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Sansei (山精, さんせい)

Sansei literally means “mountain sprite,” unspritely as this yokai is. It originally comes from China, where it is known as sanki, or “mountain demon” — though it is not quite demonic either, having no horns.

Sansei has a single foot (like some other mountain spirits we have looked at), but his foot is turned backwards. He lives deep in the mountains and occasionally pays visits to woodcutters’ cottages and steals their salt. Why? To put on crabs, of course! Sansei’s favorite food is stone crab, which he likes to broil and sprinkle with salt to eat. Sansei is sometimes referred to as the leader of all of the animals of the mountains.

Though not very aggressive, they do sometimes attack humans. When this happens, if one calls out, “Hiderigami!” the sansei will flee in terror. However, if one calls out, “Sansei!” instead, that person will meet some horrible fate, such as falling ill or having their house catch on fire.

Nothing else is written about this yokai… but if you notice that your salt has gone missing, check your trash bin for crab shells!

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Hiderigami (魃 or 日照り神, ひでりがみ)

Today’s yokai originally comes from ancient Chinese myth, but like many mythical Japanese beasts has changed quite a bit from its Chinese form. Its name means “drought spirit” or “drought god,” and can be written a few different ways, as you can see above. The kanji used for hiderigami is normally read batsu, which is the name of the Chinese beast it derived from; however, the reading hiderigami has been slapped on to that character in what is known as an ateji (free Japanese grammar lesson of the day!). It also goes by the name kanbo (旱母), which means “drought mother.”

According to the Wakan Sansai Zue (an 18th century encyclopedia) and Toriyama Sekien, a hiderigami looks like a hairy humanoid, stands between 2 and 3 feet tall, has a single eye on the top of its head, only one arm and one leg, and runs as fast as the wind. (How he does this with only one leg I have no idea…) Additionally, wherever a hidergami goes, rain will not fall — which is how it gets its name.

The original Chinese version of this beast was a god (or rather goddess, as they were all female) of drought. Not surprisingly, it was a god to be feared, as the devastation of a severe drought could be widespread and last a very long time. Despite the incredible threat to humanity that they pose, it is said that if you throw a hiderigami into a toilet, it will die…

I find it interesting that another yokai which came from ancient China, ame-onna, was also once a powerful goddess that sort of devolved into a yokai when it was brought to Japan…

Today’s presentation at Camden County Library went well and was really fun! I’ll have video up soon so the rest of you can see. Thanks so much to everyone who could make it. I really enjoyed meeting you all!

Today’s yokai is another funny and cute little creature. It resembles a Japanese magonote, or backscratcher. I really love that word — magonote. In Japanese, it means “grandchild’s hand.” Of course, one of a little kid’s common chores is to scratch his granparents’ back, so the idea that a portable backscratcher is called a granchild’s hand just cracks me up…

Nyoijizai (如意自在, にょいじざい)

Nyoijizai first appears in a Hyakki Yagyō Emaki (a genre of picture scrolls depicting the night parade of one hundred demons, i.e. a lot of yokai!) from the Muromachi period (1337-1573), though it is just an unnamed character in those early scrolls. It was finally given a back story and a name by Toriyama Sekien, in his Gazu Hyakki Tsuruzure Bukuro (Illustrated Bag of One Hundred Random Demons, published 1781).

Sekien decided that this yokai looked like a priest’s staff, called a nyoi, and dubbed it a tsukumogami of a holy staff. However, its resemblance to a magonote was not lost on the clever artist, and he made its name a play on words. While nyoi means a priest’s staff, it can also mean “as you wish,” and jizai means “freely.” While it evokes a willful priest’s staff, its name also literally means, “exactly as you please.” Sekien must have had a chronic itchy back, because his description this yokai talks about that place in the center of your back that you just can’t scratch no matter how hard you try. According to him, this yokai solves that problem for you by allowing you to freely scratch any place as you wish, exactly as you please. What an amazingly useful yokai!

