu manages to draw him into his service. All we know further of Kintoki is that , as one of the shitennō and together with Yorimitsu he was able to subdue the demon of Ōeyama, Shutendōji notorious in the capital city of Kyōto for his robberies and murders. After Yorimitsu's death Kintoki returned to the place where he was born, where we lose track of him.

I would like, in connection with Kintoki and the treatment of the Benkei figure which is to follow, to go a little further into several points italicized in the preceding paragraph. Kintoki's red colour is not an isolated phenomenon. We have already encountered one-eyed red thunder-boys...; Ebisu is often shown with a pink or red face (Daikoku being black, the name also litterally meaning “Big black one"); other onigo and devils are usually red (or black, comp. the two demons Akamata and Kuromata...) . Kappas are very often red, monkeys have red muzzles, and N . Nevsky reports for Okinawa the akanā (on Miyako Island also akara) as boyish beings from the mountains with red faces and red hair who were very fond of rice wine, sometimes came to the beaches to get shellfish, and have a legendary connection with the moon and the elixir of life . This immediately suggests the Japanese shōjō, monkeyish child figures with red bodies and red hair, with a preference for sea beaches and a predilection for rice wine."

Quoted from: Namazu-e and Their Themes: An Interpretative Approach to Some Aspects of Japanese Folk Religion by Cornelis Ouwehand, 1964, p. 169.