Continental Demons

JAPAN — Vol.1 No.1

01
Japan’s Enduring
Spookiness
02
Yokai Series
Contents
03
The Question of the
Slit-Mouthed Woman
04
Kitsune:
The Evil/Divine Fox
05
Interview with a
Ghost Expert: Zack
Davisson

A
B
To whom it may concern,
Continental Demons is a magazine celebrating
the rich mythological diversity of regions around
the world. Each issue will focus on a different
geographical location, highlighting the plethora
of demons/ beasts / creatures and the like, along
with their unique symbolism to the respective
cultures.
I encourage you, dear reader, to come with us on
an immersive journey into the deep mythological
roots of Japan.
Letter from the Editor
A
B
Where you are relationally based on spreads.
Only shows the spreads you’ve encountered previously
Shows which section you are on. Red denotes current placement.

暗 い

暗 い
優 兄 元
党 光 先
児
Type:
Non-Human
Animalistic. Beastly. Divine. Characteristics of demons that aren’t humanoid.
象 徴
暗 い

The numbers don’t lie: When it comes to spending money
on Halloween, the Japanese have nothing on Americans;
consumers in the United States shell out $6.9 billion
during the holiday, compared with ¥122 billion, or about $1
billion, in Japan. But the country that popularized costumed
performance art like kabuki and cosplay does have a competitive
edge in one particular realm:
Perhaps no country loves, hates, and fears monsters to the
extent that Japan does.
Japan’s Enduring
Spookiness
01Jillian Kumagai

In Japan, monsters—or
really any otherworldly or
inexplicable being—are known
as yōkai. One of the first
compilations of yōkai, the
18th-century Konjaku Gazu
Zoku Hyakki (“Continued
Illustrations of the Many
Demons Past and Present”),
contained 54 entries. Wikipedia
lists almost 300 “legendary
creatures from Japan,”
including kamaitachi (a “sickleclawed
weasel that haunts the
mountains”), gashadokuro (“a
giant skeleton that is the spirit
of the unburied dead”), and
tsurube-otoshi (“a monster that
drops out of tops of trees”).
Yōkai have inspired at least
two Internet databases.
According to Michael Dylan
Foster, a scholar of Japanese
folklore at Indiana University
Bloomington, the origins of
yōkai are diverse. Some yōkai
aren’t strictly Japanese, but
rather derivatives of Chinese
legends or characters from
Buddhist texts (like the oni,
giant demons similar to ogres).
Many first appeared in local
tales and were incorporated
into folklore when oral
storytelling (setsuwa in Japan)
was committed to writing.
Like most folklore around
the world, the yōkai reflected
concerns in Japanese society—
like fear of outsiders and the
ambiguity of death—at the
time they were conceived.
Foster, writing to me by
email, said the large number
of yōkai in Japan doesn’t
have “anything to do with
there being more belief in the
supernatural or in folkloric
creatures in Japan than there is
elsewhere.” Instead, he added,
“it has to do with the way in
which yōkai, at a fairly early
stage, became a very lively part
of popular culture (fiction,
drama, illustrated texts, games,
etc.).”
The yōkai also took
root through catalogs like
Continued Illustrations of
the Many Demons Past and
Present, the oldest of which
were written by a man named
Toriyama Sekien. The catalogs
included the name of each
yōkai alongside a description,
creating an encyclopedia of
the mysterious. While most
of Sekien’s monsters were
taken from Japanese and, to a
lesser extent, Chinese folklore,
many were the author’s own
inventions, according to
Pandemonium and Parade.
These beings tended to be
categorized by where they
could be found. One entry,
about mōryō, a spirit that
resided in Japan’s rivers and
mountains, was thus described:
“Its figure is like that of a
three-year-old child. It is red
and black in color. It has red
eyes, long ears, and beautiful
hair. It is said that it likes to eat
the livers of dead bodies.”
Foster wrote that while
“yōkai may be related to the

animistic quality of Japanese
religious systems,” their
persistent popularity through
the centuries is largely due
to influential people and
companies ensuring that the
monsters continued to thrive
“in the popular imagination.”
Most of these people and
companies have been Japanese;
Shigeru Mizuki replicated the
characters in manga comics
such as the series GeGeGe
no Kitarō and in a book of
yōkai illustrations, while the
filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki
and writer Haruki Murakami
have also promoted the
imagery. Sometimes, yōkai
have endured via urban legend.
One legend that first spread
in the late 1970s told of a
creature who happened upon
children walking home from
school at dusk and asked, “Am
I pretty?”—only to remove a
white mask and reveal that her
mouth was slit from ear to ear.
She was known as kuchisakeonna,
or “slit-mouthed
woman,” and her purported
existence made many children
afraid to walk home.
Yōkai have thus remained
a preeminently Japanese
preoccupation, without the
cross-cultural resonance of,
say, werewolves and vampires,
which are particularly popular
in Europe but appear in
the folklore of numerous
civilizations, or the Loch Ness
Monster, which, while Scottish,
is well-known to people
outside Scotland.
But yōkai have nevertheless,
somewhat stealthily, gained
prominence around the world
through Japanese-made manga,
television shows, and movies.
Many of the Pokémon—short
for “pocket monster”—that
populate the multimedia
juggernaut of the same name
are based on yōkai. The horror
movies The Ring and The
Grudge are remakes of the
Japanese films Ringu and Ju-
On, respectively. The Grudge
borrowed its ghosts—pale girls
with long and disheveled black
hair—from their mythical
likenesses, the yūrei. Another
forthcoming horror movie, The
Forest, is based on Aokigahara,
a forest near Mount Fuji that
witnesses a high number of
suicides and is haunted.
Do Japanese themselves
really believe in yōkai? “I
think it is fair to say that when
pressed on the question, most
people do not believe in specific
yōkai per se,” Foster told me,
“but they might believe in
the possibility of strange or
unexplainable phenomena...
I think that some yōkai fit this
sort of middle ground in which
people want to believe in them,
because of the excitement
and possibility they represent,
but know that there is no
‘scientific’ evidence to prove
their existence.”

