The Japanese proverb, Minu ga Hana, translates to ‘not seeing is the real flower’.
As long as man has seen the world, man has wondered about what we cannot see and gone great lengths to discover it. However, the flower that sounded so beautiful in poems may disappoint when one finally lays eyes on it; mysteries of the natural world are sometimes lifted just to welcome an all too pedestrian explanation. In cultures across the globe, scientific explanations were not developed, the unseen was left unseen; mankind filled gaps in knowledge with stories or beings, products of their imagination. These solutions shapeshift across history, traditions develop and diminish: this is the nature of folklore. Folklore is not controlled by governments, schools, or established religious institutions….This is one reason folklore is able to change so easily-because nobody controls it.1 And yet the imagination that folklore stems from controls almost everything affiliated with history and culture. It has dictated all the lives of the past, caused numerous conflicts and simultaneously united many peoples. Even as we marvel at how advanced mankind has become, the human imagination still seems to play as large a part in our society as it did a very long time ago. I will focus on Japanese folklore over the next few pages, the concept of yōkai in particular, beginning with a more in-depth analysis on how they originate, before a brief history, an overview on where they stand today and finally answering the question of why they are so important to Japanese culture.
The word yōkai came into existence long after what it describes was born. Other terms have been used in the ancient periods to describe the sort of thing that yōkai encompass. Mono-no-ke has no direct translation but it refers to something along the lines of ‘thing (mono) of (no) strange (ke)’ The word can be used to describe mysterious phenomena of all kind. Many people who live in desolate countryside homes, have experienced the feeling of being kept up at night by strange creaks or sounds in the walls and ceilings surrounding them. Nowadays, we understand this phenomenon to be caused by the cooling and contracting of the compounds that make up our homes overnight. However, during the ancient periods of Japan, there was no explanation for it and the event could be classed under the term mononoke. On the other hand, people searched for solutions as people do, maybe out of fear or just curiosity but one way or another, a path of reasoning was formed. This gave birth to the yanari – a collection of very small troll-like yōkai who carry tiny wooden kanabos or mallets. Yanari only do one thing, and they love doing it: making noise. They come out from the floors, ceilings, and the woodwork late at night when everyone is in bed, and they run about the house performing mischief. Specifically, they bang the furniture, the walls, floors, ceilings, and anything else they can find.2 The yanari are a prime example of yōkai as explanations for the unknown and they can teach us about the way Japanese people used to think. It seems there was an assumed idea that there was an intelligent entity behind the phenomenon. This touches on one of the most important foundations of Shinto belief: reikon or the idea that everything in existence is animated, that all things possess a soul. The concept of an abundance of spirituality both beyond and within our reach was common throughout Japan. Yōkai as explanations for unexplained phenomena is just one facet, however, many of them serve the same function as many western fairy tale creatures. I will talk about some of these later on although I will briefly mention one now as I feel that it allows for a different perspective of purpose in regards to yōkai. Some of the earliest Japanese texts are regional gazetteers, known as fudoki, which contained all sorts of historical and geographical records as well as local legends, myths, folktales, rituals, and beliefs.3 An old fudoki from the Hizen Province refers to the tsuchigumo or ‘earth spider’ as a creature of the land. The tsuchigumo has become a popular but spooky yōkai with many influences in media culture. However it was recently discovered that the word tsuchigumo was originally used by the authors of the fudoki as an ethnic slur directed at the natives of the province, the Yamato people, who they were trying to conquer. Over time, this dehumanising propaganda developed into fictional characters. The origin story of the tsuchigumo demonstrates a divide between ancient Japanese people, teaching us how they perceived each other and the land around them. These fudoki, riddled with folklore, have the potential to teach us more about the old geopolitical situations in Japan than any other source. The Hizen Province fudoki is an effective symbol of their relevance.
In these next paragraphs I will give a brief account of the ‘shapeshifting’ history of yōkai, looking at important events and individuals, beginning with the earliest known texts in Japan, the Kojiki (712) and Nihonshoki (720). Literature was key in the development of yōkai and these two texts mark its beginnings. They concern Shinto mythology and the creation of the world. Izanagi and Izanami, the primordial deities who are said to have formed the earth were the mother and father of all kami or Shinto gods. I support the opinion as do many folklorist scholars that kami and yōkai are almost interchangeable. Folklorist anthropologist Komatsu Kazuhiko suggested that yōkai are “unworshipped” kami and kami are “worshipped” yōkai4. This point captures my interest as it proposes a very strong link between yōkai and Shinto Buddhism, the main religion in Japan. The idea is reinforced by the shared concept often called ‘animism’ which I mentioned previously. Various mystical creatures are also referred to in these early texts, such as when the God Susanoo slays the nine-headed dragon Yamata no Orochi.
