Today’s yokai is a great example for the debate about what exactly is a yokai. I’ve mentioned on my blog and at talks that one of the four main categories of yokai is “phenomena.” While the vast number of yokai are creatures of some sort, there are supernatural things that are not actual creatures which still fall under the yokai umbrella. These are also called kaii, which means strange phenomena. Shinkirō is one of these.

Looking at the picture, you might guess that shinkirō is a magical clam. That’s close, but the term actually refers to the clam’s breath and not the clam itself. Although an argument could be made that the clam—with its enormous size and magical powers—is also a yokai, this specific term refers to a mirage that is blown out from the clam along with its breath.

Just like in other countries’ folklore, mirages at sea promised fantastic things to the sailors who saw them. In the case of Japanese folklore, they granted an image of a great castle at the bottom of the sea, where the dragon gods live. Wani, which was added to yokai.com last month thanks to my Patreon backers, would be an example.

An interesting little tidbit is that in Chinese, these clams are known as shen, and are actually shapeshifting dragons which take the form of clams. So they are even more connected to the dragon gods than they appear from just their breath!

Read more about shinkirō at yokai.com, or in The Hour of Meeting Evil Spirits!

I’ve said before how I love when yokai “interact” with each other—that is, when one yokai legend references another. It shows the ongoing continuity in folklore; folklore is not just created and then archived; it lives and breathes, it changes, and it builds off of itself. Tonight’s yokai is one of those. He is connected to a number of local myths around the place where he supposedly lives, but he is also strongly connected to another yokai which is featured in The Hour of Meeting Evil Spirits: eritategoromo. The little connections and interactions like this add an air of credibility and authenticity to the stories; they feel like they exist in a living, breathing canon rather than as static legends.

Sōjōbō is especially interesting because his legend continues to grow and evolve even in recent memory. In 1949 the temple to which he is strongly connected split away from Tendai Buddhism to form a new esoteric sect. In this branch of Buddhism, a holy trinity is worshiped as a central force, and part of that trinity is Mao-son, a demon king who came to earth from planet Venus 6,500,000 years ago to live at Mount Kurama. According to the priests, Sōjōbō and Mao-son are one and the same… so a tengu from Venus? I suppose it wouldn’t be the strangest story to come out of Kurama Temple, as it is also the place where reiki was invented!

Sōjōbō was selected for today by my Patreon backers. I think they picked a great one, don’t you? If you have a favorite yokai you’d like to see, consider joining my project!

As always, click below to read about Sōjōbō on yokai.com:

Sōjōbō

One of the most enjoyable parts of studying folklore is learning about the similarities and differences between different cultures. Japan is pretty well know for having wild and weird folkloric creatures, and I love pointing out how unique Japanese folklore is, but even Japan has a fair number of creatures that share a lot in common with folkloric beasts in other countries. (Yurei, yama uba, kijo, oni, and onibi being just a few of them…)

Tonight’s yokai, Ikuchi, is a particularly fun one. Sea serpents are common lore in many cultures, but what makes ikuchi so interesting to me is that it is not so violent, and more just naturally dangerous. Sea serpent legends often depict violent, raging sea creatures which rise up to tear ships apart and eat the sailors. Ikuchi, on the other hand, is a slow danger, smoothly slithering over ships without directly destroying them. The danger comes not from the creature’s temper, but from the gallons of heavy oil seeping from its body which threaten to capsize the ship.

This presents another interesting point: the problems presented by this yokai are not solved through great strength or fortitude, or through magical prowess or divine intervention. They are solved through diligence and hard work. There are no heroic warriors like in Norse sagas. They are not saved by their faith like in religious folklore. They are saved by the work ethic that Japan is so famous for. How appropriate and unique is that!

Click below to read more about ikuchi on yokai.com.

If you are enjoying A-Yokai-A-Day, remember that you can help make more yokai all year round by joining my Patreon project as a supporter. $1 per month helps me to translate and illustrate at a constant pace and expand yokai.com throughout the whole year.