Y
ōkai. Yōkai is Japan’s catch-all
term for supernatural beings and
folktalk creatures. Ghosts, goblins,
fairies, and whatever else you can think of
fall into this category. And the broadness
of this category is what makes it so much
fun. Yokai can be anything from long-nosed
demigods with the power to destroy entire
villages to aquatic lizard men with a thing
for buttholes and cucumbers.
Yokai Snippets.
Evil Beings...
02Linda Lombardi

TANUKI
The legendary tanuki clearly has a lot of
interesting characteristics. But there’s no doubt
which is the most strange and unique: his
magical expanding scrotum.
Yes, really. It’s said the tanuki can stretch
his ball sack to the size of eight tatami mats.
Of course it’s more flexible than tatami, so it’s
way more useful. Tanuki are depicted using
their nutbags as sails for boats, fishing nets,
umbrellas, swimming pools, cloaks to smother
an enemy…
“Depicted” seems to be the important
word here. The amazing scrotum is big in
art. But not so much in the stories. It’s a
later addition to the tanuki’s repertoire. The
tanuki balls craze took off in the Edo period
when ukiyo-e artists went wild illustrating it.
Zack Davisson, who’s read lots of Edo-period
stories about tanuki, says they mostly focus on
their shapeshifting or belly-drumming, not the
magical scrotum. The tanuki balls seems to
make a better visual than a plot element.
How did tanuki come by this unique
magic? It’s got nothing to do with sexual
prowess (this is never a feature of tanuki
legends). The generally accepted explanation
is a lot less fun for the tanuki. In the old days,
metal workers in Kanazawa would wrap gold
in the skin of tanuki testicles when making
gold leaf. You want to hammer your gold to
the thinnest sheet possible. So you need a skin
that can stretch a long way without breaking.
It was said a tanuki scrotum could reach the
size of eight tatami.
What clinched it, though, was probably
the pun: kin no tama “small ball of gold” and
kintama, slang for testicles. Tanuki scrotums
began to be sold as wallets and lucky charms,
said to stretch your money the way they
stretched the gold.
KAPPA
If you encounter a vaguely reptilian creature
walking upright or hanging around in a
body of water, you may be dealing with a
kappa. They’re the size of a small child or
large monkey, with humanoid arms and
legs. Otherwise they have mostly reptile or
amphibian-like qualities. They have webbed
digits for swimming and may be scaly or
slimy. They’re reminiscent of a giant frog or
turtle. Usually they have something like a
turtle shell on their back and a beaky sort of
snout. Japanese Kappa are said to smell fishy,
and they’re often a bluish or greenish color.
What will always be distinctive despite
these variations is the top of their head. You
may momentarily wonder why this creature
has the haircut of a European monk, with
a frill around its bald spot. Look closer and
you’ll see that the “bald spot” is actually
a small dish of water. Keep an eye on this,
because it will be critical defense lesson.
08

Kappa are not just strange and dangerous.
They’re kind of kinky. They don’t want to
drown you just for the hell of it. They go after
people because they want your shirikodama.
This is a ball that supposedly is found
inside the human anus. (The origin of the
shirikodama story is said to be from the open
anuses of drowning victims. Although this
loosening of the sphincter isn’t exclusive to
that manner of death.) The kappa supposedly
reaches into your butthole with its hand to get
this precious item or else sucks it out. And if
that doesn’t kill you, the drowning will.
What is this thing exactly? Some says it’s
the human soul. I have to say that if there
is such a thing as a soul, that isn’t where I’d
choose to keep it. Another idea is that it’s the
Buddhist hojo, a sort of onion-shaped jewel
that grants wishes (likewise on the storage
location choice for that one). Yet another is
that the ball is either actually the liver, or it’s
just in the way of getting at the liver, which
the kappa is really after.
The kappa’s obsession with our heinies
also leads them to hide in toilets and try to
stroke women’s buttocks. But if that’s all that
happens, you’re getting off easy: there are also
tales of them raping women and leaving them
pregnant with grotesque children.
NURIKABE
The nurikabe is just one of Japan’s many
yōkai. It is representative of the coastal areas
of Fukuoka, almost always invisible, and as
I’ve hinted at, really enjoys taking the mickey
out of nighttime travelers.
There is some debate as to whether
nurikabe is even a yōkai in and of itself.
For example, references to nurikabe in the
historical records of Fukuoka’s Oita prefecture
place the blame squarely on tanuki—or more
specifically, on the tanuki’s super-stretchy
scrotum—for the wall that appears out of
nowhere to block a traveler’s path. Oita also
has a folktale where a tanuki stands on a
traveler’s obi knot and covers the traveler’s
eyes with its paws—hence the “invisible” wall.
For the sake of argument, though, let’s
assume the nurikabe is a separate being. There
are several variants, although their modus
operandi is always to obstruct or impede
someone’s path. Generally, a nurikabe will
disappear if you hit its nether regions; in
contrast, the nobusuma variant is a Japanese
sliding door that disappears if you just sit
a spell and have a smoke. The nuribou, yet
another variant, is specific to mountain roads,
and grows out of the mountainside at night.
Whatever the case, watch out for those
walls at night!

