What Does Yokai Mean in English?

26 Oct 2012 18 Comments

by Zack Davisson in Essays on Kaidan, Yōkai Stories Tags: ,

You probably think you already know what yokai means. And, you are probably wrong. Or at least, you are only partially correct. There is more to yokai than you think.

Thanks to movies like “The Great Yokai War,” and comics and books like “Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan” and “Yokai Attack!,” yokai as a word is slowly making its way into the English language. People are becoming aware of Japan’s legacy of magic and mystery. But, “yokai” is entering English with a meaning almost-but-not-quite the same as the Japanese meaning.

It is kind of like the word “manga”—in English, manga has come to mean “Japanese comics.” Exclusively. But in Japanese, manga just means … comics. All comics. Regardless of national origin. Iron Man? Manga. Mickey Mouse? Manga. Rex Morgan, M.D.? Manga. Tin Tin? Manga. And it doesn’t even specifically mean books (That would be “manga no hon.”) “Manga” can mean toys, movies, games … anything comic-related. It has a vast meaning beyond the limited scope of usage that we have given the word in English. I digress.

Of course, yokai can refer to Japan’s menagerie of monsters. All of the beasties and spirits—the baku, the kodama, the yuki onna, the kappa—all of these are yokai. I am as guilty as the next person for using yokai as a generic term for “Japanese monster.” It works. It fits. But that’s not the whole story.

Many other things are also yokai, things that are not creatures of any sort. Like the word manga, the Japanese usage of yokai has a much larger scope. It covers much more than just monsters.

(It is worth noting that “Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan” isn’t called that in Japanese. The original title is “Nurarihyon no Mago” meaning “Nurarihyon’s Grandson.” The term “Yokai Clan” was tagged on to appeal to English readers.)

Breaking Down the Kanji – 妖怪

Like most Japanese words, the key to the meaning is in the kanji. So let’s start there.

Yokai uses two kanji;

  • 妖 (yo) which means “mysterious, bewitching, unearthly, weird.” It doesn’t really have a scary nuance to it, but more of the attraction to something beyond the normal. It can be used in words like yoka (妖花) meaning an ethereally beautiful flower, or ayashii (妖しい) meaning bewitching or charming.
  • 怪(kai) which means “mystery, wonder, strange.” Kai has more of a sense of horror, or the bizarre. It is the same kanji used in kaidan (怪談) meaning “weird tales” and kaiki (怪奇) meaning “bizarre, strange, outrageous.”

Put those two together and you get yokai妖怪, with a direct translation along the lines of “something that is otherworldly and strange yet captivating and appealing.” But direct translation of kanji almost never gives the full picture.

So, What Does Yokai Really Mean?

I think a better translation would be “mysterious phenomena”—or even “Fortean phenomena” if that means anything to you. “Mysterious phenomena” is probably better.

Along with folkloric creatures, yokai can refer to things like strange weather, mysterious illnesses, optical illusions, weird fruit, etc … And yokai is not limited to Japan. In his Yokai Encyclopedias, comic artist/folklorist/genius Mizuki Shigeru covers things like the Moai statues on Easter Island, or bigfoot and the yeti, or vampires and ghouls, or rains of frogs. Yokai is a broad, sweeping term that can cover pretty much everything weird on Earth.

Here’s what Japanese Wikipedia has to say:

“Yokai as a term encompasses oni, obake, strange phenomenon, monsters, evil spirits of rivers and mountains, demons, goblins, apparitions, shape-changers, magic, ghosts, and mysterious occurrences. Yokai can either be legendary figures from Japanese folklore, or purely fictional creations with little or no history. There are many yokai that come from outside Japan, including strange creatures and phenomena from outer space. Anything that can not readily be understood or explained, anything mysterious and unconfirmed, can be a yokai.”

That great arbitrator of all things yokai, Mizuki Shigeru, further breaks down the word yokai into four separate categories:

  • Kaiju – 怪 (kai, mysterious) + 獣 (ju; beast), meaning “monster.” Most of Japan’s famous yokai are kaiju. Godzilla is a dai-kaiju, or “great monster.”
  • Choshizen - 超 (cho; super) + 自然 (shizen; natural), meaning the supernatural, including mysterious natural phenomena.
  • Henge - 変 (hen; strange) + 化(ge; to change, transform) , meaning shape-shifters like tanuki, foxes, and old cats.
  • Yurei -幽 (yu; dim) + 霊 (rei; spirit), meaning ghosts, and spirits of the dead.

