After the shock of this morning’s discovery of the surprise rule change by Japan Post and the stressful hours afterwards trying to figure out how this impacts the Kickstarter which we just started to fulfill, I almost decided not to post a painting today and just take a day off for mental health. Aside from how crushingly frustrating it is to have to notify backers of this huge disappointment, and to hit the brakes on shipping and screech all project momentum to a halt after we’ve been working towards Kickstarter fulfillment for over a year now, this also means that we probably have to close the yokai.com webstore to all US orders—right before the holiday sales season that makes up a huge percentage of our annual income. It’s layer upon layer of suck.

But today’s story from Mimibukuro is really dark and depressing, and if I didn’t spend the day painting, I would have been brooding and feeling miserable, yet unable to do anything to make things better. It’s odd; this tale is horrifically depressing, but somehow that sadness soothes, if just a little bit, my anger and disappointment at today’s news.

The type of monkey show depicted in this story is called sarumawashi, and is fairly common in Japan. I see monkey performances every year down by the river during festivals. Japanese macaques look and behave just like little people, and it is utterly captivating to watch them perform. There is an idiom in Japanese—猿は人間に毛が三筋足らぬ (saru wa ningen ni ke ga misuji taranu)—which means “a monkey is a person minus three hairs.” They are so alike us in every way, and we are so like them, that only three hairs separate us. That makes the tragedy in this story so easy to feel deeply.

Even Beasts Feel Deep Affection

In the fifth year of the Tenmei era (1785) in Sakaimachi, a large number of monkeys were brought together and made to perform in male and female kabuki roles. Their performances attracted a huge audience. I heard from some of the spectators that these monkeys had been well-trained to copy the spirit and mannerisms of the popular actors of the time, and their gestures and movements were highly amusing.

One of these monkeys had given birth to a baby, and as the baby grew it became thoroughly infested with lice, which caused it a lot of distress. The monkey trainer bathed the monkey to remove the lice and, to dry its wet fur, tied it to a clothesline on the second floor. However, a kite spotted the monkey and pecked it to death with its beak. The monkey trainer tried to chase the kite away and tend to the monkey, but his efforts were in vain.

The trainer called the monkey’s mother and consoled her, “You have worked hard for many years, and you have been an integral part of our family business. Seeing how much you loved this young monkey, I can only imagine how sad you must be. We never imagined a kite would come. It is so regrettable that we left the young monkey on the clothesline.”

The mother monkey cried and collapsed in grief. When the monkey trainer stepped away for a moment to do something else, the mother monkey tied one of the stage ropes to a roof beam and hanged herself.

People called this a sorrowful example of a mother’s love.

Tonight’s story is another tale about a hitodama. This one comes to us (by way of Negishi) from Hino Yoshū (a nickname of Hino Sukemochi), a samurai of the Hino clan and governor of Iyo Province—who was an eyewitness to this phenomenon. Yoshū is an alternative name of Iyo Province, and since he was governor there, this is where his nickname comes from.

The rowhouse mentioned in the story is a nagaya. These were really interesting compounds that were common in cities during the Edo period, and were somewhat similar to a modern apartment building. Each nagaya had several families living in it, as well as facilities like a shared toilet. The entrance to these compounds would have a gate where everyone’s name was posted (a precursor to today’s hyōsatsu), so you knew who lived there, and the gate would be locked at night for safety and to keep out strangers. They were not luxurious—in fact, the one-room homes were supplied without doors, and when you moved in one of the pieces of furniture that you brought with you would be a front door! There is a really great walk-through model in the Fukagawa Edo Museum in Tokyo (one of my absolute favorite museums) that recreates a section of old Edo and gives you a pretty good feeling of what it must have been like to live in one of these neighborhood complexes.

An Eyewitness Account of a Hitodama Manifestation

When Hino Yoshū was still a young man, a retainer in his household was suffering from a long-term illness and seemed unlikely to recover. Because this retainer had worked closely by Hino’s side and served him directly, Hino even went out to his rowhouse to check on his wellbeing.

One day, Hino went out riding. After dark, he summoned another retainer to accompany him to check in on his ailing retainer on his way back. At the gate of the sick retainer’s rowhouse they discovered a flame, slightly larger than a cigarette butt and resembling the wick of a candle.

“It is not good to have an open flame here. Let us stamp it out,” said Hino. However, as they watched, the flame began to rise and fall about one or two shaku (about 30 to 60 cm) at a time. Before long, it had climbed up to the eaves of the rowhouse and had grown to the size of a teacup.

They felt their hairs stand on end, so they hurried back inside. Sure enough, the retainer died that very night, according to Yoshū.