Type:
Human
Characteristic of humans. Either donning a disguise or has similar features.
元
先

優 兄
党 光
児
象
元

The Question of the
Slit Mouthed Woman
Michael Dylan Foster
03

The Slit-Mouthed
Woman came into
being because there
was this very beautiful woman,
but she was concerned that
her mouth was too small so
she went to a certain cosmetic
surgery clinic and had an
operation. But there was a
mistake with the operation to
make her mouth larger, and the
instant she saw her face after
the operation, she went insane
and became the Slit-Mouthed
Woman. Usually she wears a
large mask and asks people,
“Am I beautiful?” If they say
“Yes,” she will remove the
mask, say “Even like this?”
and show her mouth. If you
see that and try to escape,
she will come after you, and
kill you with a scythe. She is
exceedingly fast and can soon
catch anybody, but she has
the weakness of not liking the
odor of pomade, so if you say
“pomade,” it is said that you
can escape her.
The woman was known
as kuchi-sake-onna, literally
mouth (kuchi) slit/ split (sake)
woman (onna), or more
coherently, Slit-Mouthed
Woman. Having first appeared
in December 1978, her story
traveled rapidly throughout
the Japanese archipelago,
terrorizing elementary and
middle-school students and
stimulating heated discussion
among older children and
adults in every prefecture.
By the summer of 1979,
a national newspaper had
identified kuchi-sake-onna as
one of the “buzzwords” of
the moment (Asahi shinbun
1979, 7); according to one
source, 99 percent of Japanese
children were familiar with
her story (Kinoshita 1999,
14). The rumor of the Slit-
Mouthed Woman is an urban
or contemporary legend, an
item of hearsay, a fragment
of gossip embedded in
conversation—the type of
discursive artifact so often
overlooked, or underestimated,
within cultural interpretation.
Yet there is no doubting
the rumor’s lasting impact:
although the excitement about
the Slit-Mouthed Woman
peaked in 1979, even today she
remains a lively, if multivalent,
cultural icon.
A FEMALE
MONSTER
Through this search for
traditionality and “latent
memory” (Nomura 2005, 130),
the Slit-Mouthed Woman is
configured as a modern avatar
of earlier demonic women of
folklore. Within this context,
her monstrousness becomes
contingent on particular
powers of femaleness—giving
birth and motherhood. Such
interpretations promote a
sense that woman is always
already monster, or as Rosi
Braidotti puts it, “’she’ is
forever associated to unholy,
disorderly, subhuman, and
unsightly phenomena. It is as
if ’she’ carried within herself
something that makes her
prone to being an enemy
of mankind, an outsider in
her civilization, an ’other’”
(1997, 64). The trope of the
monstrous female in Japan
is not limited to premodern
folklore; it also finds expression

URBAN TALES...
theparanormalguide
A
young person walks down a street in
the darkening hours of the evening.
Their identity does not matter,
neither does their age or gender, because the
thing that is about to befall them does not
care for such things, all that matters is that
they are young.
The young person turns off a main road
and into a smaller street, the sounds of the
evening traffic as people return home from
work and other daytime activities grows
hollow and distant.
There is no one on this new street except
for a woman, a little ahead. Instantly visible
is the surgical mask covering her nose and
mouth, not too unusual in this part of the
world with the heavy smog and a fear of
airborne illnesses. The woman continues
to walk towards the young person, at first
looking to walk past, but at the last minute,
veering to stand directly in front of them.
“Am I beautiful?” the woman asks.
The young person looks her up and down.
She has long dark hair that passes over her
forehead to partially cover her eyes, but
even the jet black cannot cover the piercing
brilliance of eyes that can only be described
as beautiful, although quite intense at the
same time.
“Yes you are.” replies the young person.
The women slightly bows her head in

response, before clawing at her mask and tearing it away.
“How about now?”
The young person is in shock, what stands before them
is a disgusting grin. The womans mouth has been cut, the
corners extended from ear to ear. The full set of her teeth
are easily visible through the cut flesh, the mouth pulled in a
permanent smile.
“Ye.. yes” The young person is shocked, the answer is
stammered, they are unable to think.
The person they have just met is the slit-mouthed woman.
The young person has heard the stories told at their school.
They turn to run, but after only a few footsteps, she stands
before them once again, a sharp implement in her hands—
scissors, a knife?
It does not matter, they cut the youngsters flesh all the
same. The victim is found on that street sometime later.
Their mouth too bearing the frightening visage of a smile,
stretching from ear to ear.
So goes the story of the Slit Mouthed Woman, known as
“Kuchisake-onna” in the legend’s native Japan. The legend
is quite old, but no one is entirely certain when it began.
What we do know however is that it came to prominence in
the late 1970’s, when sightings were rumored to take place
around Nagasaki Prefecture, Kyushu.

