Kasha – The Corpse-Eating Cat Demon
09 May 2012 10 Comments
in Death Customs, Magical Animal Stories, Yōkai Stories Tags: mysterious animals, Yōkai Stories
Sourced and translated from Mizuki Shigeru’s Hyakumonogatari, Kaii Yokai Densho Database, Japanese Wikipedia, Yokai Jiten, Nihon Kokugo Dai-ten, and Other Sources
If you have been a bad person all your life, your troubles are not over when you are dead. During your funeral procession, as the priest and the mourners carry your coffin there is suddenly a crack of thunder and roaring from the sky to steal your dead body and drag it to hell comes … what? A flaming chariot? A cat demon? A cat demon riding a flaming chariot?
Or maybe you have just died at home, and your once beloved house pet thinks that your sin-ridden body would make a delicious snack.
Kasha are one of the most confused of Japan’s yokai. Over the centuries kasha have evolved from a fiery cart pulled by devils to an aged cat that changes form into a corpse-eating monster. Even the calling them yokai is dubious. Although yokai can be a catch-all term for Japan’s monsters, the kasha are more properly demons. They have more in common with Hell-dwellers like oni, and are found on Kamakura period Hell Portraits designed to terrify people into following the righteous path of the Buddha.
What does Kasha mean?
Kasha uses the kanji火車 which translates easily as Fire (火) chariot (車). The kanji can also be read more explicitly as hi no kuruma (火の車 ) meaning the same thing.
That’s the easy part. Now what is a kasha? That’s the hard part.
Kasha – The Fire Chariot
During the Kamakura period (1185–1333), there was an apocalyptic belief in mappō, meaning the Latter of the Days of Law. Like some Christians today, Buddhist believed they were living in End Times and had no more life times in which to which to redeem their souls; they were stuck between Hell and redemption by the Amida Buddha. This lead to a form of art called Hell Scrolls (地獄草紙; Jigoku Zoshi), which depicted the painful suffering awaiting those who didn’t hurry up and get saved.
Most of these paintings depicted oni tearing people apart and feasting on their body parts. And sometimes these oni carried these poor bodies in flaming carts. The belief eventually developed that oni crawled the Earth looking for sinners and piled them in flaming carts or chariots to drag before the dread judge of Hell Emma-O.
As with much Japanese folklore, the image of the flaming chariot took a nap while Japan fought the massive civil war known as the Sengoku era, and was re-awakened during the Edo period yokai boom. Stories began to appear in kaidan-shu collections of the kasha, or hi no kuruma, a flaming cart that descended from the sky. The cart was said to be accompanied by thunder and great winds, and a funeral procession where thunder was heard raised an alarm that the kasha was coming.
The role of the kasha was undecided early on. In the early Edo period book Kiizoda-shu (奇異雑談集; 1687; A Collection of the Idle Chat of Mysterious Things) there is a story called “The Thing that came from the storm clouds to steal a corpse in the Manor House near the rice fields of Echigo.” During a funeral procession there was a loud clap of thunder and a beast riding a flaming cart came down from the sky and snatched the dead body. An illustrator depicted the kasha as being ridden by Raidin, the Shinto deity of thunder and lighting.
Another story, from Shin Chobun-shu (新著聞集, 1749, New Tales of Things Known the World Over) called “Saint Neyo and a visit from the Kasha,” had the Buddhist saint Neyo come out to meet the flaming chariot. But instead of a messenger from Hell, it was an ambassador from the Jyodo Pure Lands. The saint begged the kasha for a little bit more time on Earth, and the cart came back exactly a year later to take him to the Pure Lands.
All of the appearances of this kasha were heavily influenced by Buddhism. Most of the stories follow the same theme; a flaming cart that snatches up the bodies of those who have accumulated a lifetime of misdeeds. To protect these bodies from kasha, priests placed rosaries around the necks of the dead bodies, although that was no guarantee. Some said that the kasha was either a messenger of the divine or the infernal depending on the karmic state of the dead body.
Kasha – The Corpse-Eating Cat Demon
So how did this flaming cart from the sky become a cat?
Like much with yokai, the origin of the cat-like form of kasha is said to come from artist Toriyama Sekien. When Sekien drew a kasha for the second volume of his Gazu Hyakki Yagyō (画図百鬼夜行; “The Illustrated Night Parade of a Hundred Demons) in 1776, he drew the bizarre cat-demon covered in flames. Like his spiritual successor Mizuki Shigeru, Sekien often blended his own imagination in with folklore, and simply invented things as well. He didn’t begin to add notes to his yokai prints until the successive volumes, so we don’t know why he chose to make the kasha a cat.
