Greetings yokai fans!

I can’t say it enough: I love October. October is the perfect month! It’s both warm enough and cool enough that you can be comfortable in anything from t-shirt and shorts to a fleece hoodie with a warm blanket wrapped around you. The sun doesn’t bake you the way it does in the summer months, but it’s still bright at noon. The flowers that bloom in October have the best fragrances, the smell of burning leaves and wood stoves fill the air. The changing leaves paint the world in vibrant beautiful colors. Twilight comes earlier and lasts longer, and the days that are dark and overcast have the best moods to them.

That last part is the only part that matters for today’s yokai. Read on!

Asuko koko
“there and here”

Asuko koko is a yokai which looks like a swirling, gloomy cloud. Within the cloud float all sorts of grotesque faces and claws. (I wonder if they are riding this yokai, or if the heads and arms are actually part of asuko koko…)

Asuko koko comes from the Matsui Bunko Hyakki yagyo emaki. It’s a beautiful and important yokai scroll, with a lot of unique yokai. If you look it up on Wikipedia you’ll probably recognize a number of yokai from this project! Most of the yokai here don’t have back stories or folk talks describing their behaviors, but they do have names which can be illuminating and give us a bit of insight into what they are/do.

While asuko koko may look like just a strange-looking cloud on the surface, there’s something deeper about it that really touches upon the true essence of what yokai means.

– It’s formless, which is something that is often said about yokai, but gets forgotten when we see the clear shapes and forms of various yokai in colorful woodblock prints. But really, yokai are shifting, formless, and ever-changing.

– As a smokey cloud, it’s not quite opaque, but not quite transparent either. Yokai are things that we can kind of see in the shadows, but just can’t make out; just like a cloud of smoke. It’s hard to focus on, impossible to grasp, and it can vanish just when you think you see it.

– And of course if you go into a cloud of smoke, your eyes will sting, you’ll choke—it’s dangerous! If the smoke is toxic you could get quite sick, or it might just be a harmless cloud. Similarly, most yokai are dangerous, but it’s not always quite clear precisely what the threat is.

– However, the part I like best about this yokai is it’s name: asuko koko means “there, here.” In other words: here, there, everywhere. It lurks in the corner, in the shadows, under your bed, just behind you! One of the important things about yokai is that they can be found everywhere, if you know where to look for them.

The vagueness of asuko koko’s form, its faces, and even its name perfectly matches the uncertainty which is the core of what yokai are.

The takeaway? Even if you can’t name it, can’t describe it, or can’t see it… there are monsters nearby. Here, over there, and all around you.

Boo!

Hello everyone! Today is October 1st, and I am so happy because that means Halloween season is upon us! In the spirit of Halloween, as I do every year, I am painting one yokai every day: A-Yokai-A-Day for the month of October.

Just like other drawing projects (such as Inktober), I’m invite all readers to participate and share their own A-Yokai-A-Day images on social media using the hashtags #ayokaiaday and #ayokaiaday2018

Normally, I like to start A-Yokai-A-Day with some of the weirder or cuter yokai and gradually work towards the bloodier and scarier ones as we approach Halloween. However, you’ll notice that today’s yokai isn’t exactly what you’d call cute. The reason is that this guy comes out on the Autumn equinox, which was just over one week ago today. I wanted to share him early, since the equinox is still close.

So, let’s take a closer look at today’s yokai:

Kubi kajiri

Kubi kajiri
“head biter”

Kubi kajiri is a yokai that is found lurking around in graveyards on the Autumn equinox. As you may guess by his name, he is primarily hunting for heads to eat. They look very similar to typical Japanese ghosts: long, disheveled hair, discolored skin, sunken eyes, and a white burial kimono. Like Japanese ghosts, they have no legs.

When they find a corpse that has been freshly buried, they dig it up and begin eating the head, leaving a mess of blood and gore all over the ground.

The reason they look like ghosts is because they were developed from a painting (by Ippitsusai Bunchō) called “Ghost eating a man’s head.” At some point, the picture was copied and the name kubi kajiri was slapped onto it, and this character was born!

There are two different popular explanations for kubi kajiri’s origin. The first one says that they are created when a person dies and is buried without their head. Their corpse turns into a yōkai and begins to hunt for fresh heads in graveyards.

The other explanation is a little more gruesome. It says that kubi kajiri are created from the corpses of eldery people who have starved to death—particularly those who starved due to negligence and abuse. This is related to the idea of “ubasute” which occurred long ago when food was scarce. During famine, the elderly members of a family might be allowed to starve to death in order to relieve the burden on the younger members. When they were too weak to travel, the elderly might even be piggy-backed into the mountains by their children and left there to die. It’s so sad and cruel that there’s no wonder this is the original story for so many different kinds of yokai. In such cases, the kubi kajiri was only said to appear after their abuser died. Then they would appear beside the grave of their abuser, dig up the corpse, and devour its head.

