Tamba is a small, mountainous, thickly-wooded province lying to the north-west of the late capital city of Japan. Long after the removal of the Mikado's ‘Kiyô’ or court from Nara, at the close of the eighth century, to the site of the ‘City of Perfect Peace,’ afterwards Kiyôto, Miyako, and lastly Saikiyô, the hills and forests of this wild region were probably infested by remnants of the aboriginal ‘yebisu,’ at whose expense the Japanese state had slowly extended its scanty territory. It was, probably, not always under the leadership of aboriginal chieftains that bands of these autochthones, commonly described by Japanese writers as horrid, hairy, cannibal monsters, harried the lower country. They were often, no doubt, cajoled into serving the purposes of revenge or plunder of Japanese rebels or outlaws, the wickedness of whose frequent defiance of the divine authority of the Mikado is dwelt upon with pious horror by the early annalists. Of some such ‘strong thief’ dexterously availing himself of aboriginal aid, we have perhaps a memory in the gruesome legend recounted in the following pages. The tale is a favourite one with the makers of makimono, and in a set of six of these illuminated rolls in my possession is told in a manner that well exemplifies the literary style affected in such recitals. Of Oriental literature dramatic power is not usually a characteristic, and we have here no exception to the rule.