The Road for Proud Priests

By the late Heian period the tengu has a body — the sources describe something like a kite — and a specialisation. The Konjaku Monogatarishū has them working almost entirely on the religious: showing monks false visions of the Buddha, carrying them off and dropping them somewhere remote. The Genpei Jōsuiki supplies the theology behind the joke. A proud cleric cannot go to hell, being a Buddhist, and cannot go to heaven, being proud, so a third destination was needed. Japanese tradition called it the tengu road, and it was aimed squarely at one profession.