Mount Ichiyaいちやさん

Unlike the demoness Momiji, who was refined on the Noh and Kabuki stages, the demons of Mt. Ichiya are indigenous demons who bear the very origin of the place name. Their action is singular—to build a mountain overnight and block the arrival of the capital. The desperation of a local existence refusing to be stripped of its home is condensed into this single point. While the Momiji legend is a story of descent—'a noblewoman exiled from the capital falls into a demon'—the demons of Mt. Ichiya are depicted as entities that existed in the village from the beginning and resist the capital coming from the outside. The name of the real-life general Abe no Hirafu overlaps with the quasi-historical framework of Emperor Tenmu's capital relocation, giving the legend a strange sense of reality. The conclusion, where the demons are defeated and the name 'Kinasa' is born, is also a story of renaming the land from the perspective of the victor (the center), and the bitter aftertaste of this legend lies in the fact that the defeat of the demons itself was permanently carved as a place name. The cluster of Kyoto-derived place names remaining in Kinasa are scattered in the valley even today, serving as evidence of the victor's memory.