MUSE MONDAY
Please welcome Margaret L. Carter to Muse Monday. Demons, spirits, and Japanese folklore. What a fascinating trip her muse has sent her on. Read and enjoy!
The Japanese word “yokai” can be translated as monster,
demon, spirit, or other variations of
similar concepts. Not directly equivalent to any English word, it can also
apply to ghosts, transformed humans and animals, minor gods, and many
unclassifiable strange phenomena. “Demon” is misleading because it implies
evil, and, although some yokai are malevolent and dangerous, many aren’t. Some
are neutral toward humans, merely mischievous, or even benign.
Some well-known yokai often met in popular culture include
kitsune (fox shapeshifters), tanuki (“raccoon dogs,” who, in their supernatural
incarnation, have powerful shapeshifting abilities and a reputation as
tricksters), tengu (crow-like people), kappa (water-dwelling goblins, often
malicious), and spirit cats like the one in my novella “Yokai Magic.” Travelers
should beware of demonic wolves that prowl on lonely roads or the yuki-onna,
the seductive, lethal woman of the snow. Much more bizarre entities lurk in
Japanese folklore, however. For instance, child ghosts called makuragaeshi are mainly
known for flipping pillows, although they sometimes flip people around or sit
on and suffocate them. The karakasa kozō looks like an umbrella that hops on
one or two legs, has a single large eye, and sneaks up on people to lick them
with its long tongue. Some ordinary household objects come to life after a
century of existence. Called tsukumogami, they chastise owners who waste or
damage them. The ittan-momen, a living roll of cotton cloth, tries to smother its
victims. There’s even a creature, the akaname, whose sole purpose is to
clean bathrooms. In Japan’s animistic traditions, you can find a yokai for
almost anything.
Here’s one encyclopedic source of information about yokai:
http://www.yokai.com”>Yokai.com
Wikipedia has an extensive list:
Legendary Creatures from Japan
Book Blurb:
When
Val unearths a Japanese scroll and a cat figurine inherited from her
grandfather, magic invades her world. The statuette, actually a cat spirit
named Yuki—a yokai—enchanted into that form for her own protection, comes to
life. Over a century ago, an evil magician cast a curse on her, and a wolf-like
demon conjured by the curse still hunts her. Because Val is the one who broke
the protective spell, that dark magic endangers her, too. She must turn for
help to the last person she wants to get involved with, her former high-school
boyfriend, now an officer in the Navy. Together they search for a way to
vanquish the threat from the spirit realm, while facing the attraction they
thought they’d long since put behind them.
Buy Links:
PG Excerpt:
“Toby, are you in there?” Val shuffled
into the bathroom. No sign of the cat or any other living creature. She jumped
at a noise from behind the shower curtain. Not a rustle so much as a slither.
The plastic rippled. She grasped the
edge of it. “Toby?” She swept the curtain open.
A screech burst from her. She stumbled
backward and collapsed on the bath mat, with a jarring thump to her rear end.
“What on earth is that?”
A hunchbacked creature about two feet
tall huddled in the tub. Brick-red, naked except for a ragged loincloth of the
same color, it had a mop of stringy, black hair and elongated fingers and toes
with nails like claws. It was licking the tile walls with a long, sinuous
tongue like a frog’s. Its saucer-like, black eyes stared at her. With a stifled
“eep!” it blinked out of existence.
Trembling, Val clutched the edge of the
sink and hoisted herself upright. She scurried into the bedroom and dove under
the covers like a child fleeing the boogeyman.
She lay there with her lids squeezed
shut until her pulse slowed to normal. I
did not see that. I did not. She opened her eyes and gazed into the
darkness, softened only by the night light from the open bathroom door. “What is with these crazy dreams all of a
sudden?”
“You are not dreaming.” The feminine
voice sounded as if it came from somewhere in the middle of the room.
Val sat up with the sheet pulled to her
neck. “Who’s there?” She switched on the bedside light.
A slender, white cat leaped onto the
end of the bed. The animal had emerald-green eyes and wore a red scarf around
her neck. “Greetings and profound thanks for your hospitality. I assure you
this is not a dream.”
Val bent her knees to keep her feet out
of the phantom feline’s reach. “Is too. I must be still asleep. If not, how did
you get in the house?”
Demurely seated at the foot of the bed,
the cat curled her tail around her paws. “I have always been here. I was bound
to the magic of the scroll, and your blood released that magic.”
Thanks very much for hosting me!
ReplyDeleteMy pleasure. An interesting topic.
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