Justice! (Maybe?)

Want more yokai? Visit yokai.com and check out my yokai encyclopedias on amazon.com! Still want more? You can sign up for my Patreon project to support my yokai work, get original yokai postcards and prints, and even make requests for which yokai I paint next!

It’s been a little while since the last update. August and September have been wildly busy, finishing up with the book and getting it to the printers. But the good news is that if you are a Kickstarter or BackerKit backer, you should have access to your ebook download links now in your BackerKit downloads area!

A-Yokai-A-Day for the Month of October

I would be remiss if I let September pass without mentioning the project that is probably what this blog is most well known for: A-Yokai-A-Day! Keeping with my annual tradition I will be posting one yokai every day for the entire month of October.

A-Yokai-A-Day started in October of 2009, so this year marks nine years of October yokai. In that time all sorts of similar drawing challenges have popped up, including Inktober. In that spirit, I’d like to invite my readers and yokai fans all over the world to join me in A-Yokai-A-Day by painting/sketching/doodling/drawing/photographing a yokai every single day next month!

Hashtag your posts #ayokaiaday and #ayokaiaday2018 and share them on Twitter/Facebook/Instagram/wherever!

Last Month’s Yokai

Here are the yokai you may have missed in August and September by not being part of my Patreon project. If you like this site, or yokai in general, and especially if you have a yokai request you’d like to see my paint, join my Patreon project and help support this site and yokai.com!

Taki reio

Yonaki ishi

Mekurabe

Jigoku tayu

Kohada Koheiji

Mumashika

Oi no bakemono

This is it folks, the last yokai of A-Yokai-A-Day 2017! And also your last day to back The Book of the Hakutaku on Kickstarter! Collectors editions and stretch goals won’t be available in stores, so don’t miss your chance to get them as part of the Kickstarter!

I like to save my favorite and scariest yokai of the month for last. Today’s yokai won’t make you scream and won’t make you cringe in disgust. It won’t take your breath away… But it may just bring you true dread. Read on to find out why this is my pick for scariest yokai of the month!

Hangonkō
反魂香
はんごんこう
“spirit calling incense”

Toriyama Sekien’s Hangonkō

Hangonkō is a legendary incense from ancient China which has the power to bring forth the spirits of the dead before those who burn it. Those who burn the incense will see the spirits of the dead within the smoke.

The incense was famously used by Emperor Wu (Japanese: Butei) of the Han dynasty in China. After his beloved concubine Li Furen (Japanese: Rifuren) passed away, the emperor fell into deep depression. A Taoist sorcerer, in an attempt to ease the emperor’s grief, provided him with a bit of hangonkō so that he might see Lady Li one more time.

Hangonkō was a popular subject in Japanese literature as well. It appears in a number of Edo period works, from ghost story books to theater, kabuki, rakugo, bunraku/ningyō jōruri puppet theater… The Japanese versions star different characters; for example a man whose beloved prostitute dies is overcome with grief, and a taikomochi recommends he try using hangonkō—a secret incense handed down by the onmyōji Abe no Seimei.

Hangonkō is made from the hangonjū, a magical tree with leaves and flowers that resemble those of a maple or Japanese oak. Its smell can be picked up from over 100 ri away. To make hangonkō, you steam this tree’s roots until the sap comes out. Then you knead the sap to make the incense. A small piece of this resin is said to be effective at recalling the spirits of those who died from sickness or disease.

There is, of course, a catch. Hangonkō only returns the spirit for a short time; and they only exist in the smoke of the burning incense. All of the different versions of the story share the same ending: the person using the incense meets their lover’s spirit one last time, but it only leaves them sadder and more grieved than they were before. It doesn’t alleviate their loneliness, it makes it worse.

There’s an allegory here. Smoke often symbolizes delusion. And in Buddhism the the strongest delusion is attachment to material things—like the inability to let go of a loved one after death. Delusion is said to be the ultimate cause of all suffering.The smoke of the incense prevents those using it from properly letting go of their loved ones and moving on. They’re stuck in the past, in a delusion, and will be miserable until they learn to let go.

To me, there’s nothing comforting about this story. No good moral, no reconciliation, not even a punchline. It just evokes pure, existential horror; the horror of losing a loved one too soon. How do you get over that? Either you do or you don’t… One of my best friends says that their greatest fear is to die alone. Staying alive, however, seems even worse.

Happy Halloween!

Hangonkō, from The Book of the Hakutaku

Those of you long-time readers of A-Yokai-A-Day will probably know that I like to build up towards Halloween, with the scariest and most thematically-appropriate yokai saved for the end. This past week we’ve seen yokai dressing up in costumes, old hags, monsters hiding under your floor, the ghosts of people burnt at the stake (sort of), just to name a few. Today’s yokai is one that I find pretty spooky, a little funny, but mostly just darn creepy.