So if you think in the classic biological classification model, then you would have something like this:

  • Bakeneko is a yokai > henge
  • Oiwa is a yokai > yurei
  • Bigfoot is a yokai > kaiju
  • Bermuda Triangle > yokai > choshizen

(Very) Brief History of the Word Yokai

Yokai is a pretty old world, pre-dating most of Japanese folkloric vocabulary. The oldest known use of “yokai” is from the 1st century text “Junshiden” (循史伝) where the author writes “The yokai was in the Imperial Court for a long time.” The term is used to describe a sense of unnatural anxiety and foreboding. It shows up again in 772, in “Shoku Nihongi” (続日本紀) where a ritual cleansing of the palace is recommended to “clear away the yokai.” It isn’t used in the sense of any particular bad creature, but just accumulated “bad juju” that might be clinging to the palace.

Yokai as a term for Japan’s folkloric beasts didn’t really appear until the Edo period, with the publication of “Yokai Chakutocho” (夭怪着到牒 ), a yokai bestiary of the kind still familiar today. Sharp-eyed readers ( or those who know Japanese) will see that a different set of kanji was used; 夭 (yo, calamity, disaster ) + 怪 (kai). That kanji has a much more distinct menacing feel to it.

Texts from the Edo period also distinguish between types of yokai, such as “strange natural phenomenon” or “strange living things.”  Also during the Edo period, when Japan began to have contact with other cultures, books began to be published of accounts of “Yokai of the West.”

Now you Know What Yokai Means!

Of course, this is the quick and dirty version.  Whole books can and have been written on yokai, on the history of yokai, on the evolution and social meaning, etc … At least now when you want to start diving into things like that, you will have a clearer understanding of what the word yokai actually means!

Further Reading:

Secrets of the Yokai  – Types of Yokai

Secrets of the Yokai II

How Do You Say Ghost in Japanese?

Translator’s Note:

I wrote this article mainly to clear up some misapprehensions.  More and more I see people refer to yokai as if it meant some sort of tribe of Japanese monsters.   And while that isn’t exactly incorrect, it is a simplification. So here is a little deeper dive for yokai fans.

Bakeneko – The Changing Cat

03 Jun 2012 10 Comments

by Zack Davisson in Magical Animal Stories, Yōkai Stories Tags: , ,

Sourced and translated from Mizuki Shigeru’s Hyakumonogatari, Kaii Yokai Densho Database, Japanese Wikipedia, Yokai Jiten, Nihon Kokugo Dai-ten, and Other Sources

Late at night, a sublimely beautiful woman walks the street alone. As she passes by the light of a paper lantern, you notice something about her shadow—it is not human. Cast by the flickering light of the paper lantern is the clear shape of a cat.

She is a bakeneko.

What is a Bakeneko?

Bakeneko has been rendered in English in a variety of ways. Monster cat. Ghost cat. But the most accurate translation would be “Changing Cat,” as that is the defining characteristic of bakeneko.

The word bakeneko (化け猫) consist of two kanji; “Bake-“(化け) means to change form, to transform. The kanji is often used with yokai, and indeed a general term for monster in Japanese is obake (御化け) meaning “changer.” “-neko” (猫), of course, just means “cat.”

The word bakeneko is often used as a catch-all term for the mysterious and magical cats of Japan. Nekomata in particular are sometimes called a type of bakeneko. But this is a misuse of the name. Kaibyo(怪猫) is the general term for paranormal cats in Japanese. Bakeneko, just as their name implies, are defined by their ability to transform.

Specifically, bakeneko are able to take human shape, or near-human shape. Some bakeneko maintain a cat form, but they are able to speak human language and wear human clothes. Some legends say that these cat-shaped bakeneko put towels on their heads and dance on their hind legs. Much, much rarer legends are humans who change shape into cats, but which are also called bakeneko.

Because of their shape-shifting abilities, bakeneko belong to a class of yokai called henge (変化), or changing yokai. This includes other shape-shifters such as tanuki and kitsune.

Like most of Japan’s magical cats, bakeneko are said to be cats who have lived a long time. There are stories of split-tailed bakeneko, who appear similar to nekomata. The primary difference between the two is the bakeneko’s ability to adopt human shape. Also like other magical cats, there are stories of bakeneko manipulating the dead, or cursing humans.

Bakeneko Origins – The Lamp Lickers

For the origins of most yokai, there is at best a definitive “maybe” on how they arose. But for the bakeneko, there is a general scholastic consciences that the legends began with fish.

Cats are not indigenous to Japan, and the little “hand-fed tigers” were imported in later years and served as house pets and rat-catchers. Most of Japan at the time lived on a diet of vegetables and grains, with very little supplementary meat or protein. Cats were fed leftovers. However, cats are carnivorous. They don’t do well on a diet of vegetables and grains, and when they are hungry they will take their protein where they can get it. And many households had a ready supply, even if they didn’t know it.

