>>49143195Origin: The hakutaku, like many other holy beasts, comes from Chinese legends. In China, it is known as the bai ze.
Legends: One of the most famous accounts of a hakutaku comes from the legendary Yellow Emperor (2697–2597 BCE) of China. The emperor was performing an imperial tour of his lands, and in the east near the sea, he climbed a mountain and encountered a hakutaku. The two spoke, and the hakutaku told the emperor that in all of creation there were 11,520 different kinds of yokai. The emperor had his subordinates record everything the hakutaku said, and it was preserved in a volume known as the Hakutaku-zu. This volume recorded each kind of yokai, along with what kind of evils they do, or disasters they bring, as well as how to deal with them — a sort of demonic disaster manual. Unfortunately the Hakutaku-zu was lost long, long ago, and no surviving copies exist.
A legend from Toyama prefecture tells of a Japanese sighting of a hakutaku. It appeared on Mount Tateyama, one of the tallest and holiest mountains in Japan. This creature, called a kutabe in this legend, warned of a deadly plague that would soon sweep through the lands. It told the villagers how to create magical talismans that would protect them from the plague, and they were saved. Since then, the hakutaku has been revered as a symbol of medicine.