Am I
in modern Japanese
literature—from the socalled
poison women of
the late eighteenth century
(Marran 1998, 2007) to the
“dangerous women” recurring
in literary works by canonical
twentieth-century authors
(Cornyetz 1999). Whether or
not there are direct historical
links between these other
female demons and the Slit-
Mouthed Woman, there is a
long lineage—folkloric and
literary—through which similar
images of women are (re)
produced within the imaginary.
From a Western theoretical
perspective, the Slit-Mouthed
Woman’s cavernous and
terrifying mouth signifies
the unclean (Douglas 1966)
and the abject (Kristeva
1982), that which is rejected
in the constitution of
normative subjectivity. She is
paradigmatic of the “dyadic
mother,” a “maternal figure
of the pre-Oedipal period
who threatens symbolically to
engulf the infant,” or similarly
“the oral sadistic mother,” a
cannibalistic female demon
blematic of the human side of
environmental destruction.
Within this context, the
Slit-Mouthed Woman legend
becomes a symbolically
overdetermined allegory
of the suffering incurred in
Japan’s post-war drive toward
economic success. With a bitter
smile hacked out by sacrifice,
hers is the face of the populace,
a face disfigured through overwork
and environmentally
wrought disease; or, as the
countenance of the land, she
is cut and made ugly through
an overharvesting of natural
resources and overconstruction
of roadways and factories;
or, as the visage of Japan
shown to other nations,
she is a brave face put on
to cover the disfigurement
etched by sacrifices made for
economic growth. In all of
these allegories, of course, the
mask signifies that something
is wrong; its sudden removal
shockingly reveals the hideous
truth, poignantly questioning
the hope embodied by the
figure of the young woman
(Even like this? suggests
another question: Was it worth
it?). The target of the Slit-
Mouthed-Woman’s attack is
almost always a child, as if she
is warning about the future or
pointing out that it was for the
sake of the children that the
sacrifices of her own generation
were made.
AB

Am I
Beautiful?
She asks. There is no correct answer to this question. A “Yes” prompts her to
make you look like her. A “No” makes you endure a more brutal death.
eautiful m I
eautiful m I
ful Beauti Am I
IAm
ful Beauti-
Am I
eautiful m I
eautiful m I
Beautiful
B Am

Say, Yes.
And I’ll
make you look
like me...

CODA
In this episode, the
appearance of the Slit-Mouthed
Woman provides a shortlived
moment of carnivalesque
parody, an intimation
of resistance ultimately
overshadowed by the
predominance and persistence
of the ideological forms it
would critique.
As with the carnival,
transgression is temporary
and ultimately perhaps only
reaffirms the dominance of
the existing structure: with
the turn of the page, the
reader encounters yet another
advertisement for “aesthetic
treatment.” The report of
her arrest was one of the
last stories about the Slit-
Mouthed Woman to appear
in woman’s weeklies; by
the end of the summer, the
excitement surrounding her
was over. Women’s weeklies
would continue to promulgate
normative standards of
beauty and the techniques for
achieving it. Although styles
and tastes would change in the
ensuing decades, and certainly
women’s roles have shifted in
many ways, when it comes
to sculpting the female body,
the popular ideal of a woman
who “poses little emotional,
intellectual, or sexual threat
to the patriarchal status quo”
(Spielvogel 2003, 7) persists.
In contemporary Japan,
the Slit-Mouthed Woman may
no longer be newsworthy, but
her voice has never entirely
disappeared. She does not, of
course, carry the same cultural
weight and meaning as she
did in 1979, but the flurry of
excitement that surrounded
her almost three decades ago
has made her an indelible
part of the Japanese cultural
landscape. At first glance, it
seems the subversive potential
of the Slit- Mouthed Woman
and her provocative question
have become complicit in the
disciplining practices of the
beauty industry; to be sure,
as Judith Butler warns, there
is always the possibility that
certain “parodic repetitions”
might become “domesticated
and recirculated as instruments
of cultural hegemony” (1990,
139). At the risk of sounding
too optimistic, however, I
suggest that the joke is (also)
on the beauty industry.
The Slit-Mouthed Woman’s
question subverts itself; it is
steeped in the bitter, quiet
power of irony. Perhaps this
is the residual force of any
resistant moment: long after it
is over, it persists as a memory,
and nothing is exactly the same
again. Even today, a faint echo
of the Slit-Mouthed Woman
can still be heard: she has
infiltrated everyday discourse
in Japan, making it difficult
to ask sincerely, uncritically,
unreflexively, that essential
question of female subjectivity
within patriarchy: Am I
beautiful?

