MatthewMeyer.net

illustrations, folklore, and blog

Sori no kanmushi & Umakan

Posted on February 22, 2017 by Matt

Greetings yokai fans!

Today I bring you two more fun yokai that live inside of you! I hope you’re all feeling well. 😉

In case you are wondering where your postcards are this month, there has been a slight delay and I haven’t been able to send them out yet. You may remember I asked last month about making new postcards. I ordered them at the end of January, and they were supposed to arrive in 10 days, but they haven’t come yet. So I’ve contacted the print company to find out what’s wrong, but for the time please wait a bit longer for January’s postcards. I will send them as soon as I get them!

And now, on to the good stuff!

The main reason I picked these two guys was because I thought they were cute. There’s not anything in particular connecting them, but I didn’t want to leave them out. I kind of feel that way with a lot of the critters in the Harikikigaki, but I had to draw the line somewhere, so I drew it right after these two. If you guys want to see more infectious yokai in the future, let me know and I’ll happily do some more!

In March I’m going to try to pick up the pace and complete a few more entries, since my painting speed has slowed down a bit during my move to Japan. As always, if you have any requests that you haven’t told me about yet, feel free to leave them in the comments!

This post was made possible by the generous support from my Patreon backers. If you like yokai and want to learn more, please consider pledging $1 per month to support my work.

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Stomach Bugs

Posted on February 18, 2017 by Matt

Greetings yokai fans!

It’s been one month since I touched down in Japan, and it’s been a busy one! But things are finally settling in and I’ve been able to get to making good progress on yokai again. We moved in to our house on February 4th, got heating installed the following week, making it actually possible to live there, and finally got internet access installed early this week, making it possible to live and work here full-time! I’m still setting up a studio space, but for now I am able to do my painting in the living room, bundled up under my kotatsu.

Today’s post probably would have been more fun on Valentine’s Day, with all the blood-sucking and increased libido and other traits these guys have, but sadly they weren’t ready by then. But I hope you’ll still enjoy them as a late Valentine’s Day present!

There’s one more set of bugs coming after this one, and after that I’ll be moving back to more “traditional” yokai!

This post was made possible by the generous support from my Patreon backers. If you like yokai and want to learn more, please consider pledging $1 per month to support my work.

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Spleen Bugs!

Posted on January 29, 2017 by Matt

Greetings yokai fans!

As I am fighting off a cold and some food poisoning, I am wondering how many of these little guys I have inside of me right now! But painting has been helping me to forget the discomfort. Hopefully you can enjoy these without having to feel their effects!

This post was made possible by the generous support from my Patreon backers. If you like yokai and want to learn more, please consider pledging $1 per month to support my work.

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Koseu & Oozakenomushi

Posted on January 21, 2017 by Matt

Greetings yokai fans!

I’m still battling jet lag after landing in Japan earlier this week. Most of this week has been spent house-hunting, registering with the city, getting my phone & accounts in order, and that kind of boring official stuff, but I have managed to squeeze in some painting time to work on these two guys.

The text these are from, the Harikikigaki, is an old book kept in the Kyushu National Museum. It details the human body, the five elements, and how they related to sickness. It’s based mostly on Chinese medicine and philosophy. I’m now working with a couple books based on the Harikikigaki that I didn’t have access to in the US, and since online sources only cover a handful of these “bugs,” I’m excited to get to do a little deeper work with more of them. Hopefully some of the upcoming ones will be new to the eyes of even the most dedicated yokai fans!

As you’ve seen with the previous parasitic yokai posts, I’m grouping them into pairs and trios based on shared traits. In this case, Koseu and Oozakenomushi are on the same page because they are both alcoholic bugs! Both of these guys live inside you and love sake, and of course cause you to drink too much. I really love the Koseu though, because not only can this bearded worm-bug speak, but it has a funny little umbrella protuberance on its head which blocks medicine, making him very hard to get rid of!

There will be another bug painting towards the end of this month, and sketches for that coming soon! I don’t yet have a proper studio space set up, so I’m squeezing in work whenever and wherever I have the chance.

More soon!

This post was made possible by the generous support from my Patreon backers. If you like yokai and want to learn more, please consider pledging $1 per month to support my work.

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Hishaku & Hinoshu

Posted on December 30, 2016 by Matt

Greetings yokai fans!

I hope you are all having a good holiday. New Years is just around the corner and I am preparing to head back to Japan to continue working on yokai!

Today I am posting the next set of microbial yokai. This posting covers two main types of these yokai, shu and shaku. We saw a kan no mushi last time and I talked a bit about that… Shu and shaku are hard to translate, so I ended up leaving their names as shu and shaku. The reason is because these are different types of bugs, and they are so tied in with Chinese magic that is becomes very hard to accurately translate them. I’ll try to do a bit of explanation here, before the posts.

Shaku have defined shapes and forms. They infect specific parts of the body each time, and are pin-pointable. Their illnesses are usually illness “of the blood” (a vague term in Chinese medicine, which I’m not advocating here, but just describing as the yokai are described in Edo-period textbooks!). The main idea behind this “theory” is that blood can become too hot or cold, or too slow, or too thin, and it causes various ailments. Shaku cause pain deep within the body. Shaku are tied to “in” (i.e. yin), the cosmic force of negativity and shadow.

Shu, on the other hand, do not have definite forms. They collect and dissipate, causing problems as they take various shapes. Shu cause pain on the surface of the body usually. Their ailments are not of the blood, but of the “ki” (another vague concept, called “chi” in Chinese, related to words like “reiki” — it basically means “energy”). Shu are related to “yo” (i.e. yang), the cosmic force of positivity and light.

If that’s a bit confusing, don’t worry, it is! If you read The Hour of Meeting Evil Spirits you’ll be a little familiar with in and yo and the cosmic forces, but that’s such a deep and confusing subject that it would take a whole other Patreon project to delve into its meanings. For our purpses, we just care about the yokai 😉 but it helps a bit to get a basic explanation of the energies we’re going to be talking about with these “disease yokai.”

Anyway, on to the yokai!

This post was made possible by the generous support from my Patreon backers. If you like yokai and want to learn more, please consider pledging $1 per month to support my work.

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Haimushi, Hashaku, and Kiukan

Posted on December 17, 2016 by Matt

Greetings yokai fans!

I hope the polar vortext is not making you too uncomfortable. It’s quite chilly here!

Of course in the cold weather, everyone seems to be catching colds, so it’s so appropriate that this month we’re looking at these “disease” yokai.

Our first three are ready. Hopefully you won’t catch one of them!

Haimushi http://yokai.com/haimushi/

Haishaku http://yokai.com/haishaku/

Kiukan http://yokai.com/gyuukan/

This post was made possible by the generous support from my Patreon backers. If you like yokai and want to learn more, please consider pledging $1 per month to support my work.

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Jikininki

Posted on December 4, 2016 by Matt

Greetings, yokai fans!

Tonight I bring you the jikininki. I included a creepy little tale that I really like! It’s based on Lafcadio Hearn’s story about the jikininki as well as an old story from Ugetsu Monogatari. It’s got just the right amount of creepiness to it. I think you’ll like it!

http://yokai.com/jikininki/

This post was made possible by the generous support from my Patreon backers. If you like yokai and want to learn more, please consider pledging $1 per month to support my work.

Become a Patron!