Today the Kickstarter passed 1400% funding! More slipcases have been unlocked, so if you’re already a backer, make sure to check out the update with the additional slipcase images.

Today’s yokai is a plant yokai. Rocks, plants, animals, people… I love that there’s no subject left untouched by yokai!

Bashō no Sei
芭蕉精
ばしょうのせい
“Japanese banana spirit”

Musa basjoo

Bashō is the Japanese name for the Japanese banana tree (Musa basjoo). It originated in China and is found in China, Taiwan, Okinawa, and other tropical parts of East Asia. This tree is well known for its huge, broad leaves. It is a popular ornamental tree, and it is often found in gardens. It was also cultivated for its giant leaves, which could be turned into textiles.

A bashō no sei is a yokai born from this tree. They usually take the form of a human face appearing in the leaves of the tree, which then surprises people in one way or another. Stories of bashō spirits playing tricks on humans were popular during the Edo period in Japan. According to Toriyama Sekien, stories of this phenomenon go back to ancient times in China, but spread as far as Japan, even to become the subject of a noh play, Bashō (“The Bashō Tree”). In this story, a woman appears from a bashō tree next to a priest and asks him if inanimate objects like plants can go to heaven.

Toriyama Sekien’s bashō no sei

One famous story was recorded by an Edo period herbalist named Satō Chūryō. According to him, in Ryūkyū (present day Okinawa), bashō are planted in such large numbers that plantations will plant miles and miles of rows of the trees. If you walk past them at night, you are guaranteed to experience something strange. The spirits that come out of the bashō do not cause any direct harm to people other than spooking them, but nevertheless you can avoid them if you are carrying a sword. His theory was that the bashō wasn’t necessarily unique in this particular ability, but that because its leaves are so incredibly large, it is particularly easy to humans to notice these tree’s spirits (and easy for these tree spirits to notice people, apparently).

Women in Ryūkyū were warned not to go walking among the bashō trees past 6 pm. If they did, it was said that they would certainly meet some kind of yokai among the thick leaves; either a monster, or a handsome young man. After that, the woman would become pregnant. The baby would be born 9 months later as normal, however it would have tusks or fangs like a demon. What’s more, the following year and again every year after that, the woman would give birth to demon after demon after demon. If a demon child like this was born, it would have to be killed by feeding it a poisonous drink made of powdered kumazasa (a type of bamboo grass); this is supposedly the reason why kumazasa are commonly found growing near houses in Okinawa.

A story from Nagano tells of a priest who was sitting outside and reciting suttras when a beautiful young woman appeared and attempted to seduce the priest. The priest grew angry and stabbed the woman with his sword, and she ran away. The next morning, the priest found the blood trail left by the woman he had stabbed. The blood trail lead all the way to the temple’s gardens and to the bashō tree, which was lying on the ground, cut down. The priest realized that the woman had been the spirit of the bashō tree.

I wonder, if he had known that earlier, would he have not stabbed her? Was it okay to stab a woman, but not a tree? I’m not quite sure what the moral of the story is…

“Can even inanimate objects like plants can go to heaven?”

It’s Friday the 13th!!! Which has absolutely nothing to do with yokai… : Oh well…

Just a quick update on the Kickstarter before moving on to today’s A-Yokai-A-Day: we will be working with Backerkit to manage pledges after the funding period is over. This should make it a lot easier to choose your add-ons and alter your pledge level if you decide later that you should have gotten the collector’s edition, for example.

Now, for the good stuff. It’s yokai time!

Yonaki ishi
夜泣き石
よなきいし
“night crying stone”

Toriyama Sekien’s yonaki ishi

This is not the first “yonaki” yokai we’ve looked at, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. It’s also not the first strange stone yokai we’ve looked at. But it is a very famous supernatural phenomenon that is found in folklore all across Japan.

In short, yonaki ishi are stones or boulders which cry loudly at night. In many cases, the stones cry because they are possessed by the spirit of someone who was murdered and seeks revenge. However, in some cases it is the stone itself that cries and not a person’s spirit haunting it.