04
Linda
KITSUNE: The
Divine Fox
Lombardi

In every culture there are
beliefs about animals that
are so basic, we don’t quite
realize that they are folklore.
In English we talk about the
lazy pig and the wise owl, even
though most of us have never
met one personally, and have
no way of knowing whether
swine are really shiftless or
owls actually have a lick of
common sense.
But then you encounter
animals in another culture
and it’s not so obvious. You
don’t have to be interested in
Japan for very long before you
stop and wonder: What’s up
with all the foxes? Are they
good or bad, and why are they
so important?
The fox (kitsune) plays
a role in Japanese culture
that’s unusually rich and
complicated. Beliefs that
developed when people lived
much closer to nature persist in
stories, festivals, and language.
Even in these rational times,
the fox has a magical aura that
still lingers.
INARI FOX
OF THE GODS
If you’ve ever been a tourist
in Japan you’ve seen statues
of foxes at Shinto shrines. It’s
a little odd from an American
perspective, where animals are
not much involved in religion,
except maybe those cows and
camels admiring Baby Jesus
in nativity scenes. Surely the
Japanese don’t worship foxes?
No, not exactly, although it
kind of depends on who you
ask, as we’ll get to later. When
you see those foxes, you’re
at a shrine dedicated to the
god inari, who’s worshipped
everywhere from tiny roadside
shrines to major tourist
destinations like the famed
Fushimi Inari in Kyoto. More
than a third of the recorded
shrines in Japan are Inari
shrines and, aside from the fox
statues, the obvious symbol
that indicates "Inari shrine" is
red torii gates.
Entire books have been
written on the varied meaning
and significance of Inari,
but the one thing everyone
agrees on is that this god is
connected to rice. Given the
importance of rice in Japan,
Inari is obviously a big deal.
Often people pray to this
god for business prosperity –
perhaps, as the early Western
Japanologist Lafcadio Hearn
observed, because all wealth
in the old days was counted in
measures of rice.
The fox is associated with
Inari as a symbol, a messenger,
a servant, or maybe more.
Whatever it is, now it’s
impossible to tease the two
apart, although no one’s quite
sure how this connection arose
– the earliest historical records
of Inari worship, before the
tenth or eleventh century, don’t
mention anything about foxes.
The simplest explanation
seems to be that rodents eat
rice, foxes eat rodents, so
foxes could have been seen as
protectors of rice. But some of
the associated beliefs have no
such rational explanation.

KITSUNE URBAN....
coyotes.org
In a time of our honorable forefathers,
there dwelt in a mean mountain village of
Settsu Province a poor faggot-cutter who
followed the way of Lord Buddha, taking
no animal life fore the solace of his belly
and praying as a devout man should for the
eternal welfare of his spirit.
One day in a ravine he came upon a
vixen, caught by the paw in a trapper’s snare,
which with many a moan and with tears
running down her muzzle para-para seemed
to beseech him for succor, so that in pity he
would have released her. But being minded
to rob no honest man, he trudged a long way
down the mountain to his hut, and taking
from a hiding place in the thatch a piece of
silver, the fruit of weeks of toil, he returned
to the ravine and set the vixen free, and
wrapped the silver piece in a bit of cotton
cloth, he tied it to the snare and went his
way. The vixen, when he released her, fled
not, but as thought understanding his heart,
fawned upon his feet and licked his hands
and followed him limping tobo-tobo to the
mouth of the ravine, where she gave three
sharp barks and sprang into the thicket.
Now on the third evening thereafter, as the
man squatted in the mouth of his hut resting
from the sweaty labor of the day, on a sudden
there appeared before him a damsel, clad in
a brown-silk robe, who called to him, and

he, seeing her rare beauty and thinking her some great lady
strayed from her cavalcade, prostrated himself before her
and begged her pleasure. Said she: “Abase not thyself. I am
the fox which thy humanity set free the other night from
the snare, and whose life thou didst purchase with thy silver
piece. I have take this form in order to requite thy favor as
I may, and I will serve thee with fealty so long as thou dost
live.” At which he cried: “Esteemed mistress of magic! Not
for my unparalleled worthlessness is thy high condescension!
I am eight times rewarded by this thy visit. I am but a
beggarly forester and thou a repository of all beauty. I pray
thee, make not sport of my low condition.” The said she:
“Thou art a poor man. Suffer me at least to set thee on
the way to wealth.” Asked he: “How may that be done?”
She replied: “Tomorrow morning don thy best rob and thy
stoutest sandals and come to the mouth of the ravine where
thou didst rescue me. There thou shalt see me in my true
form. Follow whither I lead and good fortune shall be thine.
This I promise on the word of a fox.” At that he prostrated
himself before the damsel in gratitude, and when he lifted
himself she had vanished.
Next morning, when he came to the ravine, he found
awaiting him the vixen, who barked thrice and turning,
trotted before him, leading him by paths he knew not across
the mountain. So they proceeded, she disappearing in the
thicket whenever a chance traveler came in view, and he
satisfying his hunger with fruits and berries and slaking
his thirst from the rivulets, and at night sleeping under the
starts. Thus the reaches of the sun wound up the days till on
fourth noontide they descended into a vale where lay a city.

