Introduction to Japanese Mythological Creatures

My favorite creatures from Michael Dylan Foster's The Book of Yokai

Some quick programming notes:

• Although I changed the blog's URL, the old URLs will still function.

• I realized that Substack’s editor doesn’t catch typos well, so I want to apologize for all the errors in the previous piece. Going forward, I will run my writing through Grammarly before engaging in manual edits

• I will be submitting a book review to Freddie deBoer’s contest, which is why I haven’t published anything recently. Assuming it doesn’t win, I will publish the review on this blog once the contest concludes. I think you will all enjoy it.

• The following article will feature many Japanese nouns. To my understanding, Japanese lacks a plural, so I will treat all words as both singular and plural, as we do with “fish” in English. Second, I will ignore special characters. There’s no “ō” on my keyboard, so there won’t be any in the rest of the article.

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I’ll start with the obvious question, what the heck is “yokai?” Roughly speaking, “yokai” refers to the monsters of Japanese mythology and folklore. However, not all supernatural figures are yokai. Religious texts mention gods or spirits called “kami.” These kami can occupy mountains, boulders, creeks, and almost anything else in the natural world. There’s no clear dividing factor between yokai and kami, though we can generalize kami as being more beneficial than yokai. If a spirit helps one village and harms another, the former may recognize it as a kami while the latter despise it as a yokai. Some scholars define kami as worshipped yokai, but the positive/negative distinction doesn’t hold in all cases. Some yokai, such as the tofu boy, foretell good luck, while some kami display erratic and violent behavior. Japanese folklore also features yurei (roughly, ghosts), and scholars disagree over whether yurei represent a type of yokai or a separate sort of creature. Readers may also recognize the “kai” syllable from the term “kaiju.” “Kaiju” refers to the giant monsters we’re familiar with, like Godzilla, and we don’t see many kaiju in traditional folklore.

I’ll provide some additional details about yokai before discussing their history. First, yokai don’t just appear in folktales and mythological literature. Many yokai have gained popularity from local festivals and architecture, while others appear in modern popular media enjoyed outside the country. Second, it’s hard to say if people believe in yokai. Foster posits that many Japanese people have held a middle ground between “believe” and “doubt” when it comes to these creatures. Finally, I should note that Japanese folklore doesn’t always focus on monsters. Foster provides examples of human heroes, such as the wizard Abe no Seimei.

The Book of Yokai follows a tradition of providing long lists of these creatures. During unification, anthologies of scary stories spread throughout the islands. Later eras featured book-like encyclopedias and scrolls with sillier versions of the creatures. To speed through the history a bit, illustrators such as Kunio Yanagita, Mizuki Shigeru, and Miyata Noboru, helped popularize the monsters in the 20th century. Today, one can find Yokai in tourist traps, video games, and English-dubbed anime. One might view this as consumerist degradation of folklore, but, in some ways, this continues the trend of yokai serving current cultural needs. As Japan industrialized in the Meiji Period, philosopher Inoue Enryo attempted to rationalize or debunk traditional beliefs about yokai. Lafcadio Hearn, a foreign-born scholar, promoted nationalism in his study of yokai during the Russo-Japanese war. One WW2-era film showed Oni, a demon creature you’ll meet in the next section, living in Hawaii.

True to both Foster’s book and yokai history, the remainder of this article will contain a list of yokai. I will start with the five that Foster considers the most important before adding the ones that I find interesting, scary, or funny.

The Non-Personality Big Five

Oni

Translated as “demon” or “ogre,” these large, bipedal beasts feature claws, fangs, and horns. Their faces are yellow, red, blue, or black, and they carry iron swords. One finds them in Buddhist illustrations of hell. Though usually evil, some consider oni to be representives of their underdogs, and their muscular stature might have referenced to rural miners and metalworkers.

Humans tend to fight oni, and humans usually win. In one story, oni capture the wives of government officials and hide them in a nearby mountain. The emperor then orders a warrior, Raiko, to fight the oni and return the detained women. Raiko and his comrades pray for the help of Buddhist deities and traverse the mountains dressed as ascetics. In the mountains, these deities provide Raiko and his friends with magical alcohol that both harms oni and empowers humans. Raiko later finds the oni and incapacitates them by tricking them into drinking the beverage. The hero then finds and beheads the ogres’ leader. The other oni then awake from their alcohol poisoning before the warrior defeats them too. Finally, Raiko returns the captured women to the capital, where the locals celebrate his heroism.

