The month is just about halfway done, and I wanted to save some of the more Halloween-ish yokai for a date closer to Halloween… well I think that time has come. Today’s yokai is another one of my favorites: Yuki-onna, the snow woman. There are a few legends surround her, but the most famous one, as told by Lafcadio Hearn (and shamelessly copied from Wikipedia), goes like this:

A long time ago, there lived two woodcutters, Minokichi and Mosaku. Minokichi was young and Mosaku was very old.

One winter day, they could not come back home because of a snowstorm. They found a hut in the mountain and decided to sleep there. On this particular evening, Minokichi woke up and found a beautiful lady with white clothes. She breathed on old Mosaku and he was frozen to death.

She then approached Minokichi to breathe on him, but stared at him for a while, and said, “I thought I was going to kill you, the same as that old man, but I will not, because you are young and beautiful. You must not tell anyone about this incident. If you tell anyone about me, I will kill you.”

Several years later, Minokichi met a beautiful young lady, named Oyuki (yuki = “snow”) and married her. She was a good wife. Minokichi and Oyuki had several children and lived happily for many years. Mysteriously, she did not age.

One night, after the children were asleep, Minokichi said to Oyuki: “Whenever I see you, I am reminded of a mysterious incident that happened to me. When I was young, I met a beautiful young lady like you. I do not know whether it was dream or she was a Yuki-onna…”

After finishing his story, Oyuki suddenly stood up, and said “That woman you met was me! I told you that I would kill you if you ever told anyone about that incident. However, I can’t kill you because of our children. Take care of our children… ” Then she melted and disappeared. No one saw her again.

There are a few other versions of the story, but I like that one best, partially because it’s the first one I heard — or actually saw, on a Japanese ghost stories DVD. She is another very popular yokai in Japanese pop culture, appearing in many comic books, games, and so on.

Yuki-onna

The Tanuki is another very special yokai, like the Kitsune I painted earlier this week. It’s importance in Japan can’t really be overstated. This is another creature that, if you visit here, you will see hundreds and hundreds of, wherever you go. Many houses and shops, especially in rural areas, have tanuki statues at their doorsteps. They’re a common character on children’s shows, and in advertisements.

Like kitsune, tanuki are extremely magical creatures. They’re powerful sorcerers, and one of their most famous powers is shapechanging. Probably the most notable power is actually located in — get ready for this — their scrotums. Tanuki have incredibly magical scrotums and testicles, and virtually every likeness of tanuki in Japan comes with a very exaggerated pair of balls. Go ahead, do an image search if you don’t believe me.

Their scrotums really are amazing though. Tanuki can do almost anything with them — parachute, hunt, make music, fight… you name it. In fact, even ancient paintings of tanuki by famous artists like Hokusai depict them doing incredible things with them. In one painting, a tanuki enlarges his scrotum and uses it as a sumo stage, while dozens of tanuki sit on it and watch the competition. In another story, a tanuki decides to masquerade as a shopkeeper to trick humans, and his scrotum actually becomes the entire store — people enter it through a door, talk to the tanuki who is disguised as a shopkeeper (behind the counter, so they can’t see he’s actually connected to a room) and buy illusionary wares made from — you guessed it — scrotum. In that story, the purchaser accidentally dropped his lit cigarette onto the floor, which burned the tanuki and broke the spell, running him out of town. Talk about caveat emptor!

Anyway, here is my tanuki, playing at a festival:

Tanuki

(And if you’re wondering about the lack of testicles in my picture, look again. That’s not a drum he’s playing…)

Today’s yokai is another request, and it’s perfect for a Halloween feel. Jubokko is a tree which grows in the remains of a battlefield where many people died. The seed feeds on the blood of the dead which has soaked into the soil, and over time the tree develops a taste for blood. The vampiric tree looks like a normal, healthy tree, except that when people get close enough to it, the tree snatches them up and sucks away all of their blood. Scary!