Sekien really loves his double meanings… but those claws! I’m not sure I would want one of these scratching my back…

Only five days remain for The Hour of Meeting Evil Spirits on Kickstarter! Don’t miss out on your chance to get a collector’s edition hardcover, original paintings and prints, and have your name immortalized as a backer in the credits of the book!

Only 6 days left on the Kickstarter!

For anyone in the Philadelphia/South Jersey region this weekend: I will be giving a presentation on yokai and Japanese ghosts at the Camden County library in Voorhees on Saturday at 4 pm. Admission is free. You can preregister here to save a seat, but you don’t have to pre-register to attend.

I’ll be discussing a couple of interesting and strange yokai, talking about the theme of my next book, The Hour of Meeting Evil Spirits, and telling a few scary ghost stories! I’ll also have some books available, or bring your own and I will sign it for you. I hope to see you there!

Now, on to today’s yokai:

Eritategoromo (襟立衣, えりたてごろも)

Eritategoromo is a tsukumogami (a household item possessed by a spirit) of a kimono. Its name means “the cloth with the standing-up collar,” and it refers to a specific type of kimono — the ceremonial robes of a very high Buddhist priest. Certain priest robes have a very large, triangular collar which goes up the back of the head, almost like a hood but not quite. It is this type of robe which became this yokai — the long collar transforming into a long, pointed nose. (It also sprouted eyes and a beard!)

Eritategoromo is not just any old high priest’s robe. It is actually the kimono which once belonged to a tengu! And not just any old tengu either, but specifically Sōjōbō, the King of the Tengu, who lives on Mount Kurama in Kyoto. Sōjōbō is a fearsome and powerful god, with the strength of 1000 ordinary tengu. He is a master swordsman, and was responsible for training a number of famous legendary heroes of Japan, such as Minamoto no Yoshitsune. Though he is a mountain hermit and great trainer, like any tengu, Sōjōbō has a dark side too; he is said to eat children who come into the mountains alone at night.

Sōjōbō was not always a tengu. He was born a human, and became a very famous high priest. Sōjōbō mistakenly believed that he had reach enlightenment during his lifetime and expected to become a Buddha when he died… however, he was wrong and transformed into a tengu instead. (Tengu, of course, being the classic example of pride, lost virtue, and everything else that Buddhism stands against.) Even as a tengu, though, the proud Sōjōbō continued his priestly training, and continued to wear his extravagant high priests robes. Either because of his his extreme pride, or because of the magical nature of tengu, some spirit became attached to his high-collared priest robes and they became this yokai.

How the eritategoromo came to be known by humans is not known. Perhaps some pious monk braved the vicious tengu clans and climbed to the summit of Mount Kurama and nicked it… Maybe Minamoto no Yoshitsune took it back with him… Or perhaps it sprang to life and ran away on its own… Who knows?

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Most yokai stories involve people reaping what evil they sow, or simply just getting screwed over for no apparent reason… Every now and then there is a story about someone who gets a reward for helping a yokai, but it is almost always attached to some twist where he asks for more and more reward and ends up getting screwed over again in the end. Very rarely are there any yokai who just help people… so today I chose one that does just that!

Ouni (苧うに, おうに)

You have to be careful not to get ouni mixed up with the oni. The names look and sound almost exactly the same, but they are very different yokai!

Ouni is a kind of yamauba. While we’ve looked at a few different variants of evil yamauba, including Kurozuka/onibaba, there are also yamauba which can be personable, even downright friendly. Ouni is one of the nice yamauba.

Ouni looks like an ugly old woman with an angry face and a body covered in long, black hair. She appears at houses and huts out in the countryside or up in the mountains late at night. She asks the owners of the house to give her lodging and a meal for the night. If they are kind and invite her in, she stays the night, and during the night she spins an enormous amount of thread for the family, and then vanishes without a trace. In some stories, the owner runs out to thank the old woman, but all he can find are her footprints.

