Yikes! Another late yokai! It really seems like there are not enough hours in a day to get every thing done!

Today’s yokai is a rare and special one. I’ve mentioned a few times before how most yokai stories are very short—sometimes merely one or two sentences only! Well, today’s yokai is not one of those. Today, I want to show you one of the rare yokai that actually has a decent-length story attached to it.

It’s actually rather a simple yokai, so there’s not much backstory to tell you about it here. It’s a fun story, though, so I hope you like it! Click to read:

Kurote / 黒手 / くろて

I love this yokai.

When I first read about iyaya, I laughed so hard. All I could think of was the Seinfeld episode about the “two-face” woman who looks attractive in bright light, but when the lighting changes just a bit, she suddenly looks hideous. Of course, Jerry dumps her.

This yokai really makes me feel like I can connect to the people living in Edo-period Japan. I mean, isn’t this an experience we all have had? Someone you think is really attractive turns out to be the exact opposite? Call it two-face, or beer goggles, or iyaya; it seems to be something that transcends time and space. We usually think of people living hundreds of years ago as really different than us, but this yokai proves that they really do have the same silly sense of humor as we do, and the same experiences. It really makes a human connection across a vast distance in time.

The other part that just splits my sides is the creatures name: “iyaya!” If you’ve heard Japanese people say this word, you know exactly the tone of voice it should be said in. It’s the exact “nooo noooo!!” sound that would race through your mind as soon as you approached that two-faced person and realized what they really look like. It’s the exact corollary to Bryan Cranston’s “tsk!” in the clip above.

Maybe I am a yokai nerd, but this one just gets me on so many levels!

Iyaya / 否哉 / いやや

Well it was rainy all day today, so clearly yesterday’s amefuri kozou did the trick!

Today we’ll look at one of everybody’s favorite yokai genre: tsukumogami.

For the uninitiated, tsukumogami are a class of yokai made up of tools, clothes, and other man-made items that have been discarded or fallen out of use. They grow resentful of having been put aside after years of faithful work, and that resent turns into a powerful grudge which animates the item and turns it into a yokai.

The name tsukumogami is a bit of a mystery. It means “99-year spirit.” The 99 years is symbolic of extreme old age, which is essentially what causes these yokai to form. However, it is also one year shy of 100 years, which is even more significant. So the fact that it reached only 99 years instead of 100 is a metaphor for the fact that these items were discarded before they reached their full potential. Supposedly, one of these objects would have become a splendid kami after 100 years; but having their life finished prematurely at 99 turns them into a twisted mockery of the divine spirit that they almost became.

Furthermore—and this gets a little bit into linguistics here—the kanji for one hundred is 百. If you remove one from one hundred, you get nintey-nine. If you remove the kanji for one (一) from the kanji for one hundred (百), you get the kanji for white (白). The kami in tsukumogami means spirit, but the word kami can also mean hair. So, one hundred minus one gives you either ninety-nine or white, and kami gives you either spirit or hair. You end up with either “ninety-nine year spirit,” or “white hair”—another symbol of old age. It’s a bit of a pun, really!

Anyway, here is today’s tsukumogami:

Don’t forget, you can learn all about yokai from my book, The Night Parade of One Hundred Demons. The second volume, The Hour of Meeting Evil Spirits, will be released this winter!

It seems like someone forgot to hang their teruteru bōzu this morning, because the weather forecast calls for rain!

Just like we learned yesterday that some yokai can cause nice, sunny weather, some yokai can also bring about rain. This is one of them.

This yokai is somewhat cute in a grotesque sort of manner. He is also a bit pathetic. This has caused him to be a very popular yokai throughout history. He is often conflated or confused with a similar-looking yokai called tōfu kozō, who is also a well-loved, pathetic little child yokai.

These two yokai were often portrayed as servant yokai who get beat up or made fun of by bigger, scarier yokai. They became super popular in the Edo period, when the first comics began to be published. The silly antics of these little kozō yokai helped propel both comics and yokai into mass popularity.