For whatever reason, Sekien’s influence on yokai was so profound that people accepted the cat-like kasha and the stories began to follow. In Boso manroku(茅窓漫録; Random Talk of Outside Cogon Grass, 1833) a typical story was told of a funeral procession interrupted by a mighty wind and thunder that swept away the coffin as a kasha came down to retrieve the corpse. This kasha was not the flaming chariot however, and was identified as a moryo, an flesh –eating animal spirit, and was drawn resembling a cat—some also point out the resemblance of the Chinese pronunciation of moryo, kuhasha, as being related to the association of cats with kasha.
In another book, Hokuetsu Seppu ( 北越雪譜; Snow Country Tales, 1837), a story is told—said to come from the Tensho era (1573-1592) in Eichigo province (Modern day Nigata prefecture)—where a funeral is interrupted by a gust of wind and a fireball that comes from the sky. Inside the fireball is a massive two-tailed cat (the calling card of the nekomata) that snatches up the coffin. But the priest attending the funeral beat away the kasha with his staff.
Over time, this cat-form of kasha began to dominate, and other Japanese cat legends became associated with kasha. Like the neko mata and the bakeneko, kasha were said to be transformed house pets that lived an unusual span. Others said it was the presences of corpses that cause the transformation. Cats who jumped over coffins were said to be able to wake the dead. A cat left alone too long with an unattended corpse would transform into a kasha and drag the body away. Fear of the kasha became so great that when someone died the household cats were instantly banished, and coffins were even weighed down with rocks to prevent them from being drug away.
This particular element makes logical sense. Cats eating their dead owners is a real thing. The phenomena is called postmortem predation and, while dogs do it too, cats are well known to waste little time making a meal of their former owner. After a day or two alone with a corpse cats will start to chow down. If a person dies alone, and the corpse is undiscovered for weeks, the family pet might make a nice little feast and leave little left to be discovered. Because of this it doesn’t take too much imagination to see how the flaming chariot that comes from the sky to snatch bodies became mixed with the very real situation of a cat eating a corpse.
Other Kasha
Japan has many other yokai similar to kasha, some even using a variation of the name. The kasha baba is one common variation, which has the same story of someone who snatches corpses from funerals but instead of a cat-like creature it is an old woman. In Kanra-machi in Gunma prefecture there was the legend of the tenmaru that snatched corpses from funerals and graveyards. To protect the dead bodies, caskets were protected by bamboo cages as part of the burial.
Read more yokai magical animal tales on hyakumonogatari.com:
Nekomata – The Split-Tailed Cat
The Tanuki and the White Snake
The Appearance of the Spirit Turtle
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What is the White Kimono Japanese Ghosts Wear?
04 Apr 2012 Leave a Comment
in Death Customs, Essays on Kaidan
Translated from Japanese Wikipedia and Other Sources
Black hair. White face. White kimono. Whisper the word Japanese ghost to anyone, and that is the image that will appear in their head. For Americans, the image generally comes from Japanese horror films where white-kimonoed girls crawl from TV sets or rise from wells. But to Japanese people, the costume of a white kimono has a more somber feel. Most likely over their lives they will wrap more than one loved one in the traditional burial garment called a kyokatabira.
Kyōkatabira – The Buddhist Robe
The white kimono that most Japanese take their final journey in is called a kyokatabira. The word is split into two terms: kyo (経) which means Buddhist sutra, and katabira (帷子) which is a light, unlined kimono worn on informal occasions, such as rising in your own house in the morning.
Katabira were traditionally made from hemp and came into fashion around the Heian period (794 to 1185). At the time, katabira were a form of underwear. They were stuffed with cotton and used to keep warm as a sort of wearable blanket. But as summer came and people shed layers, they soon learned that the simple, single-layered garment was just as comfortable in Japan’s humid and oppressive summer. These were eventually adapted for use in the bathhouse, which were called yukatabira (湯帷子). This word was later shortened to yukata, a light kimono that are still worn in Japan today— although the kanji 浴衣 is more commonly used.
The use of the white katabira is thought to have appeared around the same period, as a mix of Shinto and Buddhist tradition. The Emperor was said to wear a white kimono when performing religious rituals during the Heian period. Unlike the coarse hemp of the commoners, the Emperors garment was spun from silk and was called a byakue (白衣) meaning nothing more complicated than “white robe.” Shinto priests adopted the fashion, with a full costume called jōe (浄衣) meaning “purified robe.” Brides on their wedding days wore a white kimono called a shiromuku (白無垢) meaning “white purity.”
