Happy Haunted Halloween from the Yokai Forest!
What causes a stain to appear on your ceiling or walls?
Why that must be the work of Tenjoname (Ten-jou-nah-meh) or Ceiling Licker yokai who laps up dust and grime while you sleep!
What are the strange orbs of colorful lights floating along a path near the ground?
The lanterns of the magical kitsune (fox) parade!
And why is that wooden pillar in my home seeping little blue ghosties here and there?
Because the carpenter installed it upside-down, against the grain as it grew in the forest, and the leaf-ghosts are NOT happy about it!
This October, Japanese class was all about yokai - 妖怪! But...what are yokai? Yokai researcher and artist Matthew Meyer describes them as "strange and supernatural creatures from Japanese folklore. The word is a combination of the characters 妖 (yō) — attractive, bewitching, calamity — and 怪 (kai) — mystery, wonder."
Like so many things, there really is no perfect English translation. But yokai are such an incredibly significant part of Japanese culture, it’s impossible to imagine a language and cultural immersion program that doesn’t address them. Like Grimm's fairy tales, yokai tales spread across a spectrum ranging from pretty dark and scary to silly, funny and cute.
Learning about the cultural origins of these characters, our students understanding of their own pop culture is enriched. What inspires anime, video games, manga and Pokemon? Yokai! If you have ever eaten a cucumber sushi roll (kappa-maki), you’ve encountered yokai! (Kappa, a water yokai, loves to eat cucumbers.) Studying these connections, students learn to see how centuries old folklore and myth are reflected in our lives today.
This is also a good reminder to Google carefully when researching things about other cultures online. The top results are typically popular Westernized versions and do no reflect what is important to the culture of origin.
During our yokai studies, students heard stories, studied specific yokai and illustrated their tales in three-dimensions. From the few examples shared here, you can see their interpretations were are diverse as the characters they were learning about.
Arigato and Happy Halloween!
Meridith Kiyosue