Zashiki-warashi (座敷童子, or座敷童, "parlor child"), sometimes also calledzashiki bokko (座敷ぼっこ, "parlor boyo"), are spirit-like beings told about mostly in theIwate Prefecture.[1] They are said to beyokai that live in parlors or storage rooms,[2] and that perform pranks, and that people who see one would be visited with good fortune. There are also legends of how they would bring fortune to families. They are also known fromKunio Yanagita'sTōno Monogatari,Ishigami Mondō, and stories about them appear in the 17th and 18th chapters of theTōno Monogatari and the 87th chapter titled "Zashiki-warashi" of theTōno Monogatari Shūi. In the 17th chapter, it is written "families with whom this spirit dwells become prosperous" (kono kami no yadoritamafu ihe ha fūki jizai nari to ifu koto nari). In recent years, television programs and magazines have reported about various Iwate Prefectureryokan where it is said to be possible to see azashiki-warashi.
Reports have mostly been in theIwate Prefecture, but there are also some scattered acrossAomori Prefecture,Miyagi Prefecture,Akita Prefecture and others in theTōhoku region.
Generally, the beings have a red face, hair that hangs down, and aged from a minimum of around three years to a maximum of around 15 years.[3] They have abob haircut or very short cropped hair. Both males and females have been seen. The male ones are said to wear blackish clothes with akasuri pattern and the females are said to wear a red waistcoat (chanchanko),kosode, and sometimes afurisode.[3] It is also said that there are some whose appearance is unclear, making their gender unknown.[3] Sometimes multiple beings would settle in a house at once, such as a boy and a girl. There are also some legends telling of ones that look like a black beast, and others that look like a warrior.[3]
They like causing mischief, so they are said to leave ash or bleaching powder on top of little footprints and at nighttime, they are said to make sounds like that of a revolvingspinning wheel, and they would also make sounds in an inner room making sounds like that of akagura performance. There are also tales told about how when someone in the family is sewing alone, there would be sounds similar to the rustling of papers or someone snorting, and when the wooden door is opened there would be no one there. It is also said that at night, they would do pranks such as riding on top of guest room futons and turning over the pillows in order to not let the person sleep, and when attempts are made to stop it, it would be too strong and powerful for anyone to even affect its actions.[2] Sometimes they also play with children.[2]
In Iwate, there are legends of how the zashiki-warashi of a shrine atHayachine would follow a shrine visitor who came from afar and follow them into different lands. There are also legends of how the zashiki-warashi would teach the nursery rhyme of Iwate to the children of those lands.[4]
InGonohe,Aomori Prefecture, there is a legend of how when a new house is built, a zashiki-warashi can be called into it by burying a golden ball under the floors.[5]
There are theories about how they cannot be seen by anyone other than members of the family or how they can only be seen by children but not adults. There are stories about how when adults counted children, there would be one more person than there was originally, but as adults do not understand what zashiki-warashi are, they would not know who the extra person is. Stories like these frequently appear as themes in literature.[6]
An example of a very characteristicfolk belief is that families with azashiki-warashi would prosper and families whosezashiki-warashi have gone away would decline. This aspect shows thatzashiki-warashi are like gods of fortune orprotective spirits that rule over a family's prosperity and decline.[6][7]
In theTōno Monogatari, there are tales such as one telling about how a family was wiped out byfoodborne illness after itszashiki-warashi left it and another tale about how in the Iide section of the village of Tsuchibuchi,Iwate Prefecture (now part of the city ofTōno), a wealthy family'szashiki-warashi was shot by a child with a bow and arrow causing it to leave the family, resulting in the family's fortunes decline.[8] There is also the view that the way families would decline after azashiki-warashi leaves it and the way families would prosper after abinbōgami leaves it are related.[9]
There is the theory that a whitezashiki-warashi is a sign of good things to come and the sight of a red one (with a red face, red clothes, and a red bucket in its hands) is a sign that azashiki-warashi would leave the family leading to bad things to come. There are also examples where a family that saw a red-clothed one all died from foodborne illness.[10]
Zashiki-warashi are there in inner guest rooms (zashiki), and their existence is said to have an effect on the direction the family goes in, so there are some families that treat them hospitably and offer them meals every day. They are said to likeazuki meshi, so there are families that offer someazuki meshi every day, and if it is not eaten, it is said to be an omen for the family's decline.[6]Zashiki-warashi generally work the same way as having kitsune or havinginugami, but the difference between them andzashiki-warashi is that azashiki-warashi is never considered a nuisance, and in fact they are even protected as gods, and a family that has a zashiki-warashi is usually treated by other people with respect.