Buddhist priests preferred the rough hemp over the fine silks of the byakue and jōe, and took to wearing what was called kyōkatabira. As the name suggests, kyōkatabira were standard white katabira inscribed with Buddhist sutras. Kyōkatabira came to be work by Buddhist on pilgrimages as they travelled Japan.
All of these types of garments: byakue, jōe, shiromuku, and kyōkatabira; fall under the category of shiro-shozoku (白装束) meainging “white clothing.”
What is the significance of the color white? – Priests, Brides, and Corpses
I sometimes hear people say that white is the color of death in Japan, but this is a mistake. White is the color of purity.
For as long as anyone knows, white in Japan has been the color of purity, specifically ritual purity. The native religion Shinto has always been concerned with cleanliness and purity. At most Shinto shrines there is a place for you to wash yourself before entering.
Ritual purity means more than just taking a good bath, although that is a part of it. In order to be ritually pure, you must be cleansed of kegare (汚れ) meaning “impurities,” which can only be done through a serious of prescribed enigmas under the guidance of a priest. Wearing a white kimono is a visible sign of purity, and is generally done by only three classes of people; priests, brides, and corpses (or those soon to be corpses, like people commiting seppuku).
And of course yurei, Japanese ghosts.
Shinishozoku- Costume for the Dying
Around the 700s, Buddhism arrived in Japan and began to grow in popularity. Buddhism in Japan mixed with Shinto to create a unique religion quite different from its Indian origins. Over time, Shinto and Buddhism split until each oversaw a different aspect of humanity, the kami of Shinto overseeing the living and the deities of Buddhism caring for their souls in death. Buddhism slowly took over all funeral rites, which remains with way it is in Japan today.
In Buddhism, death is not the ending but just the beginning of another cycle. Appropriately, Japanese Buddhist dressed corpses as pilgrims going on their final journey, called the shidenotabi (死出の旅) meaning “the final trip to death.” The full costume for a corpse is called shinishozoku (死に装束),which means roughly “the costume for one going to death.”
A complete shinishozoku will have the corpse dressed in a kyōkatabira with sutras written on the inside and folded right-over-left in the opposite style, a tankan-the triangle-shaped headband, a zutabukuro-a small carrying bag containing ferry passage over the Sanzu river of the dead, a walking cane, and coverings for the legs, arms, and back. The final item is a string of prayer beads nestled in the hands.
What is the significance of folding the kimono right-over-left?
A common occurrence in Japan is seeing a foreigner trying on a yukata for the first time, and eliciting a room full of gasps as they innocently take the right side of the yukata and fold it over the left. I did. And I had no idea why everyone was so shocked.
I found out soon enough that the right-over-left style is reserved exclusively for corpses, Living people always—ALWAYS—fold their yukata or kimono left-over-right. But why? That, no one could tell me.
It took some digging to find the answer, but it comes back to that old Asian favorite, class distinction by clothing. Apparently in ancient China the way you folded your kimono was a visible way to show your rank. Like foot-binding and long fingernails, it was also a way to purposefully hobble yourself to show that you did not need to work for a living.
Folding your kimono left-over-right allows a greater freedom of movement, such as was required by field workers. The leisure class thumbed their noses at freedom of movement, and purposefully folded their kimono right-over-left. During the Nara period, when Chinese culture influenced Japan, this custom was taken up enthusiastically by the aristocratic classes.
Death, however, knows no distinction of rank. One of the principles of Japanese religion and folklore is that the dead are mighty, and you don’t want to offend them. So it became the custom that all dead people, no matter what they were in life, rose to the aristocratic right-over-left class and folded their kimonos that way for their final journey.
The meaning of the kyōkatabira
So the white kimono, the kyōkatabira, is much more than a simple garment. It is a statement of transformation. It shows that here, on their last journey, a person has become ritually pure in the Shinto tradition, a holy pilgrim in the Buddhist tradition, and a wealthy aristocrat in the human tradition.
Few other items of clothes so completely raise you simply buy putting them on. Of course, you have to be dead to wear it, so there is a trade-off.
Further Reading:
Check out other death customs from hyakumonogatari.com:
What is the Triangle Headband Japanese Ghosts Wear?
Nagarekanjyou – A Death Custom
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Kimodameshi – The Test of Courage
01 Feb 2012 8 Comments
in Cursed Houses, Death Customs, Essays on Kaidan Tags: Cursed Houses, haunted forest
Translated and sourced from Japanese wikipedia and other sources
Are you brave enough? That is the question that will be answered by playing kimodameshi, the Japanese test of courage. You will have to walk a dark, lonely path to a haunted location and set down your token to prove that you had been there.
