You see what happens when you let paperwork pile up?!Lately, found this boys' manga, which despite the silly haircut, is pretty sold for a boys' manga. From it, I learned a new 4 character idiom: 魑魅魍魎 (chimimouryou) spirits of the rivers and mountains, or in other words, all the yokai of the land. These days, it is often used to describe the profane world with it's politics, money-hungry businesses, and bullying. One idiom often uttered in such situations is 魑魅魍魎が跳梁跋扈する (the demons are rampant). Or, to use another yokai-flavored idiom, I bet one could say 魑魅魍魎が百鬼夜行する (pretty much the same, though you could say it means the demons are plotting). Google says it's okay!
To learn more about 百鬼夜行, go here. BTW, Jeff, if you ever read this post, know now that you have the onus of explaining 跳梁跋扈; I'm not the guy with a yo-ji blog.
Finally, you might also like these old prints of Japanese creepies available online.
It's already the 30th of June?! Wow, man - you live in the future! :D
ReplyDeleteIf I remember right, a famous Japanese folklorist, Yanagita Kunio said, the difference between yuurei and youkai is that the place where a youkai appears is fixed while a yuurei appears at different places.
ReplyDelete@Bla. I live in the land of tomorrow, as Deas might say.
ReplyDelete@Naoki: Interesting fella. He made a study of language patterns around the word snail; I linked to some info on it in my RSS bits.
Hey Clay,
ReplyDelete百鬼夜行 is so rare that it was cool to see it on your blog, though I'm under the impression that when it is used, it's used much less literal fashions than my mythology-loving imagination would like.
Also, I think you're right on about the Obakemono stuff. When I first started browsing through the Project, I was struck by how often Japanese mythology anthropromorphizes inanimate objects, (Pathetic fallacy, shout out to Brett) and I was like, man... wonder why? But then... duh, Shintoism. All objects have a spirit. It's natural then that things whose spirits aren't properly cared for or are forgotten due to age would start to act up.
Really cool, stuff. Thanks for the link.
It seems that it's still with us a bit; a teacher I know thinks his leg pains are due to a snake he killed a few years back.
ReplyDeleteAnd in one of my books, a travelogue written in the 80s, a traveler is warned by a police officer that there are kitsune lurking in the forest.