The Master of Kurama

Japanese tradition sends the boy Ushiwaka-maru — later Minamoto no Yoshitsune, the general the country has never stopped telling stories about — up Mount Kurama as a temple page, and has him slip out at night to be taught swordsmanship by the tengu who lives there. In the noh play Kurama tengu the teacher is Sōjōbō, chief of the mountain's tengu, and the lesson is given out of something like affection for a lonely child. A figure invented to humiliate proud men ends up as the teacher of one of the most celebrated fighters in the tradition.