The Meaning of Kimodameshi
Kimodameshi (肝試し) is most often translated into English as Test of Courage, which is not literally accurate. The word kimo (肝) actually refers to the liver, while dameshi (試し) does in fact mean “test.” In Japan the liver is associated with courage—for example kimo ga suwaru, or to sit on your liver, means to be brave or self-assured. So a more literal translation of kimodameshi would be to “prove your guts.”
The History of Kimodameshi
Like most folkloric practices, the factual origin of kimodameshi is lost to legend. But there are two possible beginnings, both of which could be equally true.
In the closing years of the Heian Period, during the reign of Emperor Shirakawa (1073 to 1087), the book “O-kagami” (大鏡; “Great Mirror”) was written by an unknown author. In the book was a story of three sons of Fujiwara Kaneie. One night during the Hour of the Ox (around 3 A.M.), the sons dared each other to go to a nearby house that was known to be the home of an oni. Only the son who was the leader of the martial arts school was brave enough to take up the challenge, and as proof of his courage he used his sword to slice a chip from the lintel of the house which he brought back to show the others.
Whether the story of the sons of Fujiwara Kaneie is true or not is unknown, but it is also said that kimodameshi began as a way for those of the samurai class to condition their children against fear, and that the game served as a kind of training.
During the Edo period, the 100 candles game hyakumonogatari kaidankai—which this site is based on—was a form of storytelling kimodameshi. The earliest recording of this game comes from the kaidan-shu “Tonoigusa” (1660) where a group of samurai gather to test their courage by telling ghost stories one by one.
Modern Kimodameshi
There are no set rules to kimodameshi, and there are as many variations as there are people who play it. Kimodameshi can be played impromptu, with only a few friends egging each other on to go somewhere scary or haunted, or it can be an organized event with a preset course, often inside a prepared haunted house with actors playing the roles of spooks.
In its most pure version, a group chooses a destination, one guaranteed to inspire fear. Common examples are dark forests, grave yards, Shinto shrines, abandoned buildings, or known haunted and mysterious spaces called shinrei spots. Challengers can go alone or as a duo. They go to the chosen spot at night, to ensure maximum fear, and they either bring something back to prove that they had gone the distance, or leave some sort of token that can be recovered the next day.
Like all Japanese ghost traditions, kimodameshi traditionally takes place in the summer. In Japan, summer is when the land of the living is thought to intersect with the land of the dead, and it is the time when yokai and yurei come out to play. All organized haunted house kimodameshi will take place during the summertime. It isn’t unusual to see TV celebrities during the summer being filmed walking through a haunted house or to some famous location in a game of kimodameshi.
There are some legal issues with kimodameshi. When an abandoned building becomes a popular spot, the police have been known to set up stings to arrest trespassers. Some of the locations themselves are dangerous, such as long, dark tunnels on country roads where a car can come through at any time.
School Kimodameshi
Many Japanese people experience kimodameshi when they are young, in Elementary or Junior High School. The game is played when the children go on school camping trips, or sometimes at school during school festivals. When played with school children, the game is a set-up.
In order to keep them safe, and still provide a good scare, the location is scouted before hand and scary objects like skulls and horror-props are planted along the way. Teachers and other volunteers dress in ghost costumes and hide along the path to spring out at the children. All of the students are told a scary story about that particular location, then sent off in groups to prove their guts once the Sun has gone down.
Students can also create their own kimodameshi events at school during school festivals. They dress up in costumes and turn one of the classrooms into a haunted house for other students to enter and test their courage.
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Nagarekanjyou – A Death Custom
07 Dec 2010 1 Comment
in Death Customs Tags: Japanese ghost story
Translated from Nihon no Yurei
There is a memorial custom called nagarekanjyou (流れ灌頂). In a small river that runs next to one of the streets in town, four bamboo poles are stood upright in the river, and a red cloth is stretched between them. Next to the cloth and poles a hishaku spoon is placed so that passer-bys can stop and ladle water over the cloth.
It is said that when the lettering on the cloth has washed away completely, and the colors have faded, that dead person’s soul is released and can float up to nirvana. It is also said that it is dangerous to catch so much as a glimpse of a nagarekanjyou and not stop to ladle water. This will enrage the waiting yurei who will then follow you home.
This custom is most often associated with women who died in childbirth.
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