12. Conclusion

     Japanese people created yokai, and have lived with them. Yokai are not just supernatural monsters, or animated characters for our entertainment. Yokai reflects our minds, our culture, and our history. Young people tend to forget their own important culture. We have to learn and maintain our culture’s background, and it leads that we can learn ourselves. Please remember your identity, or your important culture. It’s not always new things are important.

Thank you for reading our blog!

11. Social phenomenon and Yokai

     It is said that yokai get popular when a period change over, and there are two factors.

1.    The social dislocations, social disorder, corruption

2.    The darkness inside of human’s mind

     Those things are thought that Oni(ogre) of social or mind. The darkness in our social and our minds produce yokai. These days, we face sever social phenomena, for example, modification because of global warming, economic stagnation, suicide, illness, etc…. We create yokai, and yokai reflect our mind. We ourselves may be yokai or yokai are alive in our minds.

10. The development of media and Yokai

     Today, the folklore and the pictures of yokai are passed down by media. Because of the development of media, yokai are devided from tales and traditional context, and they are just represented visually. Yokai culture has been developing as common-people based culture and that makes yokai animated characters.

     As the media were developed, television, radio and mobile phones come into wide use, and yokai or ghost are changing because of that. Some yokai and ghost appear and spread from TV, or mobile phone. Yokai are adaptable to the change of culture.

9. Shigeru MIZUKI , a Japanese manga cartoonist

     It is said that youkai as animated characters were spread through Japanese culture by Shigeru Mizuki’s cartoons. Shigeru Mizuki, who was born in 1922 and he lost his left arm in World War II, is a Japanese manga cartoonist, a specialist in stories of yokai. He is considered a master of the genre. He is also known for his World War II memoirs, and his work as a biographer.

     His famous manga is “GeGeGe no Kitaro” that were written in 1965, and it is still popular with every generation. Mizuki has won numerous awards and accolades for his works, especially GeGeGe no Kitaro. It’s about a yōkai boy with a missing left eye and a large number of strange powers, who fights to keep peace between monsters and humans. His father, though dead, reanimated himself as an anthropomorphic version of his own remaining eyeball, and often guides Kitaro by riding around in his hair or empty eye socket.

 

8. The changing of drawing Yokai

     In the Edo period(1603-1867), yokai were becoming entertainment for common people. Until then, people were just afraid of yokai. However, people made horror stories about yokai, told each other, and began to draw yokai for their entertainment. In the present day, yokai have become the mascot or animated characters. People don’t draw yokai only fearful and evil but also cute and good.

 

 
 
 

7. Kappa

     If you’ve heard of any one yokai, it’s probably the kappa. Early the single most famous yokai in Japan, this amphibious creature has long been feared as vicious scourge of Japan’s rivers, swamps, coastlines, and other bodies of water. They are also known to take refuge in man-made structures such as cisterns and garden ponds. They are occasionally encountered on land in mountainous areas during the winter, when their watery homes freeze over. They can be tracked by their pungent body odor, said to be reminiscent of rotting compost. Kappa are traditional “bogeymen” invoked by Japanese parents to frighten young children away from playing near lakes and rivers unattended. According to one story, some nine thousands of the creatures swam en masse from China to Japan around the fifth century. Whatever their true origin, they have become the signature yokai of the Japanese folk pantheon.

 

6. Funny Yokai

There are many strange Yokai, and we will introduce some of them here.

*Azuki Arai

A furtive little fellow, often heard but only very rarely spotted alongside isolated streams and riverbanks, the Azuki Arai(literally, “Red Bean Washer”) is an unassuming sort of creature that is believed to resemble an odd-looking little human. It is preternaturally engaged in the act of washing azuki beans in the basket it carries for that very purpose, quietly mumbling a weird little tune all the while. When hikers or travelers curious as to the source of the sound make a closer approach, they can make out the words to the Azuki Arai song: “Wash me beans, or human to eat…..Shoki-shoki! Shoki-shoki!” (The last bit being onomatopoeia for the sound of azuki beans tumbling over one another as they are washed.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

*Tofu Kozo

Tofu Kozo is a small boy dressed in traditional clothes, armed with but a single weapon; a jiggly block of tofu on a plate. Encounters invariably take the same form. Someone is taking a walk on a pleasant, uneventful night. Ahead in distance, they can just make out what appears to be a tiny figure wearing a traditional straw hat. As they approach, they see that it is only a boy bearing a plate quivers what appears to be an expertly prepared and delicious-looking block of fresh tofu, adorned with a momiji(Japanese maple) leaf. If anyone tastes the tofu, they’ve fallen into the otherwise unassuming Tofu Kozo’s trap. Results vary. In some cases, those who eat the tofu walk away with absolutely no ill effects. In others, however, once even a morsel of the tofu is consumed, a virulent fungus begin to grow within the victim’s body, its fetid spores eventually draining it of all life.