Be warned: kurobōzu is nightmare fuel. If you are the type of person who has to have your blanket tucked under your feet before you can fall asleep (I know I am!) then you might want to not read this before bed!

Kurobōzu
黒坊主
くろぼうず
“black monk”

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi’s depiction of the kurobōzu, from the Hōchi Shinbun issue #663.

As we’ve seen, there’s no shortage of bōzu (priest or monk-shaped) yokai. Heck, even black monk yokai are not in short supply. Kuro bōzu stands out those, because it is a relatively modern yokai. While the others come from the depths of folklore, this one appeared in the early Meiji period, in a newspaper article in the Hōchi Shinbun. It’s a good transitional link between the yokai of old and modern-day urban legends. The report came from the Kanda neighborhood of Tokyo:

At a certain carpenter’s house in Kanda, every night at 12 midnight, a dark, black, shadowy figure resembling a monk would appear in the house.

The creature would creep into their bedroom and stick its tongue in the ears and mouth of the carpenter’s sleeping wife, licking her all over.

The creature smelled so fowl, like rotting raw fish or garbage. The smell was so noxious that the family became ill.

The wife could not put up with this nightly treatment, so she left the house to go live with her relatives. After she left the house, the black monk never returned.

So what was the kurobōzu? Some yokai-ologists say it was a kind of nopperabō, due to its vague and indiscernible features. Others say it was related to a yamachichi, and it was sneaking into houses to steal the breath of sleeping humans.

Of course, less supernatural minded people might jump to the even more fearsome conclusion that some sort of homeless pervert was sneaking into the house and assaulting the wife. Or maybe it was even a hallucination caused by the unwanted advances of a drunk, disgusting husband? Who knows… Whatever it was, it’s difficult to imagine that poor woman’s trauma, and it’s hard to believe she had a good night’s sleep for a long time after that…

Kurobōzu. This one is going to be fun to paint!

Halloween is the final day of the Kickstarter for The Book of the Hakutaku! Don’t miss out on the chance to have over 100 yokai paintings and descriptions in glorious paperback, hardcover, or art prints!

There’s only a few days left in the Kickstarter project! In fact, Kickstarter is now counting the hours, not the days! So if you’ve been waiting until the end of the project, now is a good time to back. As we meet more stretch goals, more yokai designs will be added to the t-shirt and hoodie options.

Tōdaiki
燈台鬼
とうだいき
“spirit candlestick”

Toriyama Sekien’s Tōdaiki

Today there are all kinds of urban legends about people traveling to foreign countries, staying in hostels, and then waking up in a bathtub of ice with surgical stitches and missing a few internal organs. As much as that sounds like a product of modernization and the trend of global tourism, urban legends like this have existed for as long as people have traveled. Tōdaiki is a fun example of such a legend; although, it deals with dark magic instead of amateur organ harvesting…

According to Sekien, long ago, a government minister named Karu no Daijin was sent on a mission to Tang China. This was a period of great movement of culture and ideas between China and Japan, so nothing is strange about that. However, when the envoy failed to return to Japan long after they were overdue, the minister’s son, Hitsu no Saishō, began to worry.

Utagawa Kuniyoshi’s print of Hitsu no Saishō encountering the tōdaiki

Hitsu no Saishō traveled to China to search for his missing father. He traveled far and wide, and in one particular location he came across something he had never seen before: a tōdaiki—a candlestick fashioned out of a living human being! By some combination of strange drugs and sorcery, the man’s ability to speak had been removed. His body was covered in tattoos, and a large candle had been placed in his head. He had been installed on a fancy little stand like a piece of furniture.

As Hitsu no Saishō looked in puzzlement at the strange sight, the human candlestick began to shed tears. Unable to speak, the man bit into he tip of his finger until it began to bleed. He scrawled out a few characters in his own blood. Upon reading them, Hitsu no Saishō realized in horror: the tōdaiki was his own father who he had come to China to search for!

The people involved in this story are real. Hitsu no Saishō was the nickname of Fujiwara no Arikuni, a Heian period noble who lived from 943-1011 CE. Although the story about the tōdaiki is a fabrication, it’s an interesting example of where fact and folklore intersect. Because this early urban legend involved real people who were well known to educated readers, it gives the story much more weight. It’s not really any different from the story about George Washington and the cherry tree when you think about it… well, except that this one is far more terrifying!

Tōdaiki, from The Book of the Hakutaku

Don’t miss out on your chance to become a backer for The Book of the Hakutaku, and get Kickstarter-only special collectors editions of the book, as well as other awesome yokai goods.