They are still popular yokai today, as evidenced by their appearance in recent animated movies, and their frequent inclusion among other yokai related works. Even though these little guys summon bad weather, somehow, everyone seems to love them!

Amefuri kozō / 雨降小僧 / あめふりこぞう

With Halloween fast approaching, one common thing you can see all over are tissue-paper ghosts.

These cute flying ghosts are a staple of American elementary schools, and if you are lucky you might even find a lollipop inside one of them on Halloween.

I’ve been seeing these ghosts hanging from windows and doors all around town. In Japan, though, one thing I thought was interesting is that I saw these ghosts all over the place too, only not during Halloween season!

It turns out, in Japan, these are also a popular kid’s craft. Only, instead of flying ghosts, they are a charm meant to bring out good weather, called teruteru bōzu. Kids hang them in their windows and pray to them for nice, sunny days.

It turns out that the teruteru bōzu has yokai origins! It actually originates in a yokai called hiyori bōzu. Click to read more:

Hiyoribou / 日和坊 / ひよりぼう

Today’s yokai is a rare one. This isn’t connected with Edo period ghost stories or Heian era superstitions. This—or these—yokai are actually connected to an obscure, esoteric folk religion that used to be popular in Japan. The religion is called Kōshin, and is a mixture of Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Shintoism, and other folk beliefs. It contains a lot of mysticism from Chinese philosophy, and is primarily based on the stems-and-branches calendar (aka the sexagenary cycle). This ancient calendar system revolved around groups of 60 days which were named by combining the Chinese elements, yin and yang, and the Chinese zodiac. It looks something like this:

In this ancient mysticism, everything is inter-related. Each one of those kanji you see above corresponds to a zodiacal animal, yin or yang, a season, a month, a cardinal direction, an element, and an hour. This, it is possible to say something like “the direction of the rat” or “the hour of the ox” (which, incidentally, plays an important role in my upcoming book!

This base-60 calendar system was calculated by cycling the 10 “celestial stems” with the 12 “earthly branches.” With each passing segment, both digits would rotate one character, giving a total of 60 different combinations. Depending on the pair of kanji you get, you would be able to divine certain things about the universe.

It just so happens that Kōshin is one of these combinations: 庚申. Kōshin is similar in most respects to Buddhism, but it has a very important aspect related to this calendar. Every kōshin night, the two kanji on the calendar date would be 庚 and 申. This would take place every 60 days. On that night something very important to the Kōshin faith would take place: three spiritual worms that live inside your body would sneak out while you slept and visit the Emperor of Heaven, where they would report all of your bad deeds to him. Depending on how bad you were, your lifespan would then be shorted by an appropriate amount.

The sanshi are not the only yokai related to Kōshin . I did one other yokai based on this superstition before, and you can see him at yokai.com/shoukera. For the full story on the sanshi, click below:

Sanshi / 三尸 / さんし

Today’s yokai is a silly one to be sure. Tales about ōkubi began popping up in the Edo period. They were sort of a contemporary urban legend (as many yokai were). The story would be that a friend of a friend knew somebody who discovered a giant head in his barn or warehouse, and when he came back with other people to show them, the head was gone. Or other silly stories like that.

In fact, most yokai stories are very much like that. While a few yokai have long, detailed story, the majority of them really amount to little more than “somebody in this town saw something really strange! It was a __________!” And then that’s the end of it.

While at first glance, that might seem kind of boring. However, to me they are a delight to read. The briefness of them leaves so much up to the imagination, and even gives them an feeling of being slightly more believable than if the story were overly detailed. They sound more like unexplainable accounts as opposed to novels or short stories design to scare. It especially works well for the sillier yokai like the one below.

If you want a great example of what I mean, you might want to read The Legends of Tono, which is one of the most famous books of Japanese folk tales (including ones about yokai). Some of the “legends” in the book are no more than a couple of sentences in length. They end abruptly but somehow they leave you feeling enchanted, rather than cheated.  A number of versions are available on Amazon.

Click to view the entry on yokai.com!

Ookubi / 大首 / おおくび