Jubokko

Jubokko is actually a lesser-known yokai. According to my sources (admittedly I’m mostly using Wikipedia and The Obakemono Project), there’s actually no record of this yokai in old folklore or literature — it was possibly invented by the famous yokai comic writer, Shigeru Mizuki. If you’re interested in yokai, I strongly recommend you search for some of Mizuki’s artwork. He is author of the series GeGeGe no Kitaro, and it’s pretty much THE source from which most people know about yokai today. There’s also a really fun movie based on his work (and directed by the awesome Takashi Miike!) called The Great Yokai War. But you don’t have to take my word for it! *cue Reading Raindow music*

Today’s yokai is a little bit late — but it’s still Monday in the Americas, so I’m not too late! Actually, Monday was very busy over here. I went to a hoji — a Japanese memorial service — for Hitomi’s 50-years-gone grandfather. It’s slightly different from a funeral, but it’s related. A monk came to her aunt’s house, did a service, we chanted for a very long time, everyone nodding off now and then, and then finished with a huge, expensive meal. Being the foreigner, I of course received tons of free love, which comes in the forms of compliments like, “Wow, you don’t turn red at all! You’re so strong! Have some more alcohol!” and “Do you like Japanese wine? Really??? You don’t look drunk, let me pour you some wine!” and so on. I digress.

Today’s yokai is a bit on that topic. This is Umibozu. Actually, this is another request, so it’s entirely coincidental to the fact that I met a monk at the hoji. But anyway, it’s name means “sea monk,” and it is named for it’s large, baldish head. It also has serpentine limbs, which makes it quite Cthulhu-esque and thus doubly appealing to me. This yokai is supposed to appear to shipwreck victims and fishermen and sink the ship of anyone who talks to it. It will demand a barrel or something similar, and then use the barrel to fill the ship with water and drown everyone aboard. (How badass is that!) It’s said the only way to escape it is by giving it a bottomless barrel… but I don’t see how that could stop it.

Umibozu are said to be the spirits of drowned priests, and perhaps they look after the spirits of those who have nobody to care for their graves (as these spirits are said to take refuge out at sea). Since Fukui has a famous legend of an evil priest named Tojimbo who was tossed out to sea by angry villagers, I decided to paint the cliffs of Tojimbo in the background.

Umibozu

By request, today’s yokai is Kamikiri, a slightly less-known yokai than some of the recent ones I’ve painted. While there’s little that’s actually be written about Kamikiri, it’s said that it likes to sneak into houses during the night and cut peoples’ hair while they sleep — especially the hair of young women. Others say that the kamikiri appears just before a man is about to unknowingly marry a ghost, yokai, or spirit in disguise as a human. He cuts the bride’s hair to prevent such a perversion of nature. (Aside from being less attractive, a woman with no hair would look like a nun — certainly a groom might think twice if the woman he was arranged to marry appeared to be a nun.) So, good or bad yokai? Hard to say… There are some really good stories about folks who marry supernatural creatures over here.

Kamikiri

The October air has been so wonderful this week, especially out here in the countryside. Nighttime air is sweet and cool and fresh, and the October harvest moon — important in Chinese and Japanese culture — was absolutely beautiful last weekend. These nights are the reason October is my favorite month, and why I’m so looking forward to Halloween. Today’s yokai captures, I hope, that feeling of a ghostly October night.

This is Hitotsume-kozo, a kind of ghostly cyclops. They appear as roughly 10-year old boys and resemble bald Buddhist priests. These yokai are fairly harmless, enjoying running around and spooking humans, or yelling at them to be quiet. However, these monsters are generally said to be bad omens, so encounters with them are to be avoided. In that respect, you should hang a basket above your doorway. Apparently these repel hitotsume-kozo, as the many holes in the basket represent many eyes, and the hitotsume-kozo will run away in jealousy and shame at having only one eye.

Hitotsume-kozo

Not all yokai are born that way — some are ordinary humans transformed into yokai through some magic or other. Today’s yokai is one such cursed human: Rokurokubi. Her name means “pulley neck” and it comes from the fact that her neck is infinitely stretchable, allowing her head to fly about from her body. It’s said this ability only happens at night, and in fact, some rokurokubi are totally unaware of this ability, and their head roams around while they sleep, occasionally licking up lamp oil, or drinking other peoples’ blood, even (rarely) eating humans. Upon waking up, rokurokubi are said to remember strange dreams about what their heads went about doing in the night. This is another one of my favorite yokai. Enjoy!

Rokurokubi