Tonight’s yokai is one that most people are familiar with: a hitodama. This tale expands on the hitodama’s lore by claiming that they form bubbles, and smell bad enough to attract flies. It’s quite a bizarre claim, especially considering that frogs lay eggs in big piles of foam, and bad-smelling spots on the riverside are not uncommon at all—to say nothing of horseflies.

Still, Negishi’s acquaintance who told him this story goes out of his way to confirm that these are facts and in no way made up! So I guess we have to trust him…

The Hitodama

When a certain man went fishing at Kasai, a swarm of horseflies gathered around his fishing rod and gear. An old man who was nearby remarked, “Perhaps a hitodama has fallen around here, and that is why there are so many insects gathered here.”

Someone I [Negishi Yasumori] knew also went fishing at dawn, and a hitodama flew toward him and fell into the grass nearby. “What sort of thing has fallen?” he wondered. He went there to see what it was, and when he parted the grass there was something foamy that gave off a bad smell. A moment later, it turned into horseflies which scattered and flew away.

According to him, that old man’s words were no fabrication.

Tonight’s story comes from volume six of Mimibukuro, and introduces us to an unusual term: nyoyō. Nyoyō is written 女妖 and while it literally means “strange woman” or “yōkai woman,” it doesn’t actually seem to mean anything specific. The woman in the story below is “strange,” simply because she is acts more youthful than her age. She is 83, buts acts like a woman in her fifties. She has white hair and all of her teeth. Surely, she must be a monster!

There is plenty of precedence for female yōkai draining the life force of young, virile men in order to extend their lifespans. There was a popular belief that kitsune would disguise themselves as women in order to drain men. Nikusui and kawahime are other examples. In this story, Saki is never actually accused of draining the life force of men to retain her energy at age 83, but that might be one of the assumptions readers are meant to draw. (Is that why her husband died so early? Did she drain him?)

And while there’s nothing inherently yōkai-ish about having all of your teeth, that would certainly be unusual at her age and in that era. The fact that her teeth were blackened probably has something to do with that, as ohaguro did indeed provide cavity resistance. On the other hand, it probably didn’t help at all to dispell the rumors about her being a yokai, as even Edo period people seemed to find blackened teeth eerie, as yōkai were often depicted with ohaguro.

This story reminds me of a kidan from Fukui, in which a woman six shaku tall (about six feet, or 180 centimeters) appeared in a town and caused a great stir. Merely being tall was enough for her to be considered a monster. Although in her story, she at least appeared on top of the roofs of buildings. Meanwhile, Saki is never actually accused of doing anything supernatural, or even particularly strange. The worst that can be said about her is that she enjoyed sex with her husband, who happened to be 30 years younger than her. Hardly monstrous…

So… are we dealing with an energy vampire yōkai woman here? Or just standard misogyny?

The Nyoyō

This incident took place in the village of Kawajiri in Toyota District, Shimōsa Province, where Ogiwara Yagobei served at the local magistrate’s office.

In the third year of Kyōwa (1803), the Year of the Boar, a woman named Saki—the widow of a farmer named Kiemon who had served as a retainer of the village headman Shin’emon—turned eighty-three years old. She was living in Shin’emon’s household, more or less in the role of a servant.

For the previous two or three years, she had been close with a man from the same village named Kichiemon, who was fifty-six years old. Saki privately asked Shin’emon for permission to marry Kichiemon; however, Shin’emon denied her request, saying that it was out of the question for a person of her age.

After that, rumors began to spread that Saki and Kichiemon were planning to elope. Thus, Shin’emon had no choice but to grant Saki’s request, and he took Kichiemon into his household as her husband.

When [the official in charge of accounts for river management] Suzuki Monzaburō was making his rounds in the village, he happened to see Saki working in Shin’emon’s kitchen. She still had all of her teeth, which were dyed black with ohaguro, her hair was white, and her demeanor made her look to be about fifty years old, Monzaburō recounted.

People in the area said that after Kichiemon married Saki, he was bothered because she always took the lead whenever consummating their marriage. While other people claimed to have witnessed them actually having sex with their own eyes. However, it was said that these were just groundless rumors, and there was nothing credible about them.

Tonight’s yokai is one that has been covered by famous yokai artists like Toriyama Sekien. Here in Mimibukuro it is referred to as Ikuji or ikuji (it isn’t clear if this is a singular monster or a species of creatures), while in other places it is known as ayakashi or ikuchi.