One of the reasons I began this project, and pretty much the main topic which has dominated this blog over the past 7 years, is bringing yokai to the English speaking world. When I first started talking about yokai on here, there were almost no books on yokai in English except for what had been writteb by Lafcadio Hearn, and other collections of Japanese folk tales.

Today, not even a decade later, that is very different. I have published two books. A number of other talented writers have published books on yokai and yurei, including Matt Alt and Zack Davisson, and of course Michael Dylan Foster who has the academic side very well covered. When you search Amazon for yokai books, you’ll find a huge number have come out in just the last few years. I have no idea what caused it to suddenly spring forth, but a huge surge in yokai popularity has come to the English-speaking world.

Now, on the heels of the handful of folks like myself working to share yokai with the world, Yokai Watch has hit US shores. For those who haven’t heard of it, Yokai Watch is a mega franchise in the vein of Pokemon which has taken Japan by storm. It has already surged past Pokemon in popularity, and that is no small thing to say.

And now the anime has just come to the US, airing on Disney just one week ago. The video game is set to be released soon, and no doubt a tidal wave of Yokai Watch goods will flood every market. Part of the reason for Yokai Watch’s success is that, like Pokemon, they are pushing every possible market: video games, tv, toys, and so on.

Although I haven’t watched the show and am not particularly interested in the game itself, I am very excited for this because it means yokai may be about to become a household word in North America. It means that a lot of young people are going to become aware of the idea of yokai, and there will probably be a lot of new fans of Japanese folklore made from this franchise. Even though many of Yokai Watch’s yokai are not quite “authentic” in that they were made up for the franchise, they still have roots in folklore, and will still drive people to learn more about their origins.

There has been some speculation that Yokai Watch might not take off in the US, because American kids are not familiar with the concept of yokai, and some concepts, like the idea of one of the main characters being the ghost of a cat who dies in the first episode might be too difficult for American kids to handle. Personally I find that a bit patronizing and an unfair underestimation of the intelligence of kids. But only time will tell.

Even if Yokai Watch doesn’t hit it big, I hope that at least a few kids and teens will be turned on to the world of yokai and folklore from this franchise!

Anyway… today’s yokai is below! Kawa akago is a tricksy river imp who pulls people into the water. He’s quite a silly yokai, but also a dangerous one. You’ll find him in The Hour of Meeting Evil Spirits. Click here to order it from amazon, and click below to view the entry on yokai.com!

Today’s A-Yokai-A-Day is a 3-in-1.

When doing the illustrations for my books, I have often combined multiple tsukumogami into a single illustration and single page. There are a few reasons for this. The first one being that sometimes it just makes sense to combine like tsukumogami. Today’s, for example, feature three battlefield creatures. They are not necessarily related to each other, but they certainly go well together. They work better as a single illustration than as three separate ones. The same thing goes for my illustration of the musical instrument tsukumogami.

The other reason is that there is often very little written information on tsukumogami. In many cases, all that exists is a single illustration. If we are lucky, there is even a name left over. So it order to fill a page it helps to have multiple tsukumogami on one page of the book. Otherwise there would be a name and little else.

The reason so few tsukumogami have descriptions is that a lot of them were mass-created by artists in hyakki yagyou emaki scrolls. These are some of the earliest yokai illustrations, going back to the 14th century, and it is the popularity of these silly illustrated scrolls that created the yokai booms of the later centuries. In these early picture scrolls, most often all we see is a silly creature, and its interpretation is left up to the viewer. In some of the later scrolls we get names tacked on to familiar creatures. And finally, during the Edo period books, we occasionally see stories added on to these creatures.

These stories do not necessarily have any connection to real legends. Quite often, they are the result of creative storytelling on the part of Toriyama Sekien in order to sell more books. He might take an illustration from an older yokai scroll and a famous character from history and just cobble together a story to connect the two. It worked, because he was very successful, and the stories stuck.

