Sunday, June 15, 2025

The Snow Woman and Other Yokai Stories from Japan

Japan Book Review: The Snow Woman and Other Yokai Stories from Japan

ISBN: 978-4-8053-1758-7
Tuttle Publishing, 2024, 2019
286 pp; paperback

If you are familiar with the words kappa, yamamba, enma and yurei you will likely enjoy Noboru Wada's 2004 The Snow Woman. If not, well, you may enjoy this book anyway, especially if you know just the word yokai. Yokai are Japanese ghosts, goblins or other supernatural beings. They can appear in many forms, including animal-like figures, humanoids or, sometimes, inanimate objects. They can quickly change form and are associated with supernatural phenomena and/or feelings of agitation or trepidation.

This book is a collection of 77 traditional short yokai stories, mostly from the old Japanese province of Shinano, now called Nagano Prefecture. The purpose of most of the stories seem to be to entertain or maybe perplex readers, although some of the stories have clear, moral teachings like Aesop's Fables.

The Snow Woman and Other Yokai Stories from Japan

Don't worry if your yokai vocabulary is lacking - there is a handy glossary at the beginning of the book explaining 27 yokai-related words. If you still don't understand the concept of Yokai, the closest Western equivalent might be of well-told, scary campfire stories. Bring your own s'mores.

While the vast majority of stories deal with old, traditional yokai at some level, a few of the stories seem completely unrelated. For example, there is a story about World War II beheadings which is more macabre than yokai.

Another story also references World War II. Some stories have interesting names, i.e., "The Smelly Priest and the Yamamba" and "The Man Who Could Drink Two Quarts of Soy Sauce." Upon finishing a few of the stories, some readers may mumble, "What the heck was that all about?"

Most of the stories are one to three pages, and only a few stretch to as long as five pages, so if you aren't enjoying a particular story you needn't worry as it will conclude soon. There are also about 25 full-page illustrations which are entertaining.

The Snow Woman and Other Yokai Stories from Japan.

There is a story that alludes to "ghosts who would stroke people's buttocks," but readers end up having to be satisfied with a story of a ghost who stroked people's faces. Oh, well.

People of all ages can enjoy this book, and no real special knowledge of Japan is needed.

Don't be an onibaba, go out a get a copy of this book.

Review by Marshall Hughes, author of Rural Reflections.

Buy this book from Amazon USA | UK | Japan

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Thursday, June 12, 2025

Ema Votive Plaques Japan

Ema Japanese Votive Plaques 絵馬

Pictures | Shape | Prayers | Origin | Buy Ema

Jake Davies

A variety of differently-shaped ema hanging at a shrine

While visiting Shinto shrines in Japan, and to a lesser extent Buddhist temples, one thing you are likely to see is a rack with numerous small, wooden plaques hanging from it.

These wooden plaques are ema, most commonly translated as "votive plaques" in English. On one side of the wooden board will usually be a picture, and on the other the person writes their prayer or wishes. One writer on Japanese popular religion has coined the phrase "postcards to the gods", to describe ema, and this seems particularly apt.

An ema at Futagoji Temple in Oita with a colourful depiction of the shrine in Autumn.

An ema at Futagoji Temple in Oita with a colorful depiction of the shrine in autumn

Pictures

Most ema will have a picture on one face, often quite colorful. Often this will be a depiction of the deity or deities enshrined in the shrine or temple, or a legend or myth associated with the temple.

Sometimes it can be a specific noteworthy feature of the shrine buildings and grounds, or famous historic figures with a connection to the shrine. Iwashimizu Hachimangu Shrine near Kyoto sells ema depicting Thomas Edison.

Many shrines are too small to produce their own ema, and so depictions of the treasure ship carrying the Seven Luck Gods are quite common. The most common ema pictures nowadays are the 12 animals associated with the Chinese zodiac and calendar, usually holding prayers and wishes for the coming year. This year 2022 is the Year of the Tiger.

Ema come in many different shapes and can be found at Buddhist temples as well as Shinto shrines

Shape

While there are no hard and fast rules for the size and shape of ema, there is a common standard that is a 5-sided figure, imagine a rectangle about 16 cm wide with a "roof", though miniature versions can be seen, as well as larger sized.

In fact, many shrines display a giant ema of this shape during the new year with an image of the new year animal. However, a wide range of shapes can actually be found. Pentagons and circles are quite common, and irregular shapes abound: heart-shaped ema are seen at shrines connected to romantic love, ema shaped like cars are used for traffic safety prayers, and human-shaped ema are used for prayers for health, with the affected area of the body marked on the ema by the petitioner.

