Greetings yokai lovers!

I’m happy to bring you the story behind iwana bōzu and its full description today. Maybe it will make you think twice before the next time you eat river fish!

岩魚坊主
いわなぼうず

Translation: char priest
Habitat: mountain streams
Diet: carnivorous

Appearance: Iwana bōzu are enormous iwana (char, Salvelinus leucomaenis), a kind of river fish, that have turned into yōkai. They walk upright on two legs like humans and dress in Buddhist priest robes. They are found by mountain streams where people fish for iwana and other river fish.

Behavior: Iwana live in rivers and streams high up in the mountains. Iwana which survive for many years and grow to an enormous size become iwana bōzu. They learn to transform into human shape, leave their rivers, and even speak.

Interactions: Iwana bōzu appear out of nowhere and ask people who are fishing to stop and go home. They usually approach people catching more fish than they need to survive rather than those who are just feeding their families. In particular, they target those who use extreme measures of fishing, such as poisoning the river with Japanese pepper (Zanthoxylum piperitum), which causes fish to float to surface and makes them easy to catch. They lecture about refraining from needless killing, and taking life only when it is necessary to survive, and so on. Because they dress and speak in a manner that resembles a Buddhist priest, they are usually not immediately recognized as yōkai. It is only until later, after departing, that something seems off or strange and you realize that the person you thought was a priest was in fact a yōkai.

Origin: Iwana bōzu stories can be found in all parts of Japan. In some areas, other fish species such as yamame (Oncorhynchus masou masou) and unagi (eels, Anguilla japonica) are also said to transform into people and admonish humans against cruel and excessive fishing. These stories vary in several details but all follow a similar narrative pattern. Common to all of them is the ending, in which the fish is killed and cut open, the contents of its stomach revealing its yōkai nature.

Legends: Long ago in Gifu, several young men were fishing by a stream. They were using poison techniques to catch a large quantity of fish. While they took a break for lunch, a Buddhist priest with a shiny bald head suddenly appeared out of nowhere and approached the group. The priest asked the young men if they were fishing with poison.

The young men replied that yes, they were using poison.

The priest asked them to stop fishing in that manner. It was a bad way to fish. It was cruel, and it caused excess death, which is a sin.

The young men protested that they had to think of their own livelihoods to think of. But the priest persisted, and admonished them not to take unnecessary life. Eventually, out of politeness, they agreed to stop fishing with poison. The priest seemed satisfied, and the young men offered him some dango to eat. The priest gratefully accepted the food and then left.

After they finished lunch, the men went back to fishing. Despite what they had told the priest, they had no intention to stop using poison. Suddenly, the largest fish they had ever seen—over 180 cm in length—appeared in the river! They threw more and more poison into the river and were able to catch the giant fish.

Gleefully, the young men returned to their village laden with a huge catch. They decided to make a feast of the giant fish. As they prepared the fish, they cut open its stomach and out tumbled the dango that they had given to the priest!

The young men were so frightened that not one of them was willing to eat the fish.

Greetings yokai lovers!

January’s final yokai is Uondo, who you are probably already familiar with from last year’s A-Yokai-A-Day.

While I love the story and I love the character from the story, my favorite thing about this yokai and the book she comes from is actually the fact that the book serves as a beautiful time capsule of what mattered to people in 1791.

The book references celebrities, current events, social activities, popular music, and news that was the word on the street in the time that it was written. Reading it is entertaining not only for the story, but for the real glimpse of life from 230 years ago.

Uondo is also an example of something I usually avoid covering: characters from novels. She is a character from a book with a single author, which means her origins are traceable, and she has a structure that we don’t see with “real” folklore. I try to keep my work focused on figures and characters who are so deeply ingrained into story culture that their origins are no longer clear, and there is no person who can claim ownership of them. This is a folklore database, not a database of characters from literature. When I do occasionally make an exception to that soft rule, it’s because the character has a cultural significance that I believe outweighs the reasons I would normally avoid covering them. Uondo meets that criteria in my view, because her story shines a light on a fascinating subsection of yokai culture: the misemono (sideshows) that introduced so many Edo citizens to the concept of yokai. The mermaids and kappa and other “real yokai” shown at these exhibits were like a Ripley’s Believe it or Not! set in old Japan, and were truly important in both popularizing and preserving yokai culture. And, because her story is so ingrained with the folklore of Urashima Taro and the undersea world of Ryūgū, it fits thematically with the work I’ve been doing for the past year.

