Subject
Tsukumogami 付喪神
The object spirits. 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 tradition never held itself to the count. What it kept was the suspicion that a thing used every day and looked at never is quietly accumulating something.
Notes
- Chōchin Obake: The Lantern That Remembers Chōchin obake, the paper-lantern yokai. A merchant replaces the lantern that lit his accounts for years; the tradition holds that objects keep count.
- What Is a Yōkai? The word now translated as monster first named an event, not a creature. How yōkai, mononoke, bakemono, and ayakashi came to mean what they mean.
Volume
Japanese Horror Folktales Collection
TSUKUMOGAMI
Tales of the Object Spirit Yokai
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.
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