In the area around the city ofNinohe, there is a custom of making up a room with desserts and toys left inside for a child who had died or was killed as an infant (infanticide), and giving worship to this child, a custom that remains to the present day. There is also a custom of making a room that a child would like in order to make azashiki-warashi stay at the house in order to bring the family prosperity.[10]
According to theTonō Monogatari, the house of a certain wealthy family in the town of Tsuchibuchi had a small space that was called the "Zatō room", and it is considered to be the room that would be used to await the Zatō (a kind of member of the builder's guild such as thetōdōza or members of related groups such as theAnma,moxibustion practitioners, and members of thebiwa hōshi, among other organizations) every time a banquet was called,[11] but the literary researcherSukeyuki Miura surmises that perhaps this room was used to give worship to the god's protective spirit.[9]
Zashiki-warashi have various regional names such aszashiki-warabe (座敷童),zashiki-warashi (座敷童衆),zashiki-bokko (座敷ぼっこ),okura-bokko (御蔵ボッコ),zashiki-kozō (座敷小僧), and karako-warashi. The name "zashiki-bokko" is used in the inland regions of Iwate, and this name was also used in the writings ofKenji Miyazawa.[3]
There are also regions and legends wherezashiki-warashi have rankings, and in theJippōan Yūreki Zakki (十方庵遊歴雑記), there are statements aboutzashiki-warashi seen in the area of Inase,Esashi, Iwate Prefecture (now Esashi District,Ōshū, and that zashiki-warashi in a home's dirt floor are calledkometsuki-warashi,notabariko,usutsuriko, among other names, and the white, most beautifulzashiki-warashi that is in the inner zashiki is called thechōpirako.[12] Among these, there are some that have no influence on the family's fortunes and instead merely move around the house making noises, and there are not merely a few that have been deemed creepy.[3]
There are also some that have arms that are long and thin like vines, which they use to beckon people as well as warn of disasters like floods and tsunami, and these can be calledhosode (細手, "thin arms") orhosode nagate (細手長手, "thin arms long arms").[12] There is a story telling of how "a poor man once threw firewood into the water, was invited into the dragon palace, and received as a gift an ugly-looking but fortune-bringingryūkyū-warashi (dragon palace child)".[attribution needed] There are alsozashiki-warashi that stay in thedozō, and they are calledkura-warashi orkura-bokko (child of the storehouse).
