The Woman as depicted by Japanese Folklore and Urban Legends
Upon this island the two deities descended. Shortly afterwards they desired to become husband and wife...These deities accordingly set up a pillar on the island. Izanagi walked round one way, and Izanami the other. When they met, Izanami said: “How delightful! I have met with a lovely youth.” One would have thought that this naive remark would have pleased Izanagi; but it made him extremely angry, and he retorted: “I am a man, and by that right should have spoken first. How is it that on the contrary thou, a woman, shouldst have been the first to speak? This is unlucky. Let us go around again.”
- F. Hadland Davis, Myths and Legends of Japan, p. 22
Upon scouring Japanese folklore and subsequent media, it becomes immediately apparent how ill-portrayed women are. Monster after ghost after demon depicts women as dependent and vengeful creatures that serve as mere objects for the men. The myth-makers, however, made no accidents in creating far more tales of female monsters than those of men; the sexism deeply ingrained in the patriarchal society guarantees this trend. If the beasts people invent represent the anxieties of their time, then what do these female monstrosities mean for the Japanese? Perhaps, on a subconscious level, Japan has always been frightened of women rising up in animalistic rage against their subjugation and marginalization. In this manner, it becomes quite simple to analyze their views and fears.
The Woman as Dependent:
Though following the social trends of a more conservative time, women get depicted far too frequently as sickeningly dependent beings. In many stories, the women’s weak constitutions make them prone to fainting, the damsel in distress act, and total emotional focus on whomever they are married or wish to marry. As in many other cultures during earlier centuries, men married women through obtaining their father’s permission; women were given away like cheaply bartered livestock. To perpetuate the supposed morality of such transgressions, stories were written to include women whose dependency on their men was overt and exaggerated.
The first tale that comes to mind in such a vein is Botan Dourou or “Peony Lantern”. In this story, Tsuyu wished to marry a samurai named Shinzaburou, who promised to visit her soon with an escort for etiquette’s sake. The old man on whom he relied to visit with him, however, did not approve of the match and refused, so Tsuyu soon began to think that her love had been unfaithful. She pined away in sorrow and died, her maid Yone dying soon after. One night, though, the two women came - Tsuyu bearing a peony lantern - to visit Shinzaburou at his house; unaware that they had died, he allowed them in night after night to talk and enjoy each other’s company. A servant of Shinzaburou’s looked in one night, only to see his master conversing with a pair of corpses. They called in a high priest in order to put up holy charms on his house to prevent the spirits’ entrance, but his servant was eventually paid by the ghosts to take them down. The next morning, Shinzaburou was found dead next to a pile of Tsuyu’s bones.
This tale depicts a woman that was so obsessed with her lover that she cannot even rest in the grave without him. Undefined as her own person, Tsuyu must play the role of “that girl who loves a samurai” that can be found in far more stories than this. Notice, it did not take long for her to fall over dead after Shinzaburou remained silent - Tsuyu cannot fall into any other category than the stereotypical and sexist view of a “weak, emotional woman”. Though she eventually gets her way by forcing Shinzaburou to join her in the spirit realm, her goal was inherently a faulty one that revolved merely around men.
Another example of this poisonous dependency gets brought to light in stories of Nure onago. As the legends go, the Nure onago will appear as young girls, soaked to the bone and sometimes covered in mud and leaves. They will smile at anyone who finds them, and if that person smiles back, they will follow him or her until death. Said to be possibly be the spirits of widows or victims of drowning, these pitiable creatures clamor for attention in the way that men claim women do.
The tale of Okiku also suggests similar dependency traits. In various versions of this legend, either Okiku broke one of the ten heirloom plates of her lover, or was framed for doing so. She then either gets thrown down a well or threw herself down in shame, depending on the recountence. Each night, her spirit is heard from the well, counting to nine to tally the plates that she imagines she sees. Eventually, a priest puts her to rest by yelling “ten!” at the end of her perpetual counting. In this story, not only could Okiku not give up on a man, but she couldn’t give up on a mere object of his that got broken - even after her own life was lost. She depended so much on this man’s opinion of her that it troubled her far after she no longer lived.