Oil lamps as the time often used rendered fish oil as fuel. To a protein-starved cat this was exactly what they needed, and they would stand on their hind legs to reach up to the lamp to lick out the fish oil. Frightened pet owners looking at the lamplight-cast shadows would see their tiny cat suddenly elongate and stand on two legs as if transforming into a human. Thus was established the connection between bakeneko and shadows.

The cries of cats have also been known to mimic human words and sounds. To an ear already disposed to think their little tabby is shape-shifting at night, imaginations were allowed to run wild and people heard their cats speaking Japanese.

The Bakeneko Rebellion of Nabeshima

While there are many, many bakeneko legends in Japan (too many to tell here), the most famous is the Bakeneko Rebellion of Nabeshima.

This story takes place in Hizen province (modern day Saga prefecture) during the rule of Nabshima Mitsushige (1632-1700). Nabeshima employed a man named Ryuzoji Matashichi to serve as his opponent for Go. One day Matashichi fell out of favor with his lord Nabeshima, and Nabeshima had him put to the death. Matashichi’s mother was heartbroken by this, and poured out her sadness to the family cat they kept, then killed herself with a knife.

The cat licked the blood from the mother, and from this transformed into a bakeneko. Every night the cat would sneak into the castle to torment Nabeshima. The curse only ended when Nabeshima’s loyal retainer Komori Hanzaemon battled the cat and won, saving the Nabeshima house.

The story is famous not only as a legend, but also because it coincides with a real succession conflict in the Nabeshima household. It was made into a kabuki play that debuted at the Nakamura-za theater in the 1840s, titled Hana Sagano Nekoma Ishibumi Shi ( 花嵯峨野猫魔碑史; The History of the Stone Monument of the Demon Cat of Sagano). The play was a hit, but the Nabeshima family successfully petitioned to have the production closed. They were too late, however. The cat was out of the bag, and the bakeneko became a popular monster for future kabuki productions.

Bakeneko also became a popular subject for Edo period ukiyo-e artists. Many of these portray a giant cat in the background, although the cat is often just a symbol showing the true soul of the human character crouching in the foreground, the true bakeneko.

Bakeneko Yujo – TheBakeneko Prostitutes

In the Edo period, books called kibyoshi (yellow books)and sharebon (which translates as “Books of Fashion”) told stories of near-do-wells and salacious tales of life in the pleasure quarters. Considering the Edo periods mania for kaidan weird tales, it was only natural that these two genres should combine to tell tales of bakeneko prostitutes who haunted the lantern-lit lanes of the Yoshiwara.

These stories usually followed a familiar pattern, where a popular prostitute would escort a customer too her room and perform her usual service. Late at night, the customer would wake up and find his lady not there. He would sneak into a different part of the house where he peeked at her, and the dainty woman would be revealed as a bakeneko, usually engaged in tearing the heads off of live fish and shrimp, blood dripping on her face.

Seafood was the dead giveaway for these bakeneko prostitutes, and sometimes customers would present a woman with a live fish to see if her true nature would be revealed. Strangely enough, this plot device was used by Mizuki Shigeru for his character Neko Musume, a bakeneko that appears as a cute little girl but suddenly transforms into a ravenous beast in the presence of fish or mice.

Further reading:

Read more yokai magical animal tales on hyakumonogatari.com:

Iriomote Oyamaneko – The Iriomote Great Mountain Cat

Kasha – The Corpse-Eating Cat Demon

Nekomata – The Split-Tailed Cat

The Cat’s Grave

Yūrei-zu – A Portrait of a Yūrei, a Japanese Ghost

21 Mar 2012 3 Comments

by Zack Davisson in From Mizuki Shigeru, Yūrei Stories Tags: , , , ,

Translated from Mikzuki Shigeru’s Yokai Zukan

The moon hangs in the sky like the blade of a sickle, giving off a dim glow. A ghostly air permeates the scene, and from a thicket of bamboo emerges the form of a single yurei.

An emaciated body wrapped in a kyokatabira, the traditional white burial kimono, this figure is the very epitome of a yurei. Our eyes are instantly drawn to the clenched teeth from which dangles a pale, severed head. Held tightly by the hair, the yurei shows no sign of allowing its precious bounty to drop, and its expression challenges anyone to make it try. And while the eyes of the dead, severed head are closed, the eyes of the yurei look as if they could pop out of their eye sockets at any moment. An unearthly light surrounds the yurei and its head. The scene is blood curdling.

