TSUKUMOGAMI

Twenty-three Japanese tales of the tsukumogami — the object spirits: ladles, jars, puppets, a mask, a mirror, a plank, a coin, a pair of worn-out clogs.

A Muromachi picture scroll gives the rule, citing an older almanac: a utensil that has passed a hundred years of service gains a spirit. The rest of the tradition never held itself to the count. What the storytellers kept was the suspicion behind it — that a thing used every day and looked at never is quietly accumulating something.

Discarded household goods hold a council in a frozen lane and resolve to take their revenge. A small oil jar hops down a great avenue in daylight and goes in through the keyhole of a locked gate. A seamstress wakes to find a hair-veiled woman crouched by the box of needles she broke and threw away.