The following bout of history surrounds Heian Period Japan and it was around this time that Chinese influence was playing a considerably large role in Japanese society. The Onmyōji were a classification of civil servants belonging to the bureau of Onmyō in Japan’s Ritsuyo system. They were practitioners of Onmyōdō, a divinatory and geomancy practice with roots in Chinese yin-yang and five-element philosophies. The Onmyōji had very important roles and tasks in society such as creating the calendar but the one which was regarded as the most important was predicting the time and location next hyakki-yagyō or ‘night parade of 100 demons’. Supposedly, this was a monthly event where malicious yōkai would pour out of a rift in the sky and setting your eyes upon them was enough to kill you. The term hyakki-yagyō is now more commonly used as an idiom to describe anything in relation to the supernatural. Before I say more on the parade, I should note that the Onmyōji were believed
to have possessed the ability to tame and control certain spirits which would become their shikigami; yokai that would do their bidding. Abe no Seimei was the most famous of the Onmyōji and he is said to have controlled 14 shikigami. On the contrary, Historical evidence suggests that Abe no Seimei himself was nothing more than a “middle-ranking bureaucrat”.5 There is an intriguing implication here that everything to do with yōkai which is rooted in the Onmyōji may have simply stemmed from government propaganda. Nevertheless, the concept of powerful sorcerers having spirits to do their bidding has inspired many famous franchises today such as Pokémon and Yu-gi-Oh!
The hyakki-yagyō developed a renewed popularity in Edo Period Japan. By this time, the governmental system had changed and so had the public view of yōkai. Yōkai had previously been associated with mystery and danger but during the Edo Period’s art boom, the hyakki-yagyō and yōkai in general became a big theme of emaki picture scrolls and were therefore made more entertaining and even comedic at times. This drastic change could be seen as the starting point for how yōkai are portrayed today. Toriyama Sekien (1712-1788) was a leading member of this yōkai art movement: He wrote numerous books which were more like bestiaries with side notes, the most famous being gazu hyakki yagyō (The illustrated night parade of 100 demons). These became wildly popular and helped to spread the culture of yōkai even further throughout Japan. A final major factor of the Edo Period that heightened the popularity of yōkai was the annual tradition of hyakumonogatari. On summer evenings, families and friends would come together to tell a multitude of ghost stories that almost always involved yōkai. Tales from the northernmost regions of Japan about wind weasels in the mountains would find themselves being retold on the southernmost island, along with stories of gigantic catfish causing earthquakes at the bottom of the sea. It was this rapid unifying popularity that, in essence, demonstrates the importance of the Edo Period. Yōkai have reached this level of importance in Japanese culture because they were universally accepted so early on. The widespread popularity of yōkai that the art, theatre, traditions and literature of the Edo Period brought about has resulted in all the cultural influences of Japanese folklore we see today.
Since the Meiji Era, Japan has quickly modernised. After the second world war, the country had advanced economically, socially and scientifically. As Japan developed in this way, the gaps in knowledge that the yōkai had provided explanations for were filled with scientific reasoning and logic, thus diminishing the yōkai. There were characters who worked to separate folklore from developing Japanese culture as a subject of history which should remain as history. The most famous of these is Inoue Enryō (1858-1919) who produced the concept of yōkai gaku (Yokai Studies/Yokaiology) – an attempt to rationalise the unexplained natural phenomena for which certain yōkai had provided solutions. On the other hand, there were those who worked to revive the popularity of yōkai. An important example is Shigeru Mizuki (1922-2015) whose manga series GeGeGe no Kitarō achieved countless awards and popularity on a scale that had never been seen before. Mizuki single-handedly kickstarted the revival of yōkai culture which we witness across the world today. References to yōkai can be found in all forms of media, from video games to Japanese manga and anime and even western blockbuster films. So why did yōkai survive and why were they so valuable to people like Shigeru Mizuki?
Those who look down on the modernisation of Japan, look to the yōkai as a form of nostalgia, a symbol of the old Japanese culture, spirits that teach us how Japanese people used to live by being the manifestation of their explanations for the unknown or their perceptions of the people around them, the land they inhabit or the institution that rules over them. Yōkai are a reflection of the beliefs of olden day Japanese people. They are timeless as long as human imagination prevails. They cannot be regulated or controlled by society and for this reason, yōkai are so important to Japan. They are the purest form of its culture.