The head is painted in vivid colors, but we do not know its story. There must have been some terrible curse, some tragic event, to produce such a terrifying circumstance.

Although there are other paintings along similar themes, in this work the artist Kawanabe Kyosai has emphasized the horror, the eerie nature of the image. Kyosai is known as a master of yurei paintings, and surely this is one of his masterpieces.

Translator’s Note

This is Mizuki Shigeru’s commentary on a famous painting by Meiji-era artist Kawanabe Kyosai (河鍋暁斎; 1831-1889). Known as the last great painter in the Japanese style, Kyosai was said to be the inheritor of Hokusai and the other great ukiyo-e masters, although he did not study under Hokusai.

This painting, titled simply Yurei-zu (幽霊図), meaning “Picture of a Yurei,” is india ink on silk and was painted in 1870 – The 3rd year of the Meiji period. The painting is currently housed in the Fukuoka City Museum.

The story of this particular painting is not known, and indeed there may be no story. Kyosai painted a few portraits of yurei carrying severed heads. The reason for this is usually related to a story from Kyosai’s youth. As a nine-year old boy, he found a severed head by the side of a river, and brought it home to study and play with it like some discovered toy. When his parents found the head and ordered Kyosai to throw it back in the river, he did so only after he drew the head from every angle, fully studying his gruesome find.

Further Reading:

Check out other yurei art from hyakumonogatari.com:

Hokusai’s Manga Yurei

More Hokusai Manga Yurei

 

Tōfu-kozō – The Tofu Boy

12 Mar 2012 Leave a Comment

by Zack Davisson in From Mizuki Shigeru, Yōkai Stories Tags: , , ,

Translated and sourced from Mizuki Shigeru’s Mujara, Yokai Jiten, Japanese Wikipedia, and other sources

On a dark and stormy night Edo night, if you should happen to turn around and see a giant baby dressed in an enormous bamboo hat and carrying a wiggly block of tofu festooned with a maple leaf, don’t panic. Despite the strange appearance, it is only Tofu Kozo, one of the most harmless of all of Japan’s bizarre yokai tribe.

Who is Tofu Kozo?

One of Japan’s most popular yokai, the name Tofu Kozo is most commonly translated as “tofu boy” or “tofu kid,” although a more literal—albeit clumsy—translation would be “tofu young Buddhist priest.” But the Buddhist associations don’t run any deeper than the name, with “kozo” being a common term for young boys in Japan.

Tofu Kozo generally appears as a small boy, or even a baby, in a giant, conical bamboo rain hat and a traditional kimono. The kimono can be plain, or highly decorated with daruma figures, red rockfish, horned owls, and taiko drums, all of which were thought to be talismans against small pox during the Edo period. As the same suggests, Tofu Kozo are never seen without a plate of tofu, which is decorated with a single maple leaf impression.

Lacking any special powers or features other than appearance, Tofu Kozo is said to wander through deserted city streets at night, or during the rain. Generally shy and timid, Tofu Kozo sometimes likes to sneak behind humans and follow them through the streets.

There is little agreement about Tofu Kozo amongst writers. Some say that there is only one Tofu Kozo, and that he is a sort of yokai prince, the son of the yokai supreme commander Mikoshi Nyudo and his wife the Rokurokubi. Some say that tofu kozo are nothing more than errand boys for the yokai, rushing back and forth on endless tasks.

From the Showa era and up, there have been accounts of Tofu Kozu as meeting people on rainy streets at night, and offering up some delicious tofu. Anyone who eats the tofu finds their body growing with mold from the inside until they die. Yokai researchers Kyougoku Natsuhiko and Yamaguchi Bintaro trace this legend as having been invented for for childrens’ books in the Showa era to give the Tofu Kozo a bit more of an edge for modern readers.

One the opposite side, in modern Japan therapists have been using Tofu Kozo as a yokai who gets bullied by other yokai, and is used in anti-bullying therapy and education.

The Origin of Tofu Kozo

Tofu Kozo has the unique status of being Japan’s first modern, city-bred yokai. Unlike other yokai that sprang from ancient and rural Japan, the Tofu Kozo has no folklore heritage, no appearances in traditional folktales or legends. He arrived fully formed suddenly during the Anei era (1772-1781), where he quickly became a popular character for picture books, kabuki performances, toys, advertisements, cookbooks, and yellow-covered kiboshi illustrated stories.