At sundown they came to a grove hard by the city’s outer
barrier where was a shrine to the fox deity, Inari. Before this
the vixen barked thrice, and bounded through its door. And
presently the woodsman beheld the damsel issuing therefrom,
robed now in rich garments and beauteous as a lover’s dream
leaping from the golden heart of a plum blossom.
Said she: “Take me now—who am they daughter—to the
richest brothel in yonder city, and sell me to it’s master for
a goodly price.” He answered: “Barter thee, to the red-hell
hands of a conscienceless virgin-buyer? Never!” Then, with
a laugh like the silver potari of a fountain, she said: “Nay,
but they soul shall be blameless. So soon as thou hast closed
the bargain and departed, I shall take on my fox shape in the
garden and get me gone, and thus the reward shall be thine
and evil intent shall receive its just deserts.”
So, as she bade him, he entered the city with her and
inquiring the way to the quarter of houses of public women,
came to it’s most splendid rendezvous, which was patronized
only by brazen spendthrifts and purse-proud princes, where
all night the painted drums went don-a-don and the samisen
were never silent, and whose satiny corridors lisped with the
shu-shu of the velvet foot-palms of scarlet-lipped courtesans.
So great was the damsel’s beauty that a crowd trooped after
them, and the master of the house, when he saw her, felt his
back teeth itch with pleasure. The faggot-cutter told him his
tale, as he had been prompted, averring that he was a man
whose life had fallen on gloomy ways so that he who had
been a man of substance was now constrained to sell his only
daughter to bondage. At which the proprietor, his mouth
watering at her loveliness and bethinking him of his wealthy
clientele, thrust ink-brush into his fist and planked before

him a bill-of-agreement providing for her three years’ service
for a sum of thirty gold ryo paid that hour into his hand.
The woodsman would joyfully have signed, but the
damsel put forth her hand and stopped him saying: “Nay,
my august father! I joyfully obey thy will in this as in all
else, yet I pray thee bring not reproach upon our unsullied
house by esteeming me of so little value.” And, to the
master of the place she said: “Methinks thou saidst sixty
ryo.” He answered: “Were I to give a rin more than forty, I
were robbing my children.” Said she: “The perfume I used
in our brighter days cost me ten each month. Sixty!” Cried
he: “A thousand curses upon my beggarly poverty, which
constraineth me. Have mercy and take fifty!” At this she
rose, saying: “Honorable parent, there is a house in a nearby
street frequented, I hear, by a certain prince who may deem
me not unattractive. Let us go thither, for this place seemeth
of lesser standing and reputation than we had heard.” But
the master ran and barred the door and, although groaning
like an ox before the knacker, flung down the sixty gold ryo,
and the woodsman set his name to the bill-of-agreement and
farewelled her and went home rejoicing with the money.
Then the master, glad at the capture of such a peerless
pearl of maidenhood, gave her into the care of his tirewoman
to be robed in brocades and jewels, and set her on a
balcony, where her beauty shone so dazzling that the halted
palanquins made the street impassable, and the proprietor
of the establishment across the way all but slit his throat in
sheer envy. Moreover, the son of the daimyo of the province,
hearing of the newcome marvel, sent to the place a gift of
gold, requesting her presence at a feast he was to give there
that same evening.

Now this feast was held in an upper room overhanging the
river, and among the damsels who attended the noble guests,
the fox-woman was as the moon to a horde of broken paper
lanterns, so that the princely host could not unhook his eyes
from her and each and every of his guests gave black looks to
whoever touched her sleeve. As the sake cup took its round,
she turned her softest smile now to this one and now to that,
beckoning to each to folly till his blood bubbled butsu-butsu
with passion and all were balanced on the thin knife-edge of
a quarrel.
Suddenly, then, the lights in the apartment flickered out
and there was confusion, in the midst of which the damsel
cried out in a loud voice: “O, my Prince! One of thy guests
hath fumbled me! Make a light quickly and thou shalt know
this false friend, for he is the one whose hat-tassel I have
torn off.” But cried the Prince (for he was true-hearted and
of generous mind): “Nay, do each one of you, my comrades,
tear off his hat-tassel and put it on his sleeve. For we have
all drunk overmuch, and ignorance is sometimes better than
knowledge.” Then after a moment he clapped his hands, and
lights were brought, lo, there was no hat left with a tassel
upon it. At this, one of the young blades, laughing at the
success of the artifice, began to sing this ancient song:
The hat thou lovedst,
Reed-wove, tricked out with damask,
Ah me, hath blown away,
Into the Kamo River-
Blown amidst the current.
While I wandered seeking it,
While I wandered searching it,
Day-dawn cam, day-dawn came!

Ah, the sawa-sawa
Of that rustling night of autumn,
There by the water,
The spread-out, rustling water!
But the damsel, crying that with the affront unavenged she
would not choose longer to live, ran into the next chamber
and, stripping of her clothes, cast them from the window into
the swift current, while she herself, taking on her fox form,
leaped down and hid in a burrow under the riverbank. So the
party of the Prince rushed in and, finding the window wide
and her vanished and seeing the splendid robe borne away
by the rushing water, deeming that she had indeed drowned
herself, made outcry, and the master of the house plucked
out his eyebrows, and his folk and the gallants put forth in
many a boat, searching for her fair body all that night, but
naught did they discover save only her loincloth.
Now on the fourth evening after that, as the faggot-cutter
sat in his doorway, the damsel appeared before him, robed
in a kimono of pine-and-bamboo pattern, with an obi of
jeweled dragonflies tangled in a purple mist. Asked she:
“Have I kept my fox-word?” He answered. “Aye, eight times
over. This morning I purchased a plot of rich rice land, and
tomorrow the builders, with what remaineth, begin to erect
my mansion.” Said she then: “Thou art no faggot-cutter
henceforth, but a man of substance. Look upon me. Wouldst
thou not have me to wife?” But he, seeing how her carriage
was as graceful as the swaying of a willow branch, her
flawless skin the texture of a magnolia petal, her eyebrows
like sable rainbows, and her hair glossy as a sun-tinted
crow’s wing, and knowing himself for an untutored hind,
knelt in abasement before her and said: “Nay, wise one...”

