Greetings yokai lovers!

Beware when you stare into the mirror, for it too is staring back at you!

Mirrors are associated with interesting bits of folklore all around the world. Many myths tell of mirrors being able to reveal things that are not there; even though we can’t see them with our eyes, the mirror uncovers some kind of hidden truth. We see that today, with folk games like “Bloody Mary” or “Candyman” which have regional variants all around the world, including Japan. 

Mirrors are also often seen as holy items, such as the mirrored shield of Perseus, which protected him and allowed him to slay Medusa. And of course, one of Japan’s most famous myths is the story of how the sun goddess Amaterasu saw her own reflection in her mirror, and was convinced to come out from hiding in her cave. That mirror was bequeathed to her grandson Ninigi, who pacified Japan and whose great-grandson became the first emperor. Her mirror is now one of the imperial regalia of Japan.

So it should come as no surprise that mirrors exist in yokai folklore as well. Rather than tying this one back to Japanese history, Toriyama Sekien tied it to Chinese myth, linking it with the evil kitsune Daji (who, as you may know from The Hour of Meeting Evil Spirits, eventually became Tamamo no Mae). Don’t you just love when yokai interact with each other like this? I do…

Anyway, here is the story. Enjoy!

http://yokai.com/ungaikyou/

雲外鏡
うんがいきょう

TRANSLATION: mirror beyond the clouds

APPEARANCE: Ungaikyō is a haunted mirror which shows demons and monsters reflected in its surface. The spirit which haunts this mirror, as well as the countless spirits which have been reflected in it over the years, can manipulate the reflection and cause it to appear as anything they like. People who gaze into an ungaikyō might see a transformed, monstrous version of themselves looking back.

INTERACTIONS: An ungaikyō can be used by humans to trap spirits. On the 15th night of the 8th month in the old lunar calendar, water is poured into a crystal dish to reflect the light of the full moon. (In the old days this was a popular way of admiring the reflection of the night sky.) If that water is used to paint the image of a yōkai onto a mirror, that spirit will then inhabit the mirror.

ORIGIN: Ungaikyō appears in Toriyama Sekien’s book of tsukumogami Hyakki tsurezure bukuro. Sekien based this yōkai on a mirror from an old Chinese myth. That mirror was called shōmakyō (“demon revealing mirror”). It had the ability to expose the true forms of demons masquerading as humans when they were reflected in the mirror. Shōmakyō was used by King Zhou of the Shang dynasty to reveal that his beloved consort Daji was actually a wicked nine-tailed kitsune, intent on runing his kingdom through her evil depravities. Her true form revealed, she fled the country (setting into action a chain of events that would see her eventually wind up in Japan as Tamamo no Mae). Shōmakyō was used time and time again to reveal the true nature of disguised spirits. Sekien postulated that such a mirror might pick up a little of the strangeness of each yōkai and demon it reflected, eventually becoming one itself. Perhaps the countless spirits that is has reflected over the years have slowly gained the ability to manipulate its reflections.

More recently, ungaikyō has been described simply as a mirror which has transformed into a conscious being. Upon reaching one hundred years of age, the mirror develops a soul and is transformed into a yōkai—a very common theme among tsukumogami.

Ungaikyō has also been portrayed as one of the many transformations performed by tanuki. By sucking in large amounts of air and inflating their bellies, a tanuki is able to display a picture on its bare belly similar to a television screen. This portrayal is not rooted in folklore however, but comes from Daiei Films’ 1968-69 yōkai movies. Nonetheless, it has caught on and remains a popular variation of ungaikyō in many productions.

Greetings yokai lovers and vegetable fans! Today I bring you the eggplant hag, nasu baba. And no, she isn’t the mean old yokai who tells you to eat your veggies. 🙂

http://yokai.com/nasubabaa/

茄子婆

TRANSLATION: eggplant hag

ALTERNATE NAMES: nasubi babā

HABITAT: Mount Hiei

APPEARANCE: Nasu babā resembles an ugly old hag. Her skin is dark purple and her face is said to resemble an eggplant with teeth. She haunts Mount Hiei, around the Enryaku-ji temple complex. She is known as one of the “Seven Wonders of Mount Hiei.”