According to the essay "Zashiki-warashi no Hanashi" (ザシキワラシの話, "Stories about Zashiki-warashi") by the folkloristKizen Sasaki, in a certain home in the aforementioned village of Tsuchibuchi, there is akabukire-warashi (tree stump child) that lives in the "Mada no Ki" (meaning "Bodhi tree"). It is said to take on the appearance of a child and sneak into the family'szashiki to perform pranks on the family's daughter, as well as take on an appearance with a red face and play on walnut trees where the tree splits into three.[13] It has also been interpreted to be a spirit of this Mada no Ki.[14]
Despite there being many legends of thezashiki-warashi in the Tōhoku region, there are fewer inAkita Prefecture; this is said to be because Akita has thesankichi oni, so lower-class yōkai would not enter Akita.[6]
Kizen Sasaki noted that perhaps they are the spirits of children who were crushed to death and buried at the home.[15] In the Tōhoku region, infanticide was calledusugoro (臼殺, or "mortar kill"), and it is said that children who were killed this way to reduce the number of mouths to feed would be killed by being crushed by a stone mortar. Afterwards, burying them in the dirt floor room (doma) or in the kitchen was a custom. It is said that the spirits of such children would, on rainy days, walk around outer edges, shaking and frightening the guests, which is said to be seen to resemble deeds similar to that of azashiki-warashi.[10] The aforementionednotabariko andusu-tsuki warashi are seen to be lower ranking among thezashiki-warashi, and the former would peek out from the inner dirt floor (doma) room and crawl around while the latter would use a mortar to make a sound. Due to such acts,[12] it is sometimes suggested that these kinds ofzashiki-warashi have a relation to the fact that the location where the infanticide happened is in the dirt floor (doma) room or underneath a mortar.[3]
In addition to this relation to infanticide, the fact that thezashiki-warashi are in both old homes and are often mentioned in relation to legends about how after a visiting Buddhist pilgrim from outside the village was killed, the family of the home came to ruin, it has been suggested that thesezashiki-warashi are signs of the dark undersides of the village's community.[9]
In the "Zashiki-warashi wo Mita Hitobito" (座敷わらしを見た人びと, "The People Who Saw Zashiki-Warashi") by the authorSadako Takahashi, there are also stories aboutzashiki-warashi that came about from a curse that resulted from carpenters and tatami makers that were unable to do their construction jobs in comfort, and it is said that there were rituals of taking a doll that had a bit of its wood peeled off and inserting it between the pillars and beams.[3]
There are also many theories that their true identity is that of akappa, and there are stories of azashiki-warashi being a kappa that lived in the depths who would rise up and go into a nearby home to do pranks, as well as stories of zashiki-warashi that were kappa that have settled into a home.[16]
Concerning whyzashiki-warashi look like children, seeing how in Buddhism there aregōhō-warashi (wrathful gods that protect Buddhism and take on the appearance of a child), there is the theory that they come fromfolk beliefs in how children connected gods and humans,[7][17] as well as the theory that the appearance of a child embodies divinity.[9]
In Kunio Yanagita's view, just as thegōhō-warashi were called forth from the heavens by high priests, the protective spirits of Buddhism and folk mikos are related to the faith in giving respect to the freshness of the spirits of young leaves, and this is related to the faith in thezashiki-warashi who became protective spirits of a home in order to will divinity to humans. Infolkloristics, after Yanagita also, there has been debate on subjects such as the relation to Okunai-sama and the relation of children that come from another realm such as theRyūgyū-warashi (dragon palace warashi).[9]
Also, the folkloristKazuhiko Komatsu viewswarashi (children) from the point of view of cultural anthropology, and regarding the question of the fortune within homes and the movement of wealth within a village, he notes thatzashiki-warashi have almost all their characteristics in common with animal spirit possession such asizuna-tsukai ("weasel-using"). From an analysis of the supremacy and inferiority within the community of families with a spirit haunting them, he notes thatzashiki-warashi have been used as a basis for explaining changes in fortunes within folk society, especially for old homes and families.[9]
InUeda Akinari's lateEdo-periodyomihon theUgetsu Monogatari, in the story "Hinpuku-ron" (Theory of Wealth and Poverty), inMutsu Province (nowAomori Prefecture), in a certain home of a warrior family, a spirit of money appears in the form of an old man going by the name of "Ōgon no Seirei" ("golden spirit") who said "I'm glad you treat money as something important to you, so I came to tell a story", but the doctor of letters Masamichi Abe suggests that perhaps this is an older, more prototypical type ofzashiki-warashi.[18]
To the people of Tōhoku, thezashiki-warashi was certainly not a legend that came around after the war, and tales ofzashiki-warashi were told even in the times of Meiji, Shōwa, and beyond. According to Kunio Yanagita'sYōkai Dangi (妖怪談義), it is said that in the year 1910 or Meiji 43 around the month of July, in the village of Tsuchibuchi (nowTōno, Iwate Prefecture) inKamihei District,Rikuchū, azashiki-warashi appeared at a school that was visible only to the first year students and not to the older students and adults.[19]
Certain ryokan that have continued to be managed in the Shōwa and Heisei periods and beyond such as the Ryokufūsō at theKindaichi Onsen inIwate Prefecture,[20] the Sugawara Bekkan, and the Warabe both in Tenjin village inMorioka Prefecture are known to be lodges where azashiki-warashi dwells; there have been tales of guests who sawzashiki-warashi, heard footsteps, were physically touched.[3] However, unlike in the usual legends ofzashiki-warashi, the one at Ryokufūsō is considered to be an ancestor that died from an illness and became a protective spirit.
