Everybody’s favorite tree spirit is back today, with my illustration of Kodama from my upcoming book The Night Parade of One Hundred Demons. You most probably know Kodama as the cute little forest sprites in Hayao Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke. The truth is, they go back much further than that movie. They are the souls of trees, and have been part of Japanese folklore for centuries.

Kodama share a resemblance with another yokai we’ve seen previously: the Yamabiko. As you may recall, Yamabiko are responsible for delayed echoes and strange noises in the mountains. Similarly, when your echo comes back delayed or distorted deep in the forest, it can be blamed on a Kodama.

The oldest and most sacred trees — ones most likely to have a Kodama living inside them — are often decorated with the famous Shinto rope, known as a shimenawa. Shimenawa are commonly seen decorating shrines, rocks, trees, and other sacred objects and places. Next time you’re in the forest, look for these glowing spirits fluttering about in the twilight. Or, when you get home, check your camera. They most commonly show up in the flash photos, as Google Image Search illustrates.

Kodama

While we had a couple of cool, cloudy, rainy days last week, today’s weather is bright, hot, and muggy. The quintessential midsummer day. So instead of a soft painting in subtle blues and cool colors, here is a bright, hot one.

Today’s preview is another yokai we’ve seen before. I did a Houou for last year’s A-Yokai-A-Day project. So I won’t go too much into the details of its story, as you can read about it back there. Needless to say, though, it is the king of all birds, and I hope this very colorful piece shows that.

A little bit about my upcoming Kickstarter project…

We’re now coming into the final week of July! Holy smokes! That means soon I will be launching my Kickstarter project, which will run for the month of August. I will be trying to raise $2000 to cover the costs of publishing, printing, and so on through Amazon’s CreateSpace, as well as recoup some of the costs of working on this since January. I will have a larger breakdown of the costs when I launch the project next week. The give you an idea of the patronage rewards, the lowest will be simply $1, and it will include previews of all of the paintings like you’ve been seeing on my blog, as well as additional previews (such as the concept artwork that leads to the paintings) and previews of the actual text that will be in the book next to each yokai. These detailed previews won’t be public on my blog, so you’ll have to become a patron to see the extra stuff. Higher levels of patronage will include ebooks and lower-priced physical books signed by me, and there will be an option to buy any of the yokai in the book as a large, beautiful, matted print. They won’t be available individually on my Etsy store, so the only way to get prints of these will be as a patron. Finally, there will be some more, very interesting, patronage options at higher levels than that, which I will reveal next week along with the project. Basically, if you are thinking of buying the book, it will be very worth it to become a patron. I hope the previews so far have been enough to catch your interest! 🙂

Houou

Today was another overcast, cool, and slightly rainy day. Such a welcome respite from the July heat! I hear back home in the States some places are hitting well over 100 degrees. Yikes. Stay cool!

To go with today’s weather, and to help cool down all of you back in the great heat wave over North America, here is a refreshing cool, watery yokai. It is called Onibi, or demon fire, and it is found near lakes and rivers, especially on misty summer mornings and evenings. Onibi is usually a ball of phantom blue fire — sometimes red or orange — which hovers over the water’s edge. They bob up and down and are very beautiful and mesmerizing. Folks who get close enough to Onibi find out that it isn’t even hot to the touch, and it seems like a fun plaything except for the fact that it sucks the life force out of any living creatures that come near it… So if you see an inviting glow at a Japanese watering hole, stay away!

There is a very large number of fireball-type yokai. You’ve already seen Hitodama earlier, and now Onibi. There is another one which will be featured in this book as well, and a great deal that I won’t cover just yet. Collectively they are known as Hinotama, or literally “fireballs.” Good name, eh?

I think it’s interesting how there are some yokai that are so similar to European monsters. The English Will o’ Wisp, for example, is a near exact analogy to many of these Hinotama phenomena. It makes you wonder if there really isn’t something real behind most of these monsters and yokai. Maybe not something supernatural, but at the very least a common human experience, explained to the best of our abilities. Little things like this make me realize how small the world really is, and how even on the complete opposite side of the planet, we are all still the same human beings, with the same hopes, fears, and experiences.