(Incidentally, another yokai who caused me to break that soft rule is Masaki gitsune, in my upcoming book The Fox’s Wedding. She comes from another Edo period novel and is thus not truly folklore, but she exemplifies a part of kitsune mythology that is not well represented in actual folk tales. So I gave her a pass on being a literary figure.)

Anyway, on to Uondo!

魚人
うおんど

Translation: a courtesan name meaning “fish person”
Diet: prefers expensive, luxurious foods and sweets

Appearance: Uondo is a ningyo courtesan and the illegitimate daughter of Urashima Tarō and a carp. She inherited the good looks of both of her parents, and was famous for her beautiful face.

Behavior: Uondo fell in love with and married a human fisherman. She became a courtesan in order to help pay off her husband’s debts.

Origin: Uondo comes from Hakoiri musume menya ningyo, a comical fairy tale written by Santō Kyōden in 1791. It capitalizes on the pop-cultural trends of 18th century Edo—the city’s famous red light districts, kabuki theater, the well-known legend of Urashima Tarō, and traveling sideshow spectacles called misemono which were all the rage at the time. A common misemono attraction was mummified yōkai, such as kappa and ningyo (mermaids), often made out of taxidermy by combining pieces of monkeys and fish. Kyōden’s fairy tale makes numerous references to misemono shows, as well as popular actors and celebrities of the day, and current events, making it a time capsule of Japanese pop culture in 1791.

Legends: Urashima Tarō was a playboy. He loved to visit the undersea kingdom’s red light districts and spend time with the beautiful aquatic courtesans there. One courtesan in particular—a carp named Orino—was so beautiful that Urashima Tarō fell madly in love with her. Orino loved the handsome Urashima Tarō as well. They spent many nights together, but because he was princess Otohime’s man, they could not remain together. Still, their love produced a child—a girl, who inherited the beauty of both of her parents. The child of a human father and fish mother, she was a ningyo.

Years later, a fisherman named Heiji was fishing in Shinagawa harbor when a ningyo suddenly jumped up into his boat. It was the beautiful and flirtatious daughter of Urashima Tarō and Orino, now an adult. She asked Heiji to marry her. The ningyo was so beautiful, and Heiji was old and alone, so he agreed.

Heiji and the ningyo loved each other. However, Heiji was poor and had debt. The ningyo looked for ways to earn money to help her husband, but with her fish body and no arms, her options were extremely limited.

One day, a brothel owner named Denzō noticed the ningyo’s stunningly beauty face. He came up with a scheme to get rich off of her. Denzō offered her a great deal of money to come work for him as a courtesan. Seeing this as the only way to help her husband, she accepted.

Denzō made plans for the ningyo’s immediate debut as an oiran. He ordered a splendid kimono, and had her hair and make up done in the most fashionable way. In the style of high class courtesans, he gave her a professional name: Uondo. Then he held an extravagant procession to announce her debut at his brothel.

However, Uondo’s debut did not go well. Her lack of arms and legs meant that she could do little except flop around like a fish. Worse, the brothel’s best perfumes and incenses could not mask her fishy smell. On top of it all, she was so tired from preparations and the procession that she fell asleep immediately after welcoming her first customer into her room. Confused and repulsed, the customer left and demanded his money back.

Denzō was outraged. He returned Uondo to her husband and demanded that Heiji pay for the expenses he incurred organizing her debut. Heiji and the ningyo were even worse off than before.

Then, Heiji remembered a story about how eating the flesh of a ningyo granted eternal life and youth. If that were the case, then merely licking a ningyo should surely have at least some revitalizing effect. Heiji and the ningyo opened up a ningyo licking shop, offering single licks at very high prices. The people of Edo lined up in the streets for the opportunity to add a few years to their lifespans by licking the ningyo.

Heiji and the ningyo became rich and famous. They made enough money from their ningyo licking shop to pay off all of their debts, and to make sure they never wanted for anything again. They lived happily ever after.