Negishi also gives us a fun folk etymology, linking the word “ikujinashi” (written “ikujinaki” here to reflect the archaic way it is written in Mimibukuro) to this yokai. Ikujinashi means a coward/weakling/loser/good-for-nothing person. Although it’s not clear how that word would relate to this creature…

The Thing in the Sea Called Ikuji

In the Seto Inland Sea and the waters off of Kyūshū there is a creature called an ikuji that sometimes climbs across the bows of ships. Its body resembles that of an eel, and its length is longer than can be measured. Once it climbs onto a ship’s bow it can supposedly take two, sometimes three days to slither all the way across. How many tens or hundreds of jō long it is, I can not even guess. The term “ikujinaki” (“good-for-nothing”) probably originates from this.

According to another person’s account, “smaller versions of these ikuji inhabit the coasts off of Izu and Hachijō. These creatures look like eels in the shape of rings, with no eyes or mouth. Therefore, the kind that is said to climb across the bows of ships is not one that has grown very long, but is merely looping around the bow in the shape of a ring.”

I don’t know which version is true, but they don’t particularly cause any harm to the ships.

Tonight’s story is bound to upset some readers, since it deals with the death of a fox. Among all the yokai I have covered, foxes are almost universally the most popular ones, no matter what country the readers are from.

The term in the original text that I translated as “evil spirits” is 妖氣 (yōki — strange spirit). It’s a term I haven’t used on this site or yokai.com before, and it’s not really a common term either, so I decided to translate it this way.

Even Evil Spirits Cannot Prevail Against Bravery

Among the retainers in Lord Tsuchiya’s hometown of Tsuchiura was a man named Komuro Jingorō. He was fiercely confident, fond of shooting his rifle, and enjoyed hunting in the mountains for pleasure.

The people of Tsuchiura revered a fox named Kanmyōin and its mate Otake, and they built an Inari shrine and honored the pair of foxes there.

One day, Jingorō shot and killed the female, Otake, with his matchlock, then cooked her up and ate her with sake. The male fox, Kanmyōin, possessed the wife of a farmer from a neighboring area not far from Tsuchiura Castle. She began to babble about all sorts of things, and spat curses about Jingorō.

The villagers, including her husband, gathered and demanded answers. “What an unreasonable fox! If he has a grudge against Jingorō, he should possess Jingorō – not take some unrelated person in a neighboring village and torment her…”

The fox said, “How could I possibly possess Jingorō, the man who killed and ate my wife? I’m terrified of even entering Tsuchiura, so I possessed your wife instead. Please, kill Jingorō for me!”

When word of this reached Tsuchiura, Jingorō heard about it and said, “What a detestable beast!”

He notified the chief magistrate and then railed against the villagers: “This insolent beast, reprehensibly tormenting people from another area! If you insist on continuing to possess others, I will speak with the lord and have the shrine the peasants put up destroyed, and even if it takes many nights and nights I will hunt Kanmyōin down and beat him to death!”

Then he went to the shrine and railed against the people there in the same manner. Immediately the fox possession ended, and nothing further happened after that.

Tonight’s story comes from Sado, where Negishi was stationed during his time as an administrator. The area in the story, Sotokaifu, is on the northwestern coast along the sea. I have never been to Sado, but it sounds like a fascinating place—an isolated island surrounded by mountains in the middle of the sea.

Fukui, where I live, also lies along the coast of the Sea of Japan. We get dramatic sea surges during the winter, with waves rising very high and then exploding against the cliffs, sending white foam into the air like a volcano. I am sure the sea must be even more furious out near Sado, and I can only imagine how terrifying it would be to ride in a wooden ship with no radio along the rocky coast of Sado in a storm.

Tonight’s story isn’t exactly a shocking or surprising ghost like some of the recent stories, but its atmosphere and the way it is told sits with me more deeply and lingers in my mind more than stories about bumping into ghosts on the street. It feels more creepy and forlorn. I hope it creeps you all out as well!

A Remnant of Spiritual Energy

The place called Sotokaifu on Sado Island is known for its particularly rough and violent seas.

When a certain man named Torii was working at the guardhouse at its harbor, one of the locals living on the beach reported that one night he heard the sound of a boat being hauled up onto the beach. Torii went down to the water’s edge to investigate; however, there was no sign of any such activity.

The same sound was heard for two or three nights. He went to investigate again, and he found a capsized boat that had drifted ashore near where the sound had come from. Surprised, he gathered a large group of laborers to pull the boat upright. Things like pots and kettles appeared to have sunk and were nowhere to be found. However, things like boxes and barrels were still inside the boat. One of the boxes bore the name of Kaifu Village.

“This must be the boat that was reported missing recently,” they said.

Word was sent to the village, and when people came to inspect it, they confirmed that it was indeed the missing boat. It had been returning from Aikawa, where it delivered a load of firewood. It encountered a severe storm off Washizaki and disappeared without a trace. Naturally, the spirits of the dead crew remained behind, and perhaps it was them that produced those sounds.

Such things are said to occur from time to time along the coast.