Historically ema were paintings of horses

Prayers

The prayers and wishes that are written upon the ema run across the full range of human desires, though most would fall under the category of "this-worldly" benefits, that is to say, the attraction of good fortune and the protection against misfortune.

Desires for health, wealth, and happiness, in all its varied forms, are written on ema, and the practice extends outside of the bounds of purely religious practice into cultural practice as ema are starting to appear at secular sites in Japan such as supermarkets and department stores, and ema are sometimes collected as souvenirs.

These unusual ema featuring breasts are found at shrines connected to safe birth, etc

Though specific shrines and temples are linked to specific wishes, any shrine or temple will have ema with a wide range of wishes and prayers upon them.

Ema featuring the Chinese zodiac animal for the new year, The boar was the animal of 2019

Origin of Ema

The word ema means "horse picture" and refers to paintings of horses that were given to shrines as offerings. The practice grew more popular and other subjects were used in the paintings, with ships being particularly common.

Some of the larger shrines still have an Ema-do, or Ema Hall where such paintings can still be seen, though most smaller shrines have the paintings on display in the worship hall.

In Japan, horses have somewhat of a sacred character historically, as in many other cultures around the world, especially in East Asia. Kifune Shrine just north of Kyoto relates that in the 8th century the Emperor would donate a horse to the shrine, a white horse to pray for rain, and a black horse to pray for the rains to stop.

Heart-shaped ema at a shrine specializing in love matches

Statues of horses can be found at many shrines, and a wooden, white horse can often be found in its own small structure. A few shrines still have real horses. Archaeological and textual evidence suggests that in earlier, pre-Buddhist times, horses were actually sacrificed, The horse paintings, and hence the contemporary ema, developed as a much cheaper and accessible way to get the message to the gods.

At Kokawabusuna Shrine in Wakayama, a special area has been set aside to display ema put up by non-Japanese visitors

Ema shaped like yokai featured in manga on display at a non-religious tourist site in Sakaiminato, Tottori

Paintings given to shrine as offerings are the forerunners of today's ema.

Paintings given to shrines as offerings are the forerunners of today's ema

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Wednesday, June 11, 2025

Onomatope: The Fantastic World of Japanese Symbolic Words

Japan Book Review: Onomatope: The Fantastic World of Japanese Symbolic Words

Onomatope

by Ono Masahiro

ISBN: 978-4-8163-6734-2
Natsumesha Co. Ltd., 2019
208 pp; paperback

Meow….Woof woof….Crash!....Whoosh!
What just happened? Perhaps you imagined a cat and a dog getting in a fight, something falling over and the cat running away.
You concluded this just from reading four onomatope (or more correctly onomatopoeia) words, words that imitate the natural sounds of things. The words sound like what they describe.

Onomatope: The Fantastic World of Japanese Symbolic Words

Those who are already somewhat familiar with the Japanese language might know commonly-used words found in this delightful book, words like perapera (fluent), dokidoki (the heart pounding with excitement) and piipoo piipoo (the sounds of ambulance sirens). All of these are considered onomatope and are found in these pages.

With only a few exceptions, most of the Onomatope are given one page and fit the following format: on the top is the number (of the 201 discussed onomatope), followed by the katakata for the onomatope, followed by the romaji for the onomatope, followed by a cute, near-half-page drawing of the word used in a one-frame cartoon, followed by the kanji definition of the word, followed by that definition in romaji. Then at the bottom are example sentences using the onomatope in Japanese (kanji and kana) and the translation in English.

A greedy reader like me might have liked to have had kana for the kanji in the example sentences, but perhaps that is asking a bit too much.

Contents are divided into 10 categories, i.e., expressions and feelings, body movements, degrees and manners etc. The last chapter is dedicated to sounds, for example sounds that animals make. Did you know that horses say "hihiin" or that elephants say "paoon?" Shaka shaka is the sound that tambourines or maracas make.

To tell the complete, unvarnished truth, some of the words listed don’t really fit the onomatope definition, but readers can work around that. For example, assari is said to be "someone or something being straight forward and plain." Huh?
The book has plenty of spacing and is visually pleasing and, well, "fun."

In case you want to quicky find an onomatope that you previously learned, there is a handy alphabetical index in the back of the book. While not really a text book, this book can certainly be used that way. Its small size (5.8 x 4.1 inches) makes it easy to slide in your pocket and pull out any time.

Review by Marshall Hughes, author of Rural Reflections.

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