Non-heroic individuals also defeat oni. In one tale, children steal a pair of magic boots from a sleeping oni, allowing the children to fly to safety. In another, a child called Peach Boy leads a dog, horse, and pheasant against an island of oni. After defeating them, the demons confer treasure to the invaders and promise to cease their evildoing.

Foster provides other details about oni that do not involve tales of good triumphing over evil. Though almost all oni are male, the author presents one story in which a human woman became an oni after killing her husband. A few ceremonies also feature oni. In one, young men don oni-like outfits and pretend to scare their family and neighbors. In another, children ward off oni by tossing beans around the house. Finally, the term “oni” once referred to yokai in general, though it now refers only to the demon creature discussed in this section.

Tengu

Though tengu translates to “heavenly dog,” Foster describes them as mountain goblins. Folklore once portrayed them with avian characteristics, but they now look like Buddhist monks with long, red noses. They often oppose the real monks, teaching a sort of dark art that leads its followers away from enlightenment. For example, one story shows a tengu disciple healing an emperor. After doing so, however, the man repents for deploying such evil magic. This tengu-Buddhist dichotomy occurs outside of folktales. Rival sects sometimes accuse the other of being tengu, and previous Buddhist teachings portray the tengu realm as belonging to those who fell prey to evil. Tengu also enjoy fighting. One tale shows them teaching a common man their surreptitious martial artistry so that he can avenge his father’s death.

When they weren’t teaching martial or dark arts, tengu liked to kidnap young men and boys. The Japanese term for this act translates to something like “spiriting away,” which you may recognize from the Miyazaki film. Spiriting away tales usually take the following form: a young male will recall an older man taking him to a mysterious area such as an abandoned house. The listener will assume that a tengu had committed the crime, even if the creature doesn’t appear in the story. Victims rarely suffer physical harm from the kidnapping, and some enjoy a feast in their secret location.

Kappa

Kappa live near the water and look like a mixture between a monkey and a turtle. These monsters love to wrestle, and they gain extra strength when water lay on their heads. Opponents can nullify this strength by asking them to bow before a fight. Kappa adore cucumbers, so locals attempt to prevent floods and droughts by leaving cucumbers at kappa shrines. They despise iron, and Foster notes that we see a similar antipathy towards iron in water spirits around the world. The mythical turtles also boast impressive medical knowledge, as shown by a tale where a human doctor learns to heal bones from a kappa.

These turtle monkeys also contain a darker side. Many tales show kappa attempting (and usually failing) to drown horses and cattle, and parents will often dissuade their kids from swimming in a local pond by warning of kappa. The last important trait is the strangest. Kappa like to stroke human butts, usually in an attempt to steal a fictional ball said to sit in front of the anus

If you’ve played an Animal Crossing game, you’ll recognize Kapp’n as a kappa. For those unfamiliar with the series, Kapp’n takes the player on a boat ride to a distant island. This seems relaxing. With the relevant background of kappa, though, one can see the dark humor: the player is hopping on a boat with a creature that likes to drown things. I also can’t help but realize the similarity between the word “kappa” and “Koopa,” the latter being the turtle specie in the Mario series as well as Bowser’s Japanese name. Yet, I don’t think Bowser is a kappa. I can’t recall the villain spending much time near the water, and I don’t imagine him possessing much medical knowledge. He also displays a disappointing lack of interest in Mario’s anus.

Kitsune

Kitsune, or foxes, cause a lot of trouble. As shapeshifters, they sometimes turn into gorgeous women and tempt husbands into leaving their wives. In one instance, a kitsune deceived a husband into leaving his family and living among the kitsune. His family panicked during his absence until a mysterious man broke into their home and rescued the husband from a storehouse. Though he only left for a couple of weeks, the short time in the kitsune family felt like years to him. The husband apologized for his infidelity, and a local monk cleansed and exorcised him. In another story, a husband returned home to find two copies of his wife. He removes one of them from the household, believing her to be the kitsune. The husband chose incorrectly, as his children later noticed a tail on the woman. The kitsune ended the relationship after the revelation, though she helped the family avoid taxes by making their rice stalks appear bare.

When temptation and trickery don’t work, kitsune can possess people. One kitsune possessed a human to beg for rice cakes from the household. Another kitsune possessed a man as revenge, blaming the man for killing a kitsune in a previous life. Upon his death, the man reincarnates as a dog and takes his own revenge on the kitsune. Sometimes the roles reversed, as some human families were said to control kitsune.

