Tonight’s story features a yokai called a mōryō. I really like these guys, mostly because they have a creepy-cute, bunny-like appearance. Here is how Toriyama Sekien depicts them:
Mōryō are old spirits, going back to ancient China. They are nature spirits, inhabiting rocks, trees, stream, and mountains. They feed on human corpses, and a lot of folk religious ritual was originally developed to protect corpses from being stolen and eaten by mōryō.
What I love about this story is that it implies a complex world of spirits and monsters with its own society and structures. How did this mōryō know his time had come? Do they have some kind of yokai radio or text messages? Do they just know? Does someone tell them? What happens if they fail in their duty? There are so many questions raised that it ignites my imagination. Naturally, there are no answers given — so we are all invited to speculate on what they might be.
I also love that this mōryō has the courtesy to tell his employer of his duty, and the employer has the courtesy to grant him his leave. It’s all so formal and polite, and it just tickles me.
The Demon Servant
There was a certain man named Shibata who served as an accountant. Several years ago he was sent to Mino Province on official construction business, and before he departed he hired a manservant to accompany him. The manservant attended to him faithfully.
One night, after Shibata had retired for the night at an inn, at around midnight, while he was half-dreaming and half-awake, the manservant came to Shibata’s bedside and said:
“I am not a human. I am something called a mōryō. Something unavoidable has come up, and I must ask to take my leave.”
Shibata replied, “If it is something unavoidable, then I must grant you leave. But I would like to hear the reason.”
The manservant said, “I have a duty to steal the corpses of the deceased in turn. Now, my turn has come up, and I must steal the corpse of a certain peasant’s mother about one ri from this village.”
After saying this, the servant disappeared without a trace.
“What a silly dream,” thought Shibata, and he put it out of his mind.
When he woke the next morning, the manservant was missing. He asked around about the peasant’s mother from the village one ri away, and a person from that area told him, “We held her funeral today, but while on the road a dark cloud seemed to descend upon us, and then the corpse vanished from inside of the coffin!”
Upon hearing this, Shibata was utterly astonished.
