Monsters – the Ultimate Adversary? It seems to be the most gripping kind of tale: The fight against a monster. Our heroes may confront it literally, as a demonic creature or a mad serial killer, or more symbolically, in the faceless grinding mechanisms of society, or the depths of their own subconscious. The Japanese monsters…
Tag: yokai
Musings VI: On the ghost of O’iwa, and why she’s still scary.
The Season of Horrors It may seem strange at first that summer is the prime time for ghost stories in Japan. We tend to associate summer with pleasant things… but imagine you’re living in early modern Japan. You have no iced drinks, no electric fans, no convenient water taps. There’s basically no way to keep…
Musings III: On the Use of Premodern Japanese in Anime
Hard but hardly useful? As a master student of Japanese Studies, I am obliged to concern myself not only with modern popular culture and anime but also with the subject of Premodern Japanese. To be precise, I’m learning to read texts from the Edo period and older which use bungo, or premodern grammar. I’m also…
Japan’s Strangest, Most Fearsome Spirit–The Wanyudo
Japan is a land chock full of weird ghosts and monsters. Some are harmless, if off-putting, creatures, while others are creatures straight out of your worst nightmare. Today’s beast is two parts weird and one part terrifying, even more so because of its tendency to haunt residential areas of major cities, most notably Kyoto. Legend…
Nurikabe–The Ghostly Wall Yokai
Japan is a land haunted by many strange monsters and ghosts. Known collectively as Yokai (and Yurei. The two words are often used interchangeably, but for our purposes we will say that Yurei refer to human ghosts and Yokai to magical creatures of all sorts), these beings can range from the mischievous to the malevolent…
Kamaitachi–The Sickle Weasel
Night has fallen. You’ve had a hard day at work, and you’re walking home, cutting across a grassy field to save time. All of a sudden, a huge gust of wind knocks you to the ground. When you stand, you happen to look down and notice that your pants have been sliced open at the…