Curious Ordinary

The tiger is the third animal in the Chinese zodiac, and 2022 is the year of the tiger. The tiger embodies yang energy and so this year is believed to be one full of activity and change. It may be a time of renewed enthusiasm, following dreams and social progress.

In Japan there is a folktale about a cannibalistic hag who lived alone on the Adachi Plain. One story tells of a Buddhist monk who arrived at her lonely cottage late at night and asked if he could shelter there.

In Japanese folklore, funayurei are the vengeful ghosts of people who have died at sea. They are often the ghosts of sailors who remain in this world searching for former shipmates with the intention of dragging them into the ocean.

Bunbuku Chagama is a Japanese folktale in which a tanuki shapeshifts into a kettle and uses his talents to reward his owner. The story begins with a priest who bought an old tea kettle from a local store. He polished it up to use for the tea ceremony at his temple. One night while he was sleeping, the monks heard a lot of noise coming from his room and when they looked, they saw that the kettle had sprouted legs, a bushy tail and had the face of a tanuki.

In Japanese folklore there is a tale called ‘Kachi-kachi Yama’ which translates as fire-crackle mountain. Kachi kachi is onomatopoeia for the sound of crackling fire. The story is also more commonly known as ‘The Farmer and the Badger' however the ‘badger’ in this tale is actually a tanuki . Ikuhide Kobayashi, 1880 One day there was an old farmer whose fields were ransacked each night by a malicious tanuki. Finally fed up, the farmer tried to catch the sneaky tanuki but had no luck. He decided to lay traps and after much persistence managed to catch the tanuki whereupon he took him home, tied him up and hung him from the ceiling. Before he headed out to work the next day, the farmer told his wife not to untie the tanuki because he was making tanuki soup for their dinner that night. The old woman was doing her chores and pounding some barley when the crafty tanuki offered to help her. At first she refused, knowing that her husband would be angry if she didn't follow his instruct

In Japanese folklore, Oitekebori is strange apparition that takes the form of a human ghost. The story goes that one evening, two fishermen were fishing in a canal in Tokyo and they were catching more fish than usual. As they were preparing to go home they heard an eerie voice coming from the canal calling 'oite ike' which means 'drop it and get out of here.'

In Japanese folklore the suiko (water tiger) is a yokai that lives in rivers, lakes, ponds and waterways throughout Japan. They have a body that is the same shape and size as a small child and is covered in tough scales with sharp claw-like spikes protruding from their knees. Suiko are far more dangerous  than the more well-known kappa .

In Japanese folklore there is a tale about a powerful mountain witch called Momiji. The name Momiji translates as maple leaves, and the story takes place during Autumn, when the leaves begin to fall. The tale begins with the samurai Koremochi who was given the task of hunting and killing oni (demons). He was travelling through the mountains with his retainers when they came across a leaf-viewing party.

In Japanese mythology, Tsukuyomi is the Shinto moon god and brother/husband of the sun goddess Amaterasu. He is one of the three noble children' born from Izanagi, along with Amaterasu and Susanoo, after he had returned from yomi (the underworld) when he had tried to retrieve his dead wife, Izanami.

In Japanese folklore, yuki-onna (snow woman) is one of the most famous ghostly yokai. She is usually seen on snowy nights in the mountains, appearing as a beautiful woman with blue lips, ice cold skin so pale she is almost translucent, and long black hair laden with ice. Some say she has no feet and glides soundlessly across the snow wearing a white kimono.

One of the most famous Japanese ghost stories is Bancho Sarayashiki (The Dish Mansion at Bansho) which is the tale of Okiku. While there are many different versions of the story, they all centre around the death of a servant who returns as an onryo (vengeful ghost) to haunt those who mistreated and killed her.

In Japanese folklore unagi hime, which translates as eel princess, is a huge shapeshifting eel that takes the form of a beautiful woman. This yokai is believed to live at the bottom of deep ponds and lakes and acts as a guardian of both the lake and everything in it.

In Japanese folklore hiderigami is a yokai with Chinese origins that is believed to cause droughts. It is short and hairy with a human-ish shape, although it has only one arm, one leg and a single eye on top of its head. Living in remote mountainous areas, its body gives off so much heat that wherever it goes everything dries up and rain cannot fall, thus causing drought.