BEHAVIOR: Despite her grotesque and frightening appearance, nasu babā is not a wicked yōkai. She spends most of her time lurking in dark rooms around Enryaku-ji or wandering around Mount Hiei, away from prying eyes. However, when there is a disaster at the temple, she warns the people living there by ringing the temple’s bell.

In 1571, Oda Nobunada attacked Enraku-ji and set fire to the temple complex. The fleeing monks reported seeing through the flames a disheveled old woman ringing the temple’s bell to alert the mountain to the danger.

INTERACTIONS: On the rare occasions that her path crosses with a human’s, she greets them with a big smile. The shock is often enough to cause the human to faint, but nasu babā is able to revive them with her magic and send safely them on their way.

ORIGIN: Nasu babā was once a human woman. She was a high ranking noble woman who lived hundreds of years ago and served in the imperial court. However, due to some crime she committed (some say that she killed an animal and ate its flesh, others say that she committed a murder) she was damned to go to hell after she died. For the remainder of her life, however, she was repentant of her sins, and asked the buddhas and the priests of Enryaku-ji to forgive her. Therefore, even though her body descended into hell, her spirit was able to remain on Mount Hiei. To this day, out of her gratitude to the buddhas, she comes to warn the temple when disaster strikes.

Greetings yokai fans!

I just came back from a yokai exhibition in Nagoya featuring a number of mummified “real” yokai which were paraded around as sideshow features long ago. I’m putting together an album which I will share with you guys as soon as its finished.

In the meantime, I’m giving you April’s final yokai, the ozato!

By now, I’m sure all of you are aware of how Toriyama Sekien especially, and other yokai artists, used yokai satire as a way of circumventing government censorship. Sekien loved to poke fun at corrupt priests, prostitutes, and zato. It makes me wonder if Sekien himself didn’t spend too much of his free time around brothels… But in any case, his yokai are really a fun snapshot of what city life was like 250 years ago.

http://yokai.com/oozatou/

Ozato

おおざとう
大座頭

TRANSLATION: giant zatō (a blind entertainer)
ALTERNATE NAMES:
HABITAT: city streets (especially near brothels) on dark, rainy nights

APPEARANCE: Ōzatō are monsters which resemble zatō—blind entertainers under the patronage of the Edo Period shōgunate. They wear tattered robes and wooden sandals, and carry a cane and sometimes a musical instrument. They appear on rainy nights, loitering about brothels or wandering through red light districts.

INTERACTIONS: People who stop ōzatō to ask where they are going receive the same reply: “Always to the brothel, to play my shamisen!”

ORIGIN: Zatō were a protected class of people, sponsored by the government. Under the shogunate, certain jobs were legally restricted to certain classes. Under this system, the zatō had a monopoly over shamisen and biwa performances, massage, and debt collection. While this system was established as a sort of safety net to ensure that the blind could perform work and earn a living independently, it allowed for massive social stratification among the blind, and heavy corruption existed among the rich and powerful zatō.

Ōzatō was invented by Toriyama Sekien for his book Konjaku hyakki shūi. Sekien expressed his distaste for corrupt people—zatō among them—by turning them into yōkai. Apparently he thought that the old zatō hanging around outside of brothels every night were ghastly and sinful, and reminded him of yōkai. Although Sekien doesn’t specifically explain what he had in mind when he created this yōkai, it’s easy to imagine that he was criticizing corrupt debt collectors gathering other people’s money and spending them on carnal pleasures. And to someone who owed money, seeing a zatō might be just as frightening as seen an actual monster!

Greeting yokai fans!

Today’s yokai is chochinbi, or lantern fire.

Although it’s a relatively simple yokai, I like it because it exemplifies a number of key yokai traits.

Firstly, it is a common occurrence, but mysterious and unknowable. People see bizarre lights on the horizon in all cultures all over the world, so this story is not unique to any one location. But, when you try to get close to examine what it is, it vanishes! People explain mysterious fires as swamp gas, or refraction of light, or bio-luminescence, but with all of our knowledge we just simply can’t observe them properly.

Secondly, it’s used by other yokai as a light. So it has a strong connection to the spirit world. It’s not so much a strange effect on its own, but it signifies that something even stranger is going on. It also shows how similar to us yokai are; with all their monstrous strangeness, even spirits need to light their way at night so they don’t trip! It keeps yokai from becoming too alien and too unknowable.