The Woman as Vengeful:
The majority of the female monster tales, however, undeniably focus on revenge - and more often than not, it is the revenge of a spurned lover. The sheer amount that this trope appears throughout myths and folklore suggest two very important points to know: men cannot help but feel that they deserve more than one woman, and women are demonized for objecting to it.
Uji no hashihime’s story of a female oni depicts this clearer than most. In this legend, Uji no hashihime, made ill by morning sickness, asked her husband to go retrieve some seaweed for her to eat. On his journey, he met a sea goddess and ran off with her instead; this caused Uji no hashihime to throw herself into the Uji river, became an oni, and murdered a bunch of innocent people in her rage. Shuten Douji, a male oni that causes havoc, gets acknowledged by locals as a problem for a warrior to defeat honorably, whereas Uji no hishihime is not addressed publicly, as women were considered more of a private issue to be dealt with by their men. “In contrast, a female oni, the Uji no hashihime described in Heike Monogatari, is marginalized by her husband, a private person....Her unleashed fury that results in the killing of numerous innocent people in the capital and has everyone else locking their doors and hiding, is less a public act than a warning against the danger of women entering the public sphere” (Reider, 57-58).
In a more modern play version of the Uji no hishihime story, Kanawa, the woman prays to be turned into an oni to take revenge on her unfaithful husband. The husband, who had gone to an Abe no Seimei’s house to get a dream divined, was informed by the Seimei that his wife was going to kill him. In taking pity upon him, the Seimei saves the husband from the “monster’s” wrath, and she disappears after swearing her vengeance once more. “Symbolically, as if to underscore the societally mitigated power of woman in Kanawa, the scene in which she attacks her husband occurs in the private confines of a bedchamber. Thus it is political disappointment, resentment, and rage against a public entity that drives the plot in stories about male oni, while jealousy, shame, and grudges involving love affairs that serve as the driving force in stories about female oni” (Reider, 59).
Another tale of vengeful oni comes in the form of Onibaba’s backstory. In this bloody, confusing yarn, a five year old child has not spoken since birth, and a doctor claims that a fetus liver is the natural cure. The job of obtaining said liver gets forced onto the nanny who gives her own daughter an amulet of protection, then sets off on her journey to find a liver. After years of no luck, the old woman finally comes across a pregnant woman in the mountains and kills her for her fetus’ liver. With horror, the woman realizes that the lady she killed wore an amulet and was actually her own daughter; she goes mad and begins eating people who wander in the mountains.
Not only does this story suggest that women are gullible and willing to kill pregnant women to make a child speak, but it also implies that women are a crazy, bestial breed that will fall to cannibalism if traumatized enough.
On the subject of insanity, the Kerakera onna - yokai that derive from the spirits of brothel girls who were worked to death - follows men around to drive them insane with a cackling laughter. This demonization of women who were sexually overworked until their untimely deaths demonstrates the disgusting nature of sexism in these legends.
Another example, the Nure onna, a vampiric snake woman, “While physically much stronger than a human, nure onna prefer to use trickery and guile to catch their prey, rather than relying on brute force” (yokai.com). This description suggests women’s sadistic pleasure in torment, which men will selfishly declare that they have experienced. Any sign of strength in women gets morphed into terms such as “overbearing”, “unfeminine”, and “vindictive”.
These stories from Japanese folklore lead to newer urban legends following the same tropes. In Teke teke’s backstory, she gets pushed in front of a train and sliced in half. Far from resting in peace, she drags her torso around with a scythe in attempt to cut other people in half like her. It is troubling that such violent and vengeful depictions of women remain so prevalent in modern myths.
The Woman as an Object:
Objectification of women characters permeates through Japanese folklore to the present. Females are designed to fit beauty standards, and when they cannot, they are suddenly considered putrescent yokai. If they are beautiful, they are shallow beings, usually with violent tendencies.