Personally, I love his additions, even if they are purely made up and have no connection to actual myths. After all, all myths have to be made up by somebody at some point, so why not him? And I think everybody loves looking at tsukumogami, so adding a little backstory to them only makes them more interesting.

To view their entries on yokai.com, click here: Furuutsubo, Kurayarou, or Abumiguchi
You can view all three of them in my book, The Hour of Meeting Evil Spirits.

Namahage is a really well-known yokai, famous across Japan—which is strange when you consider that it is only a local yokai from the small, northern prefecture of Akita. For a prefecture that has barely over 1 million people, it has managed to leave its mark on the national consciousness of Japan.

Part of the reason namahage are so well known is because of the namahage festival which is televised nationally. Although many prefectures have yokai that behave similarly to namahage, Akita’s own yokai manages to have the most exciting way of celebrating. I have never seen the namahage in person, but watching them on tv is always fun.

During the festival, cameramen follow the namahage, local villagers dressed up in costume. The namahage act fierce but are actually quite nice. The most entertaining part of this festival is the way it doesn’t quite work the way it is expected to. What is supposed to happen is that the namahage will come up to the young children and menace them, waving knives and screaming “Any bad kids here???” and the kids are of course supposed to say, “No! We’re all good kids!” It’s like the boogeyman, really: they are meant to scare children into behaving. In reality, though, you end up seeing a bunch of people getting really into their costumes and going way over the top with their scary acting. The kids are so terrified they are unable to answer, and just scream and screeeeeeeeeeeeeam, tears and snot running down their face. They are never even able to answer “no,” they just scream and break down instantly. So the namahage move on to the next bunch of kids and try again.

The cameramen follow them the whole time, so what you get to see on TV is close up after close up of children screaming their brains out, one after another. And you catch glimpses of the moms and dads laughing their heads off at their helpless kids who are freaking out from the scary namahage. Watching it, you can’t help but laugh along. You feel slightly guilty and bad for the kids, but when you see it over and over, it’s just so hard not to start laughing.

Of course once the kids are a little older, they all come to love the namahage as all Akita residents do, and the tradition carries on. Sadly, as the number of people having children declines every year in Japan, some local areas are no longer able to carry out these festivals. There is no shortage of people willing to dress up and be the yokai, but there is a shortage of children to scare. For this reason, local variants of the namahage are in danger of disappearing altogether as small towns are absorbed into bigger cities and lose their local identities. In a way, you can say that these yokai are an endangered species.

At least for now, the namahage is not in any danger of disappearing, due to its immense national popularity.

You’ll find namahage and many more yokai in my latest book, The Hour of Meeting Evil Spirits. Available from amazon.com in paperback and Kindle formats!

I’ve written a little about yokai themes these past few days, but today’s yokai is another interesting theme: it is often considered to be a metaphor for child-rearing.

Like in many cultures, bringing up children is a very important part of Japanese culture. Motherhood and fatherhood are difficult tasks, and highly respected according to traditional customs. Unsurprisingly, there are many yokai which reflect this duty in one way or another (either cynically or sincerely).

Child-rearing yokai legends usually begin with strange creatures that require something—often this is food, or candy, or even asking a stranger to hold their baby. Nure onna and ubume come to mind, as does the kosodate yurei, which we will look at later this month. The specific details vary from story to story, and sometimes the person who offers support is killed, while sometimes the person is rewarded for their efforts.

In the case of today’s yokai, all that is required is a piggyback ride. However, after giving the piggyback ride, the yokai becomes unbearably heavy and starts chewing on your head. In these legends, those who are able to put up with the pestering yokai are rewarded with gold in the end. The metaphor is not hard to see: those who are willing to love and care for children, sacrificing what they have in order to make the lives of their children better—even when those children are unbearably annoying—will one day reap great rewards.

If only raising a child were that simple!

Today’s yokai is brought to you by request of my Patreon backers! If you have a yokai you’d like to see, please consider joining my Patreon project for $1 per month!