Thirdly, it appears on the borders between rice fields; fields of course being the borders between the town and the wild lands; and rice fields being flooded while the footpaths are try makes another sort of border. So this fire exemplifies the way that yokai are creatures of the borderlands. They don’t appear deep in the wilderness away from our eyes, they appear just at the extent of our vision, where we’re a bit too afraid to go, but not so far away that we feel safe from it. It may be a simple observation, but the location where these fires appear is a perfect example of the heart of “yokai-ness.”

Anyway, on to the yokai!

http://yokai.com/chouchinbi/

 Chōchinbi  
提灯火

TRANSLATION: lantern fire
ALTERNATE NAMES: tanukibi, kōemonbi
HABITAT: rural farmlands

APPEARANCE: Chōchinbi are strange orbs of fire which appear on the footpaths separating rice paddies in rural Japanese farmlands. They appear at about the same brightness and height as a handheld paper lantern, or chōchin, which they are named after. The presence of chōchinbi signals that other yōkai may be close by.

BEHAVIOR: Chōchinbi float about in the air a few feet above the paths formed along the borders of paddies. They drift about lazily, but if a human gets too close to them they vanish. They often appear in long rows of dozens of chōchinbi one after another, resembling a string of lanterns.

ORIGIN: Chōchinbi is most frequently said to be the work of kitsune, although it is sometimes attributed to other magical animals. In many places, chōchinbi is said to be the work of tanuki. Occasionally other yōkai are said to use magical fire to light their way in the dark. While chōchinbi is more or less identical to other types of magical fireballs, its distinguishing feature is that it is used as a light source by other spirits.

Greetings yokai fans!

Here is the finished painting of isogashi. As I mentioned yesterday, I added the cherry blossoms in there partially because it’s the season right now, and also because the fleeting nature of cherry blossoms matches the anxious, busy feeling of this yokai. I know that sometimes I sure feel like I’m possessed by an isogashi!

Also, you’ll notice if you visit yokai.com, that the new site template is in place! I think it’s looking quite nice. There are still a few areas that need tweaking for it to be perfect, but it’s on its way. The look is mostly preserved from the old site, but it’s had a massive upgrade “under the hood.” This new template will make the site work well on smartphones and tablets, as well as make Google and other search engines rank the site higher in their results, since it is compliant with modern web standards. From the user perspective, I like the look of the new search and yokai finder results!

Enjoy!

http://yokai.com/isogashi/

Isogashi
いそがし

TRANSLATION: busy
HABITAT: human-inhabited areas
DIET: none; feeds off of people’s restlessness

APPEARANCE: Isogashi is a blue-skinned monster with floppy ears, a big nose, and a massive tongue which flops out from its mouth. It runs about frantically, as if it had a million things that it needs to do. It is a type of tsukimono, a class of yōkai which possess humans.

INTERACTIONS: Humans possessed by isogashi become extremely restless and unable to relax. They constantly move about, doing things. However, this is not an unpleasant feeling. On the contrary, people possessed by isogashi feel a sense of security in getting things done. Sitting around and doing nothing at all makes them feel as if they are doing something wrong.

ORIGIN: Isogashi first appears in the Muromachi Period Hyakki yagyō emaki picture scroll, in which it is presented without any name. This painting actually spawned two different yōkai.

During the Edo Period, the monster was copied into a hyakki yagyō picture scroll with the name isogashi written beside it. No other description was given besides the name. Around the same time, Toriyama Sekien attempted to give the nameless yōkai from the original Hyakki yagyō emaki illustration a name and an identity. He included it in his collection of tsukumogami Hyakki tsurezure bukuro, dubbing it tenjōname.

Later, this yōkai appeared in a number of other picture scrolls, with the name isogashi appearing next to it. Despite being based on the same picture, tenjōname and isogashi developed into separate yōkai.

Aside from paintings, nothing but a name was recorded for isogashi until the Shōwa Period. It does not appear in folklore or legends. Mizuki Shigeru came up with the description of this yōkai as a spirit which possesses humans, and his description stuck.