There are several theories as to the origin of Tofu Kozo. One aspect is tofu itself. The urban Edo period saw the rise of tofu as a popular food source, cheap and nutritious. One picture book of the time, Edo Meisho Zue (江戸名所図会) “Collection of Pictures of the Famous Places of Edo” by Hasegawa Settan, shows tofu dealers wearing the iconic conical bamboo hat as they travel the streets back and forth with their wares. Other illustrations from the period show yokai like tanuki and kappa carrying tofu, and it is speculated that some enterprising tofu dealer might have created Tofu Kozo as an advertising character for their shop, only to see the character’s popularity run away from them.

Mizuki Shigeru gives the location of Tofu Kozo as Satsuma province, modern day Kagoshima prefecture, although the character is seen all over Japan. During the Edo period, when the 100 candle storytelling game of Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai was popular, game players and storytellers were always on the lookout for new yokai stories to tell, and it is likely that the legend of Tofu Kozo was created and expanded upon during numerous storytelling sessions.

The first known print appearance of Tofu Kozo is in the 1777 kiboshi illustrated book “Bakemono Shiuchi Hyoban-ki” (妖怪仕内評判記; “Commentary on Notable Events of the Yokai”), written by Koikawa Harumachi. A few years later in 1782, he appeared in a popular tofu cookbook called “Tofu Hyakuchin” (豆腐百珍; “The 100 Curiosities of Tofu”) by Hitsujun Ka. The character continued to be popular through the Meiji era.

The Many Faces of Tofu Kozo

Because there is no traditional origin for Tofu Kozo, artists have depicted him in varying ways over the years. Early descriptions describe him as having an enormous head, like an overgrown baby. Koikawa Harumachi described him this way in “Bakemono Shiuchi Hyoban-ki,” and the artist Kitao Masayoshi even named him Ogashira Kozo, meaning “Big Head Boy,” in his 1787 picture book “Bakemono Chakutōchō” (夭怪着到牒). For a short time, it was popular to draw Tofu Kozo as having only one eye, but this fad soon faded and by 1853 Tofu Kozu was drawn looking like a normal young boy, as seen in the illustrated book “Kyoka Hyakumonogatari” (狂歌百物語).

An obvious relative of Tofu Kozo is Hitotsume Kozo, meaning the One-Eyed Boy. Although Hitotsume Kozo is an older, more traditional yokai, over the years the two have come to resemble each other as their stories and appearances merged. This has caused researchers to postulate that they are the same yokai. But while they have had obvious influences on each other—and are depicted as cousins in many modern yokai stories—they are generally considered to be separate characters.

Shōrōkaze – The Ghost Wind

02 Mar 2012 3 Comments

by Zack Davisson in Yūrei Stories Tags: , , ,

Translated from Mizuki Shigeru’s Mujara

In Goto city in Nagasaki, on the morning of the 15th day of the Obon festival of the dead, it was said that an evil wind blew. Anyone who felt the caress of this evil wind would fall sick and collapse. This day also happened to be the traditional day for visiting the graves of ancestors. It was believed that the souls of the unworshiped dead flew on the winds.

Since olden times, the people of Japan believed in and feared the unworshiped dead, called muenbotoke ( 無縁仏). Farmers blamed everything from droughts, to strong winds, to infestations of insects on these unhappy spirits. And so, during the Obon festival of the dead, along with the usual offerings of rice and sake to the ancestor spirits of the family, they would try to calm the spirits of the muenbotoke and the Buddhist hungry ghosts, so that they would not lay their curse on any living person. But some of these spirits would not be calmed, and so on the morning of Obon these vengeful souls would take flight on the wind and become the shōrōkaze.

It was not just evil spirits that used the wind to travel. The kami spirits of Shinto were also known to flow with the winds. For example, in the middle of March the wind from the East was called the kami-kudashi, and in the beginning of October when the kami gathered in Izumo for their annual meeting it was said that they traveled from all corners of Japan on the wind. And of course, the most famous of all is the kami-kaze, the God Wind that saved Japan. But of these all, only the shōrōkaze is counted amongst the yokai.

Translator’s Note:

The Shōrōkaze uses the kanji 精霊 (shōrō – ghost) + 風 (kaze – wind). 精霊 as a term for ghosts is interesting in that it has two different pronunciations, each with different connotations. The most common reading of 精霊 is seirei, and means ghosts or spirits in the Western tradition. When proncounced shōrō, as it is here, the word carries Buddhist meanings. So it is appropriate that the shōrōkaze is associated with Obon, the festival of the dead.

Further Reading:

Check out other yurei tales from hyakumonogatari.com:

How Do You Say Ghost in Japanese?

Goryo Shinko – The Religion of Ghosts

The Gratitude-Expressing Yurei

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