Folklore also associates kitsune with fire. Some depictions show a fox creating fire with its tail. Villagers might attribute a mysterious fire to kitsune in older eras, and Japanese sun showers have earned the name “fox’s wedding.”

Not everyone associates kitsune with evil, however. Kitsune act as the messenger for Inari, a kami representing fertility and harvest. One will find kitsune statues guarding Inari shrines.

Tanuki

Tanuki, or raccoon dogs, share some traits with kitsune. They also live in the countryside and enjoy shape-shifting. Unlike kitsune, they’re generally less menacing and more whimsical. While kitsune tempt men with femme fatale transformations, tanuki prefer the appearance of a chubby monk. Their shape-shifting attempts often fail. One mythical tanuki tried to trick a buyer into thinking he was a tea kettle, only to break the illusion by complaining about the heat.

Tanuki can also shape the world around them. They sometimes employ this power for trolling, but often use it to battle modernity. A late-nineteenth-century tale shows a tanuki attempting to stop a bullet train by making its conductor hallucinate a rival train. In a 1960s film, tanuki take various shapes to prevent the construction of suburbia.

Others

Kuchi-Sake-Ona

If you’re going to bed soon, you might want to skip this one. The slit-mouthed woman looks like an attractive young woman wearing a medical mask. Note that these masks were popular in Japan before COVID. She will approach you and ask if she looks pretty, and, if you choose “yes,” she will lower her mask and reveal a Joker-esque slit face. She will then ask if she still looks pretty. If you again answer in the affirmative, she will cut your face to look like hers. If you answer “no” to this question or either query, she will stab you.

Besides being nightmare fuel, I found it interesting that this monster exploded in popularity in the late 1970s. It shows that folklore is alive among us, and not relegated to a more primitive time. Foster argues that this character represented other social phenomena in the country, such as over-ambitious mothers or women’s liberation.

Ninmenju

For this human-faced tree, the most intriguing aspect is its origin. The ninmenju came to Japan through China by way of Persia, where it referenced Alexander the Great. In other words, Alexander the Great is a Japanese monster.

Mokumokuren

Portrayed as a group of eyes growing in an abandoned home, these guys represent the feeling of being watched while alone. Foster compares to this modern surveillance state, but a different comparison pops into my head. As I write this article, I feel some pressure to “be productive.” I don’t make any money from this blog. No one will care if I release it next week rather than this one. Yet, I feel someone watching me and judging me for not typing faster. Must be the mokumokuren.

Mukade

I think centipedes look scary, and the Japanese agree. Foster tells of one adventure where a hero defeats a giant mukade wrapped around a mountain.

I might be stretching here, but I wonder if Super Mario Odyssey took influence from this. In that game, a climactic boss fight takes place on the tallest building in a fantasy city based inspired by NYC. The set piece resembles King Kong, but Mario fights a giant mechanized bug rather than an ape.

Tsuchigumo

In earlier eras, conquers used these spiders as a bigoted caricature of the conquered. Later on, the spider served as a vanilla villain, a hero slaying a giant one and finding dozens of skulls in its body.

I mention this one because I recently read parts of an anthology of Native American folklore. In that book, multiple stories also mention evil spiders. There must be something about spiders that all humans find eerie.

Jinmenken

This is a dog with a human face. He’s a new yokai like the slit-mouthed woman, first appearing around 1989. He eats trash and, if you confront him, he’ll say “just leave me alone.” Not all yokai are scary!

Kamaitachi

This weasel cuts those who pass by with a sickle, causing a strange wound that doesn’t bleed. This creature likely exists to explain a strange injury seen in a part of Japan, where people will find bloodless wounds despite nothing cutting them. Scientists have attempted to explain this injury via air vacuums that occur during thunderstorms, but no one knows why they occur.

Tsukomogami

These are common household objects that gain a spirit after 100-ish years. I think we feel something similar to tsukomogami in our own lives, refusing to throw out unused objects as if they gain character while they age.

Yamabiko

Yamabiko cause the echo heard in the mountains. The description interests me more than the creature does since the term “echo” references Greek mythology. I think back to my last article, where I discussed how language evolves due to metaphors. It’s funny to think about one mythological figure being explained via another.

Azuki-Arai

Azuki-arai translates to “bean washer.” They wash beans.