The most famous yonaki ishi comes from Kakegawa City in Shizuoka Prefecture. (Kakegawa is also home to Kakegawa Kachoen, an amazing zoo and probably one of the my favorite places that I have ever been to. I’m sure there’s lots of night crying going on there even today, although I’d wager it’s more from all the various bird calls and less from possessed rocks…) This story is known as one of the “Seven Wonders of Shizuoka:”

Long ago, a pregnant woman was walking home through the steep mountains. She had reached the Sayononakayama Pass when she needed to stop for a rest. She leaned against a large round boulder to catch her breath, but suddenly a bandit appeared. He slashed at her with his blade, and would have cut all the way through her if the sword hadn’t also struck the large boulder she was leaning against. The bandit grabbed her purse and fled into the night. The wound was a fatal one—the woman bled to death.

Thanks to the blade striking the rock, her baby was not hurt by the attack. It emerged from her body through the stab wound. Although the mother was dead, her soul was so driven by the need to protect her child that it got stuck in the boulder. From then on, every night the rock would wail and cry loudly. A priest from a nearby temple heard the rock’s cry, and when he went to investigate it, he discovered the newborn baby. The priest took the baby to the temple and raised him, naming him Otohachi. The crying rock was from then on known as the yonaki ishi.

Sayononakayama’s yonaki ishi, accessible from Kakegawa, Shizuoka

There’s an interesting epilogue to this story: Otohachi grew up and was apprenticed to a sword sharpener. After many years he became an accomplish sword sharpener as well. One day, a samurai appeared before Otohachi and commanded him to repair his chipped katana. Otohachi was surprised by the terribly crack in the blade. The samurai absentmindedly explained that the blade had been chipped many years before when it struck a stone in the Sayononakayama Pass. Otohachi realized that this samurai was the bandit who murdered his mother. Otohachi stood up, gave his name, and then took his revenge!

My yonaki ishi, which will be painted in the coming months

A few new stretch goals were unlocked for the Kickstarter today. First, the slipcase for the hardcover collector’s edition—a popular request—has been unlocked. Secondly, as we have reached 1200% funding, the book will now be printed via offset printing instead of digital print-on-demand. After the Kickstarter, remaining offset copies will be sold until they are all gone, after which subsequent books will be produced via print-on-demand (as they are currently produced).

Now, on to today’s yokai!

Mekurabe
目競
めくらべ
“staring contest”

Toriyama Sekien’s mekurabe

Mekurabe is found in the same book that many of this month’s yokai come from: Toriyama Sekien’s Konjaku hyakki shūi. In his book, Sekien draws a lot upon history to either invent new yokai or to catalog yokai from famous stories. Many of these come from ancient China, as we’ve seen, as Chinese classics were a big part of Japanese literature. Others, like mekurabe, come from Japanese literature. Mekurabe was not made up by Sekien, although it was named by him. It first appeared in Heike monogatari—an epic poem which chronicles the long conflict between the Heike (aka the Taira clan) and Genji (aka the Minamoto clan). Remember those names! They come up a lot in Japanese folklore!

Mekurabe comes from a story in which Taira no Kiyomori (there’s one of those names!) encounters the creature in his garden. Kiyomori steps out into his garden and is shocked to see it is full of skulls. What’s more, the skulls are rolling about, left and right and all around, tumbling over each other. There are too many to count. Kiyomori shouted for help, but nobody heard him.

Just then, the countless began to gather together in the middle of the garden, clumping together, rolling up each other, and forming one giant mass. The skulls grouped together to create a single enormous skull, close to 45 meters in size!

The giant mass of skulls glared at Kiyomori out of its countless eye sockets.

Kiyomori took a breath, and recovered his bravery. He then glared back at the skulls.

Some time passed. Finally, the mass of skulls crumbled apart, melting like a snowflake in the sun, and vanished leaving no trace behind.

one of Tsukioka Yoshitoshi’s versions

So Taira no Kiyomori was pretty much a badass. Of course, he went on to establish the samurai-dominated government, which eventually became the shogunate, so (spoiler alert) we all knew he was going to win. I think my favorite part of this yokai is it’s name, which Toriyama Sekien chose masterfully!

