Yesterday I showed you Zashiki-warashi, which is named for the zashiki — a kind of room in a Japanese house. I mentioned that there are different kinds of zashiki-warashi, and they vary in terms of pleasantness. Most zashiki-warashi appear as young children, and while they love to play pranks and mess around, they’re generally well-liked yokai.  Today’s yokai has a much less wholesome image. This isUsu-tsuki-warashi. It’s named for a Japanese millstone, and has a slightly less wholesome image. Usu-tsuki-warashi is connected with ancient infanticide customs, in which an unwanted baby would be buried in a warehouse, in a dirt floor, or underneath the millstone.

Usu-tsuki warashi is said to cause general feelings of unease in houses that it inhabits. It crawls out from beneath the dirt floor and creeps about the house, making noises like someone pounding on a millstone (thus its name). It’s not a malevolent yokai, but it certainly can feel that way.

Unfortunately, it’s like that driving it out of the house would have the same ruinous effects that driving its more-pleasant cousin out would have… so a family with a Usu-tsuki-warashi may have to live with the creepy yokai rather than forcing it to leave.

Usu-tsuki-warashi

Today’s yokai is a little less sinister than yesterday’s. This is Zashiki-warashi, a house spirit which looks like a young child. It’s generally a harmless spirit, and it’s said that if you see one in your house, it will bring you good fortune (though it’s also said they are invisible to adults). However, if it ever leaves your house, you will fall into ruin. Zashiki-warashi are pranksters who like to make noise, move things about, and goof off in other ways. They’ll often jump on sleeping guests in the middle of the night, and then vanish before anyone can see them. They also like to play with anything in the house that makes noise, or run around singing Japanese “spirit music.” Another of their favorite pranks to do is to rub their feet in the ashes from the fire place and run around the house, leaving footprints everywhere. In some areas, people leave food out at night for the zashiki-warashi in hopes to keep it happy.

Zashiki-warashi

There are a number of variations on zashiki-warashi, and while this one is a prankster, it’s relatively pleasant. We’ll see a less pleasant variation tomorrow.

Today’s yokai is Hyosube. This nasty fellow is a cousin of the much-beloved Kappa, a slightly mischievous river spirit, however, Hyosube is much crueler. Those who cross one of these foul little wretches often find themselves sorry for it. Like the kappa,  he lives in rivers most of the time; but he likes to venture in to towns to, among other things, take baths in people’s houses. His body is covered in thick hair, which invariably gets left all over the bathroom, in the tub, and every he’s been. If you’re hairy like me, you know this problem only too well — we Meyers are a hairy bunch — (thankfully my wife likes hyosubes so she doesn’t seem to care).

There are a few stories of people who had unfortunate run-ins with a hyosube. In one story, a woman caught a hyosube who was trashing her eggplant garden. The hyosube got angry and destroyed all of the eggplants, and afterwards the woman turned purple and soon died. In another story, a man who went to take a morning bath found hairs and a horrible smell all over his bathroom, so he made sure to empty all the hot water after his bath that night. In retaliation, the hyosube killed his horse. In a third story, another man found his bathroom befouled by a hyosube and threw the dirty hairs and water out the window. Some of the hairs landed on his horse, which promptly died. (These stories were translated from the Japanese Wikipedia page on hyosube, as the English page just redirects to the page for kappa.)

Hyosube

I really love how this monster as well as yesterday’s monster both sound like stories someone made up to explain away a nasty relative. “Grampa Jim always drinks our beer and smokes all our cigarettes and acts like he owns this place!” could easily be a nurarihyon, while “Uncle Carl is so rude, he stinks, and he leaves his hair all over our bathroom whenever he bathes!” could easily be the origin for a hyosube.

It’s time to unveil my super-secret project that I have been planning in my head for months now, and should most certainly have preceded with more fanfare. I’ve been fascinated with Japanese monsters, yokai, for a very long time now, and October is my favorite month, for the weather, the smells, the sights, and of course, my favorite day of the year: Halloween. So in honor of Halloween, I’ve decided to make October a sort of yokai month. Every single day this month I am going to paint a yokai and post it here. It’s a big project, but it should be a lot of fun!

And that brings me too my first yokai-of-the-month: Nurarihyon. Nurarihyon is a great little guy. It’s said he is the most powerful of all yokai, and some also say he is the leader of the yokai. Nurarihyon looks like an old man with a gourd-shaped head. He sneaks into people’s houses and acts like he owns the place, drinking all their sake and smoking all their tobacco. I have no idea what happens if you walk in on a nurarihyon breaking into your liquor cabinet, but I imagine he’d just act like it was totally natural. The main reason I picked him is because he’s my wife’s favorite yokai, but there’s also something quite fun about painting wrinkly, stinky old men. Incidentally, my nurarihyon is drinking Kirin’s Aki Aji, my favorite beer (probably because of the beautiful can) which is only available in the fall.

Nurarihyon

This should be a fun project, so check back every day for more yokai. You can also look them up in Wikipedia and the Obakemono Project. And my favorite source for yokai-inspired artwork is Pink Tentacle, which frequently posts collections of old Japanese art.