A solid first example of this is the Yamauba. Literally a “mountain hag”, Yamauba is rumored to eat children. Some stories claim that she has a second mouth on top of her head beneath her hair. Yamauba, well, “she lacks the feminine traits ascribed to people of the sato, namely, chastity, obedience, and compassion...In other words, yamauba exists outside of the sato’s system of gender normativity. She refuses to be assigned a household role such as a mother or daughter and will not be territorialized” (Reider, 66). However, this take suggests that anyone who falls outside the range of acceptable gender normativity will be treated like, and essentially turned into, a monster.
Another example, the Rokurokubi, has an extendable neck that gets hidden during the day. A certain painting by Koide Narashige sexualizes the figure of the Rokurokubi; “Koide’s illustration for this essay shows Rokurokubi seated on a stage before an all-male audience strumming a samisen, while her primary attraction, her neck, has the appearance of a tall, thin post holding her head high above her body...The bizarrely stretched neck of the Osaka freak show performer and similar motifs in Koide’s writings presents a peculiar parallel to his practice of painting the nude by twisting female anatomies for a male-centered spectatorship” (Tamaki, 89). The creation of these bizarre women yokai therefore holds traces of men creating exotic figures to perhaps excite them through sheer uniqueness.
The perfect portrayal of a beautiful, thin woman comes in the form of Futakuchi onna. Despite her nice figure, Futakuchi onna devours rice ravenously through her second mouth on the back of her head. As such, though she constitutes the perfect, objectified image of a girl, her “terrible greed” and consumption lead to her demonization.
Another body image-related yokai is the Taka onna. This “tall woman” was considered too homely to marry in life, so she stretches her body to watch others’ sexual encounters through hotel windows in the red light district.
Similarly, Ohaguro bettari, the woman with blackened teeth and no face, is also suspected of being too ugly to marry before turning into a yokai. The stress that the patriarchal society puts on marriage and dedicating oneself to a man creates a lot of literal demons for Japan.
A more vengeful yokai, the Kuchisake onna, has a disfigured face with scars running from lip to ear. Wearing a medical mask, she approaches people on the streets and asks them if she’s pretty. If they say yes, she removes her mask and asks again, if they say no, she kills them. When asked a second time, “no” leads to the same unfortunate result, while “yes” drives her to slice their face in the same manner as her own. The very fact that Kuchisake onna is so self-conscious about her appearance portrays the results of such a strict, sexist culture. In this society, women exist solely for the men to enjoy looking at. Therefore, any physical disfigurement proves her to be a useless “monster”.
Yuki onna, though depicted as a beautiful woman who appears in snowstorms, seems to mock women’s supposed “violent tempers” and shallow nature; she murders men who get caught in blizzards and beguiles them into marrying her if she doesn’t. Her capricious nature paired with her pretty face imply that she does not have much of a personality past her malicious intents.
The last example, is represented by the Inari (fox god). Though not necessarily female, the “chief attribute of the bad fox is the power to delude human beings, and for this purpose it will take the form of a beautiful woman” (Davis, 93). The choice of “beautiful women” as a means of malignantly tricking others links the female with deceit, as these tales are wont to do. Generalizations such as this portray the objectification of women, as they are shown as vessels and costumes instead of people with personalities.
The Woman in Modern Horror:
So has anything truly changed since the early Japanese folklore in regards to women? The vengeful female monsters can still be seen today in modern horror films. Ringu and Ju-on (the precedent plots of The Ring and The Grudge) suggest that nothing has strayed too far from the patriarchal message inherent to most plots. In Ringu, Sadako Yamamura transmits a death curse to anyone who watches her paranormal video tape, unless they spread it to more people until everyone knows her tragic story.
Kayoko, from the Ju-on series, was murdered by her husband and haunts her former house. She, and her deceased son, end up killing and driving insane all the residents or mere passersby there. In conclusion, angry ghost girls still spend far too much of their time attacking people and revenging themselves upon their unfaithful male counterparts. Too much of how they are viewed comes from societal expectations for women. In order to create a more flattering and accurate portrayal of women in Japanese myths and media, they must discard their delusions that women are dependent, vengeful, and meant to be seen as objects.
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