“Doth the smutty raven mate with the snow-white
heron?” Then she said, smiling: “Do my bidding once again.
Tomorrow return to the city and to the brothel where thou
didst leave me, and offer, as the bargain provided, to buy me
back. Since the master of the house cannot produce me, he
must need pay over to thee damage money, and see that thou
accept not less than two hundred gold ryo.” So saying, she
became a fox and vanished in the bushes.
So next morning he took his purse and crammed it with
copper pieces and betook himself across the mountain, and
on the third day he arrived at the city. There he hastened
to the brothel and demanded its master, to whom he said,
jingling the purse beneath his nose: “Good fortune is mine.
For, returning to my village three days since to pay my
obligations with thy sixty ryo, I found that my elder brother
had died suddenly in the next province, leaving to me (since
he was without issue) all his wide estates. So I am come to
redeem my beloved daughter and to return thee thy gold
plus the legal interest.” At that the master of the house felt
his liver shrink and sought to put him off with all kinds of
excuses, but the woodsman insisted the more, so that the
other at length had no choice but to tell him that the girl
had drowned herself. When he heard this the woodsman’s
lamentations filled all the place, and he beat his head upon
the mats hata-to, crying out that naught but ill treatment
had driven her to such a course, and swearing to denounce
the proprietor to the magistrates for a bloody murderer, till
from dread to see his establishment sunk in evil repute, the
man ran to his strongbox and sought to offer the breaved
one golden solace. Thus, with two hundred more ryo in gold
(for mindful of the maiden’s rede, he would take no less) the

woodsman returned to his village, with an armed guard of
ten men for an escort, where he rented a stout go down for
the money’s safekeeping.
The night of his return, as he sat on his doorstep,
thanking all the deities for his good luck, the fox-maiden
again appeared before him, this time clad only in the soft
moon-whiteness of her adorable body, so that he turned
away his face from the sight of it. Asked she: “Have I kept
my fox-word?” And he answered, stammering: “Eight
hundred times! Today I am the richest man in these parts.”
Said she: “Look upon me. Wouldst thou not posses me as
thy concubine?” Then, peeping despite himself betwixt his
fingers, he beheld the clear and lovely luster of her satiny
skin, her breasts like twin snow-hillocks, her bending
waist, and the sweet hidden curves of her thighs, and all
his senses clamored like bells, so that he covered his eyes
with his sleeve. And said he: “O generous bestower! Forgive
the unspeakable meanness of this degraded nonentity. My
descendants to the tenth generation shall burn richest incense
before the golden shrine which I shall presently erect to thee.
But I am a man and thou art a fox, with whom I may not
knowingly consort without deadly sin!”
Then suddenly he saw a radiance of the five colors shine
rainbow-like around her, and she cried out in a voice of
exceeding great joy, saying: “Blessing and benison upon thee,
O incorruptible one! As a fox I have dwelt upon the earth
for five hundred years, and never before have I found among
humankind one whose merit had the power to set me free.
Know that by the virtue of thy purity I may now quit this
animal road for that of humankind.” Then she vanished, and
he built a shrine to her in the mouth of the mountain ravine,
and it is told that his children’s grandchildren worship before
it to this day.

Representations of the fox in popular
culture, exemplified in Ahri, a
character in League of Legends.

THE FOX TODAY
As the real fox has adapted to
modern life, so do the folkloric
ones. Authors of fiction and
manga and anime put their
own spin on kitsune, and some
of these can even make their
way into tradition. Multiple
tails are traditionally a sign
of great magical power, but a
blogger who researched the
now-common idea that the
number of tails increases with
age and rank concluded that
it probably originated in a
modern fantasy series.
Festivals persist, such as
one at Oji in Kita, Tokyo,
once supposedly a site where
kitsune-bi was often seen,
and where tradition said
that foxes from all over the
region gathered on New
Year’s Eve. Now, people from
all over gather in fox masks
for parades.
At the end of the nineteenth
century, Lafcadio Hearn
predicted that western
education would eradicate
belief in the supernatural
qualities of foxes. That hadn’t
happened by the 1950s, when
one folklorist had no trouble
finding believers, although even
in those days it was often one
of those things that happened
to the friend of a friend:
They openly admit their fear
of being bewitched. Nobody
is ashamed of it, and if an
uncomprehending foreigner
laughs at the superstition,
examples are immediately
forthcoming of “wellauthenticated”
cases, or at least
of people who knew people
whose friend was once fooled
by a fox.
By the 1990s when Karen
Smyers was doing her research,
people would tell her about
things that happened to
their grandparents, or that
happened to them as children,
not contemporary stories. She
wondered sometimes if their
answers were basically edited
for her as a foreigner, though,
and found that people seemed
to be uncomfortable with the
notion that she was hanging
out with so much fox stuff:
Japanese people regard
this kind of talk as old
fashioned and superstitious.
But the figure of the fox still
retains some of its sacred and
dangerous aura—at least to
judge by the comments I heard
when I talked to people about
my research or showed them
my extensive collection of fox
statues. The idea that I was
in such close touch with all
those foxes seemed to make
otherwise rational people
rather nervous.
Whether you’re a believer
or not, it’s probably best to
be careful.