Incidentally, the idea of things clumping together to form bigger things (as these skulls did) is not unheard of elsewhere in Japanese folklore. The first one that comes to mind is another yokai, gashadokuro, who not only is made from things clumping together, those things also happen to be skeletons, just like mekurabe. I wonder if they’re cousins? Another famous example is pebbles which are said to grow together and form into boulders over time. One such boulder is in Kyoto’s Shimogamo shrine. These rocks are even referenced in Japan’s national anthem.

And of course, if you’re about my age, you’ll surely remember the Constructicons, which kind of work the same way. When I was a kid I loved them! It always amazed me that someone would have come up with the bizarre idea of robots clumping together to form an even bigger robot. Of course this isn’t just the transformers, but all kinds of Japanese tokusatsu and sci fi movies and tv shows. Looking back at these now, through the lens of folklore, it makes a lot more sense!

My sketch of mekurabe, to be painted later, as part of the Kickstarter project

Greetings, oh ye who love yokai!

Today’s yokai cracks me up. There’s no shortage of yokai with a bit of sick or perverted humor (taka onna, shirime, iyaya, kurote, okaburo, just to name a few…) but I am always happy to see more! Just like horror movies need their fair share of sex and comic relief, yokai stories work well when you add in a little bit of crassness and bawdlery.

Byōbu nozoki
屛風闚
びょうぶのぞき
“folding screen (byobu) peeker”

Toriyama Sekien’s byobu nozoki

The byōbu nozoki appears in Toriyama Sekien’s book Konjaku hyakki shūi, his third book of yokai. In fact, a lot of the yokai we’ve looked at this past week come from this book. It includes a lot of yokai that he borrowed from Chinese sources, and some that he made up, but with fake histories connecting them to Chinese history.

Byōbu nozoki is a pretty funny yokai, and fairly straightforward. It is a tsukumogami of a byobu (aka a Japanese folding screen). According to Sekien’s description, this spirit haunts a byobu which has seen its fair share of “nocturnal activities,” shall we say. It is tall enough to peep over a byobu seven shaku high (a shaku is roughly 30 cm long, so this spirit is well over 2 meters tall).

Sekien’s description of a seven shaku byobu specifically references a story about the Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang, in which he leaped over a 7 shaku tall byobu to escape an assassination attempt; a legend which would have been known to well-read Japanese during the Edo period. In this way, he invents a nice little narrative and finds a way to give this amusing yokai a fake history, legitimizing it as more than something he just made up.

Below is my sketch of the byōbu nozoki as it will eventually appear in my Patreon project and Kickstarter once it is painted. If you’d like to see the finished painting, consider joining one of those!

My byobu nozoki

The Kickstarter rolls along, having completed one full week. Today, a new stretch goal has been unlocked: double the yokai postcards! Check it out!

Kosamebō
小雨坊
こさめぼう
“light rain monk”

Toriyama Sekien’s kosamebō

Kosamebō is a monk/priest yokai which appears in the mountains on drizzly nights. When a traveler passes near this yokai, it accosts them and begs for alms in the form of small change or food.

Toriyama Sekien specifically mentions Mount Ōmine and Mount Katsuragi—two holy mountains in the shugendō religion—as places where kosamebō may be encountered. However, other authors have mentioned kosamebō encountered in the Tsugaru area of Tōhoku, and other mountain ranges, so it does not appear to be limited to specific mountains or religious sects.

It should be noted that this yokai doesn’t do anything other than beg for coins or a bite to eat. It also doesn’t actually summon the rain, like other rain yokai do (ame onna, amefuri kozō)—it just appears on rainy nights. This begs the question: where is the yokai in all of this?? It sounds to me just like a regular old beggar monk!

Still, in his illustration, the kosamebō does look positively monstrous, and it’s fair to say that not all yōkai necessarily perform amazing tricks or feats. I suppose I can give this guy a pass. And far be it for me to question Toriyama Sekien!

My sketch of kosamebo, which will eventually become part of my Patreon project