Onibi

We’ve been under the shadow of a typhoon for the past few days, which has given us a welcome respite from the sweltering heat and scorching sun we’ve had this month. Thinking of the typhoon always makes me think of the tropics, and of my college years in Florida, so I painted this tropical yokai, the Kijimunaa, a native of Okinawa.

Kijimunaa live in Banyan trees, which also remind me of Florida. Our campus had a huge old banyan tree that was great for climbing. You could climb up to the roof of the school in that tree as long as no security guards were around.

These yokai are the quintessential forest boys. They’re almost a South Pacific version of Link. They live in trees, often near human villages, and occasionally do good deeds for virtuous human beings. They are excellent fishers, and help fishermen bring in catches. They are also tricksters and magicians, and have a very short fuse — once you anger a Kijimunaa, it will hate you for the rest of its life. One way to anger it is to refuse to come out and play when it asks you, no matter what time of day or night. Another way is to fart in its presence, which they really hate!

Their favorite food is fish eyes, so if you happen upon a beach and find some dead fish with no eyes, that’s a sign Kijimunaa are around!

Kijimunaa

Yesterday was a national holiday in Japan known as Marine Day. It’s meant to be “a day of gratitude for the blessings of the oceans and to hope for the economic prosperity of maritime Japan.” Certainly appropriate, considering how important the sea is for an island nation.

Of course, the sea is not just a source of bounty for Japan. It also can be a source of terrible tragedy, such as the tsunami earlier this year which began the whole current nuclear crisis. It also is a source of yokai — usually terrible ones — such as the one I am showing you today.

You may remember I painted an Ushi-oni from Shikoku last year, which was a large, horned, bear-like monster which terrorized villages. There are many different kinds of Ushi-oni, however, as the term simply means “bull demon” and can refer to pretty much any large, beefy, demonic yokai. This particular Ushi-oni hails from the Sea of Japan off of the coasts of western Japan. It scours the beaches for human prey, often working in conjunction with Nure-onna and Iso-onna to catch its prey.

Ushioni

One of the coolest mythical Asian animals is the Kirin. You may remember my earlier post on Kirin from last year’s A-Yokai-A-Day entry, so I won’t get into too much detail about what exactly a Kirin is.

You may remember earlier I mentioned how seasons are going to play a theme in this book. Fans of Haiku and other Japanese art may be aware of how important seasonal motifs are. In fact, there is even a specific word for seasonal vocabulary: kigo.

You can often tell the month of a Japanese painting by key flowers, animals, or activities inserted into the image. Hiroshige and Hokusai used seasonal motifs in many of their works, and the detail is so precise that you can almost arrange the paintings of their larger series into specific weeks of the year.

If you pay attention to the yokai in these book, you’ll notice similar clues as to when each picture takes place. (Of course, I’ve been uploading summertime images for the present time, simply because it’s summer. I’ll put up a few different seasonal pieces later on though.)

Kirin

The other night I was walking home at around 10:30 pm, and as I crossed a river I noticed a blue heron stalking frogs and fish in the dark water. It reminded me of a yokai called Aosagibi, or “blue heron fire,” and that is what I painted today.

Aosagibi occurs during the summer months near riversides. It’s a kind of phantom fire caused by herons and other water birds. When these birds reach an advanced age, their breast feathers fuse into reflective scales. Their breath begins to expel a yellowish powder, and on hot summer and autumn nights the powder ignites into brilliant blue flame. The birds’ feathers also begin to luminesce, giving an all-around eerie appearance to the creatures.

If you’ve ever been glared at by a huge heron mid-hunt, you know their sharp eyes can send chills down your spine. When they glow and spew blue fire too, well, it might just be time to run home!

The particular heron in this picture is a species called a “night heron.”

Aosagibi