Background: Overview Mythology Yōkai & Bakemono Folklore in Art Content: Mukashibanashi Densetsu Kaidan Kotowaza   Further Reading Resources

Yōkai and Bakemono: Monsters and Apparitions in Nippon As is true in every culture the world over, Japan's legendary landscape is populated with hosts of monsters and apparition of every kind. However, it is not a stretch to say that Japan probably has more such monsters, and quite certainly has a greater variety, than any other culture on earth. Such monsters hold cultural meanings that express fears, worries, and values much more clearly than the heroes of their stories often do. If mythic heroes are the ideal of behavior and conduct within their culture of origin, then monsters are the shadow side, the opposite of this ideal behavior, expressions of all that is feared and repressed. And thus yōkai 妖怪 ("bewitching apparitions") and bakemono 化け物 ("changed or distorted things") are the antithesis of ideal Japanese conduct. What makes yōkai and obake so unique is the volume of specifically described monsters, and the amount of information known on each one. True, there are apparitions such as the aosagibi, of which not much more is known than it is a black-crowned night heron which somehow possesses a mysterious flame; but then there are others, such as the sazaeoni, the okuri-ōkami, the dorotabō, etc., of which a specific origin story can be told and its behavior described in detail. Curiously, with the wealth of traditional folk monsters available to Japanese, the bakemono typically encountered in Japanese folk tales are left described only by the reader's or listener's imagination. Perhaps this is because each person has his own most frightening idea of a monster. Or perhaps it is because many yōkai, having origins in localized legends, were not widely known before the Edo Period (1603-1867), when they were painted and described for the masses by such artists as Toriyama Sekien, Utagawa Kuniyoshi, and Yoshitoshi Tsukioka, among others. And many obake, while having a strong tradition in the scrolls and prints of traditional artists, have little more than names. As is to be expected, the monsters and apparitions of Japan are of a quite different nature than those of the West. Let us first examine their name: bakemono, which comes from the verb bakeru, means a "changed thing". It is something that originally belonged to the natural world, but through some tragedy or mischief somehow became tainted or touched by the supernatural. Many times these obake are transformations of animals, such as foxes, tanuki, snakes, snails, frogs, cranes, etc. The origins of obake are varied. There are monsters that were always monsters: the kappa, the tengu, the aobozu, the ushi-oni. There are monsters that were originally inanimate objects: the tsukumogami, or one-hundred year old objects. There are monsters which were originally human: the futakuchi-onna, the dorotabō, the rokuro-kubi. And there are monsters that are nothing more and nothing less than mockeries of humanity and their religions: the nuri-botoke, the hitotsume-kozō; and there are monsters that are, as stated above, the transformations of animals. And there are countless more. But it is not the aim of Mukashibanashi Library to enumerate and describe these monsters. Thankfully, that is already being done quite skillfully by the webmistress of The Obakemono Project, a well-researched and brilliantly illustrated yōkai database. I cannot reccomend this site enough.