The name ouni comes from 苧 (karamushi), or ramie, which is an East-Asian plant that can be spun into thread and used for textiles. So her name comes from the plant which she spins into thread for her generous hosts. Alternatively, she is sometimes called wauwau, which has no meaning at all but sounds really funny!

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Today’s yokai contains an interesting little etymology tidbit, so make sure you read all the way to the end! I’m sure you’ll find it quite “scary!”

Kowai (狐者異, こわい)

Today’s yokai first appeared in the Ehon Hyakumonogatari, a collection of illustrated ghost stories published in 1841.

Kowai is the ghost of a glutton. Someone who loved food so much that they even ate other people’s portions in life would carry that attachment to food into his next life, transforming into this yokai when he died. Kowai stumbles about towns, rooting in trash bins, digging at carrion, and assaulting food stalls and shopkeepers just to get one more precious bite. It was illustrated attacking an udon stand, and according to yokai researcher Tada Katsumi, this is because the soft noodles are so easy to digest that they go right through you, leaving you hungry again very soon after you eat — very appropriate for this ever-starving yokai!

While this yokai has nothing to do with Buddhism, it strongly echoes Buddhist doctrine, where attachment in life determines which world one reincarnates into in the next life. In Buddhism, those with severe attachments to material goods (food in particular) will reincarnate into the realm of the hungry ghosts, sometimes called preta in English, or gaki in Japanese. The world of the hungry ghosts is awful — you are gaunt, starving, and so blinded by your hunger that you stuff anything you can find into your mouth, making focusing on spiritual pursuits and enlightenment utterly impossible. It is a life of pure suffering and torment, and when your life as a hungry ghost ends, you get another chance to reborn as something else. Kowai is a yokai, so it is not related to Buddhism, but it bears a remarkably strong resemblance to a gaki. No doubt whoever thought it up was influenced by that religious belief; and readers of the Ehon Hyakumonogatari would probably recognize the connection as well.

Finally, IMHO one of the neatest things about this yokai is its name. It is written with 狐 (ko; “fox”) 者 (wa; “person”) 異 (i; “strange”), so could literally be translated as “weird fox person.” Presumably this ghost sniffing around trash resembles a fox. But students of Japanese may also be familiar with the word 怖い (kowai). According to the Ehon Hyakumonogatari, this yokai is actually the origin for the word “kowai“, which is the Japanese word for “scary.” Cool huh? Whether or not this is actually true, I do not know… but hey, if it is written in a very old book, it has to be true, right? Right??

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Today the Kickstarter pledge level broke 500%, which means that a new stretch goal has been unlocked and five extra yokai will be added to the book! Everybody wins!

Umi-zatō (海座頭, うみざとう)

Umi-zatō is a gigantic, old, blind zatō who roams about the surface of the sea, tapping the waves with his cane. I talked about zatō earlier this month (on the te-no-me entry), but in summary, zatō is a term for blind men from the Edo period who performed one of a few designated jobs — massage and biwa being two of them. Umi-zatō is usually depicted carrying a large sack for carrying a biwa.

Today’s yokai is truly a mysterious one. There are almost no stories about the umi-zatō, and the earliest known paintings of umi-zatō did not come with any descriptions. It is very likely that it is a yokai invented solely for decoration. However, that has not stopped researchers and folklorists from speculating about its nature…

Because there are no stories about umi-zatō attacking people, it was long believed that they were just peaceful old zatō who roam the seas, not harming people. However, more recently, yokai researchers have speculated that umi-zatō is dangerous after all. Because he bears such a strong resemblance in appearance and in name to another yokai called umi-bōzu, it is now commonly accepted that umi-zatō is a variant species of umi-bōzu. Umi-zatō are said to beckon ships at sea towards them, and when the ships get close enough to reach, they flip them over and capsize them. They also occasionally swallow entire boats whole. The chief difference between umi-zatō and umi-bōzu is that the former seems to be a lot more congenial. If your ship does end up being attacked by an umi-zatō, all you have to do is reply to his demands in a polite and docile manner — the umi-zatō will disappear and leave you alone.

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