Ghost stories have been big in Japan
for about as long as there’s been
Japanese literature. When they were
first written down in the Heian period, at the
same time as the classic Tale of Genji, there
were enough to fill a 33-volume collection.
When the first printing press appeared in
Japan around 1600, ghost stories were among
the best-sellers.
But when it comes to writing about these
stories, oddly, a Westerner has dominated
this arena. If you go to a Japanese bookstore
and ask for a book about ghosts, they’ll hand
you the work of Lafcadio Hearn, renowned
as the first major interpreter of Japan to the
West after it opened to the outside world in
the nineteenth century, and author of books
including Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of
Strange Things and In Ghostly Japan.
Today, a modern day Lafcadio Hearn is
picking up this ghostly torch. Zack Davisson
is the author, translator, and folklorist
following in Hearn’s footsteps. His book,
Yūrei: The Japanese Ghost, is coming out in
October. I got the chance to sit down with him
and discuss Japanese ghosts, translation, and
working for the godfather of horror manga,
Mizuki Shigeru.
Interview with
Zack Davisson
05Linda Lombardi

Q. You say in your book that it’s
important to know about Japanese
ghosts if you’re interested in Japanese
popular culture. Why is that?
It’s an important aspect of Japanese culture
and history—more important than most
people realize. After all, Japan is the most
haunted country on earth. Yūrei are deeply
bound into the country’s customs, religion,
and entertainment. There is almost no aspect
of Japanese culture not touched in some way
by ghosts.
Even if you just want to watch some
cool horror flicks or anime, or play some
games—everything makes more sense when
you understand yūrei; when you know the
backstory behind the movie monster costume
of white kimono, white face, and black hair.
After all, imagine watching a vampire flick
without knowing what a vampire was. You
wouldn’t have the slightest idea why these
dead people sprouted pointed teeth and bit
people, or why the heroes kept stabbing wood
into them. You need context.
Q. One thing I was surprised to learn
from your book was the role of kabuki,
where ghost stories were big, and
more gore was a plus. To be honest,
I always thought of kabuki as one
of those tedious classical Japanese
entertainments that are only of interest
to specialists. But you say it was
actually theater for the masses. Tell us
a little about ghosts in kabuki.
Oh yeah, Kabuki was completely lowbrow
mass entertainment. During the Edo period,
kabuki would have been the equivalent of Saw
and Friday the 13th slasher flicks, full of blood
and guts and cheap thrills. Kabuki also took
those snippets of tales from hyakumonogatari
kaidankai and sewed them together into
legitimate stories. Kabuki writers introduced
plot lines and structure and relationships. But
it was always with an eye for thrills. The plays
kept getting gorier and gorier until eventually the
government had to step in and establish limits.
It’s weird how that works. In his time,
Shakespeare was lowbrow mass entertainment
too. The theater was a place for laborers
to let off some steam. Now both kabuki
and Shakespeare are considered high art,
something to be studied and mastered. It
makes me wonder what people will think
about slasher flicks five hundred years from
now. Will we have Jason scholars debating the
finer points of the Friday the 13th franchise?

Q. If people have seen even one
J-horror flick, they’ve seen the ghost
with long hair. What the heck is the
deal with the long hair?
Hair—especially woman’s hair—was always
thought to possess supernatural powers.
Lafcadio Hearn wrote about it in his first Japan
book Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan. But Kabuki
theater is really behind the craziness of hair.
Kabuki loves extravagant, wild special effects,
and would do all sorts of things with hair. Stage
hands would hide under the floor boards and
push up hair through the bottom to make it
look like yūrei characters were swimming in
oceans of hair. Movies are visual, like kabuki, so
they picked up that effect and ran with it.
Q. When and how did the consistent
description of yūrei begin? You say
in your book that it was created as
recently as the Edo period, during a
renaissance of spooky tales.
In Japan’s prehistory, yūrei were invisible,
more like forces of nature without personification.
Things changed during the Heian
period and contact with China. Yūrei became
indistinguishable from human beings. They
could even get married and bear children
after death. You can tell stories from the
Heian period because they usually have a
twist ending of someone being revealed as a
yūrei. Probably the most famous of this kind
is Botan Dōrō, where a man takes a woman
to bed, and finds out later he was sleeping
with a corpse.
Then came the Warring States period,
which didn’t produce a lot of yūrei tales—
people were too busy worrying about being
killed for real to bother about ghost stories
and horror. But they made up for it in the
Edo period.
During the peace of the Edo period, Japan
rediscovered its love for ghosts and the weird.
There was a kaidan renaissance, and the first
of Japan’s yokai booms where the country
became obsessed with the supernatural. That
classic look of the yūrei—the white kimono,
white face, and black hair, comes from the
Edo period kaidan renaissance. It relates
directly back to a painting from1750 by the
artist Maruyama Okyo, who had a vision one
day of his dead love Oyuki. He painted her
picture—called The Ghost of Oyuki—which
became the template for yūrei that you still
see today.