 

5. Tengu

     Patrons of Japanese restaurants often encounter fierce red masks depicting the sausage-nosed face of the tengu, a strange and unpredictable creature said to make its home deep in the mountains. Many believe that this bizarre combination of man and bird still haunts remote forests, its unreal wings conveying it great distances in a heartbeat, and its fearsome eyes shining with the mischief it still perpetrates upon unwary humans. They are said to enjoy spreading chaos and confusion in the human world, punishing the vain, annoying the powerful and rewarding the humble folk who can join in their nocturnal merrymaking without fear. Sometimes they kidnap people and leave them wandering through the woods in a state of dementia called tengu-kakushi, but sometimes they are called upon to help lost children find their way home. In traditional art tengu are portrayed as human-like creatures with a bird's beak or a long and beak-like nose, wings and tail feathers on their backs, and claws on their fingers and toes. Some of the more monstrous depictions give them scaled digits or lips, pointed ears, mouths full of sharp teeth, three-toed bird's feet, or somewhat bat-like webbed flight feathers. Like many demons, they are often associated with the color red.

4. Oni (Ogre)

     Depictions of oni vary widely but usually portray them as hideous, gigantic ogre-like creatures with sharp claws, wild hair, and two long horns growing from their heads. They are humanoid for the most part, but occasionally, they are shown with unnatural features such as odd numbers of eyes or extra fingers and toes. Their skin may be any number of colors, but red and blue are particularly common. They are often depicted wearing tiger-skin loincloths and carrying iron clubs.

Oni are a key part of the Japanese holiday known as setsubun. This festival marks the start of spring, and the new year in the old lunar calendar. People in ogre masks are ritually driven away, symbolically warding off misfortune and evil for the coming year. Long ago oni could be repelled by the stench of burning sardines and other methods, but today it is most popular to toss soybeans (which oni are said to hate) and shout "Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi!" ("Out with demons! In with happiness!").

3. What are Yokai for us?

     Yokai, supernatural monsters, are reflection of people’s spirit and desire. We created the Yokai as an instrument for our own purposes. The Yokai have three main functions.

1.    Admonition

People use Yokai as a deterrent. For example, a parent will warn their child if they try to do dangerous or naughty things a Yokai will come to get that child.

2.    Explanation of Common Events

People want to explain common events that they cannot understand, so they use Yokai when they cannot do so otherwise.

3.    Explanation of New Discoveries

When people discover new things that are not intuitive, they use Yokai to explain such new things.

 

   People feel comfort in finding rational thoughts within chaos or disorder around us, and that may be one attraction of the Yokai. We will introduce some Yokai in the next blog.

2. How were Yokai created?

     Yokai first appeared in the Japanese book Kojiki which was published in the year 712. It is thought that Yokai was created when the Japanese culture began to develop. As human beings we tend to be afraid of what we do not understand. At the time when science or other knowledge was in early stages, people could not understand nor do anything to prevent natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes, or an epidemic. When the Japanese were faced with those kinds of problems, they created Yokai as a means of explaining such events and could take comfort in that having knowledge. Yokai are not just supernatural monsters, they have a psychological function.

1. Introduction

Hello, everyone. We are in our junior year in Aoyama Gakuin University in Japan, and we will introduce Japanese culture through this blog. This blog will follow the theme of “Yokai”. Do you know “Yokai”? This is it!

 

 

 

Yokai are a class of supernatural monsters in Japanese folklore. They range eclectically from the malevolent to the mischievous, or may occasionally bring good fortune to those who encounter them. Often they possess animal features, other times they can appear mostly human, some look like inanimate objects and others have no discernible shape.  Yokai usually have a spiritual supernatural power. So far there is no actual proof of the existence of Yokai. They originated as mythical tales and superstitions during a time when science could not yet prove common occurrences. The Yokai and accompanying tales perfectly exemplify the Japanese spirit and state of thinking at that time.