Close to the Warabe, there is the Hayachine Shrine that was opened more than 1200 years ago, and it is said that since there have been festivals for offering prayers tozashiki-warashi ever since the establishment of the Warabe, the shrine'szashiki-warashi goes to the Warabe.[3]
Thezashiki-warashi of the Sugawara Bekkan was originally a god of fire of theEdo period that protected the proprietress's original home from fire,[21] and it is said to have followed this proprietress when she married into the family of this establishment. There have also been tales about how guests to this ryokan have been successful in their marriage and jobs.[22]
Similar to thezashiki-warashi are thezashiki-bōzu of Kadotani,Tōtōmi Province (nowShizuoka Prefecture) and theakashaguma ofTokushima. Near one of the inner temples of the Kotohira-gū inShikoku, it is said that at nighttime an "akashaguma" appears from abutsudan. "Akashaguma" refers to the fur of a bear that has been stained red, and it is said that a little childlike being wearing this would tickle the old woman owner of this house every night.
In the formerHigashiyatsuhiro District inYamanashi Prefecture, it is said that there is anokura-bōzu (お倉坊主, "warehouse bonze") that stays within the warehouse, and this is thought to be a type ofzashiki-warashi.[23][24]
InIshikawa Prefecture, there is themakuragaeshi and it is said that if one sleeps in thezashiki of a certain house, especially if one wields two swords, has hair that stands up, wears western clothing, and puts on a haughty face, then one would get dragged into a neighboring room.
Thezashiki-warashi of Shirotori,Ōkawa District,Kagawa Prefecture (now part ofHigashikawa), is said to appear as a little girl who is calledoshobo due to the small, slight (shobo-shobo in Japanese) way it hangs, and sometimes it is said to be invisible to the members of the house,[3] while other times it is said to be visible only to the members of this house.[6]
In addition, inHokkaido there is theainukaisei said to attack people in their homes while they sleep, and in theOkinawa Prefecture there is a yōkai called theakagantaa said to play pranks on people in their homes while they sleep, and sometimes these are interpreted to be the same kind of beings aszashiki-warashi.[6][12]
The folkloristShinobu Orikuchi enumerates examples such as the okunai-sama, thezashiki-bōzu, theakashaguma, thekijimuna of Okinawa,gaataro ofIki, etc., and sees in them examples of tales of a faithful spirit that came from another land to do work for a certain family whose disappearance would result in the decline of the family. He notes howzashiki-warashi do not descend into the garden and suggests that this is related to how performing arts in the past had a division between "garden", "zashiki", and "stage".[2]
The name breaks down tozashiki (Japanese:座敷), a sitting room or parlor, usually withtatami flooring, andwarashi (Japanese:童子), an archaic term for a child, used particularly in the northeast of Japan.[25][26]
By the end of November 2015, a mirrored website offered video footage from a home video camera in Japan. It captured the image of what appears to be a girl wearing akimono walking in the house. Her body is translucent and can walk through walls. It is believed that she was azashiki-warashi.[27]
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