One: The cultural origin of Japanese yokai
(1) Japanese yokai originated in China
(2) Origin of Yokai in Japan (this article)
Two: The origin of the birth of Japanese yokai
(1) The natural factors that gave birth to Japanese yokai
(2) The social factors that gave birth to Japanese yokai
III: The Essence of the Evolution of Japanese Yokai Culture: "Charm" and "Lamentation"
(1) Japanese youkai culture "Hyakki Night World"
(2) The plot of "material mourning" in Japanese yokai culture
Four: An overview of the historical process of Japanese painting and the yokai painters of ancient and modern Japan
Last time, I talked about China's influence on the development of Japanese ghosts. Today, we will talk about how ghosts originated and developed in Japan.
According to legend, the island country of Japan, which is home to "eight million gods and more than 600 kinds of yokai living in the territory, is also known as the "Yokai Islands", and japan has a different view of its native "yokai culture" than any other country in the world. The identification with yokai culture is extraordinary in Japan. It can be said that the interesting and mysterious image of the yokai and their humanized personality have completely penetrated into all aspects of Japanese native society, and have long been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, catering to the appetite of the island people and dotting the daily life of Japanese people.
Ghosts, not hated by people, are extremely popular and can already be compared with Japanese cherry blossoms, kimonos, and elegance
Elements unique to Japan, such as music, noh drama, and sumo wrestling, are placed in the same position, becoming symbols of Japan's representative culture. But when it comes to the day
The historical origin of this yokai can be roughly divided into the following stages.
1. The Jomon period in Japan
The birth of Japanese yokai culture may be traced back to the time of the Japanese Jomon pattern 10,000 years ago
Dynasty (12000 BC – 300 AD). The Japanese nation, like everyone else in the world, naturally had a mystical tendency in this environment. For example, the monster image of "Glen Sound" was created because the people of Japanese Jomon at that time could not use their existing knowledge to explain the natural phenomenon of echoes in the valleys and mountains. The lack of understanding of nature, coupled with the Factu people of Japan, who live on islands and islands, live a primitive life of fishing, gathering, and hunting every day, living with the mountains and forests and animals in nature. Faced with the dangerous wilderness, jungles, and various beasts, the Jomon people are full of awe and at the same time feel fear and uneasiness about all the unknowns in nature, and they have been passed down by word of mouth, and they have attributed these "supernatural forces" in nature that cannot be explained by the cognition of the time, and the phenomena that cannot be seen and touched by them all as "yokai phenomena". In this way, these natural imaginations that made the early Japanese Jomon people feel awe and fear, and the yokai that were born from them were quietly integrated into their daily lives, deeply rooted and passed down to this day.
2. Heian period of Japan
The last historical era of ancient Japan was the Heian period (794-1192 AD), however,
Japan in the Heian period can be seen as a period of rapid development of Japanese yokai culture. Someone once said, "Wraith" this
Individual words can be seen as the key to understanding Japan's Heian period. Since there is a "Wraith", it is necessary to mention the "Yin and Yang Division", which was an indispensable profession in Japan's Heian period. Heian Kyo, which was built for a thousand years, is what we call Japan in the Heian period. The Japanese people are looking for the protection of various ghosts and gods because of their decadence, uneasy social atmosphere, and the abundance of princes. The Yin-Yang Division was a position established in the Japanese government at all levels at that time, and the Yin-Yang Division, with great power, was tasked with channeling spirits and ghosts, as well as undertaking divination, etc., which had some similarities with the ancient Chinese diviners. It is understood that Abe's mother is the white fox Kudzu leaf (in Japan, foxes are divided into two categories: "wild fox" and "good fox", of which "good fox" is divided into five types: black fox, white fox, gold fox, silver fox, and sky fox, and white fox is a kind of spirit fox, and Abe's mother, white fox kudzu, belongs to "good."
Spirit Fox in "Fox"). However, in the Heian period when people were uneasy and socially turbulent, the Japanese ruling class could not find a solution to these problems, and in order to divert the attention of the Japanese people at that time, they attributed all the causes of the problem to the problem
On the body of the ghost god. As a result, the noble status of the Yin-Yang Master reached its peak in Japan during the Heian Period. And it is understood that
The taboos in Japanese culture today are largely inherited from the Heian period.
3. Muromachi period in Japan
The period of development of Japanese yokai culture to the prosperity of japan is the Muromachi period (1378-1573), but when it comes to Japan
Among the various yokai in this yokai culture, I have to mention the "Hundred Ghosts Nocturnal Painting" that was collected by the Shinju-an in Kyoto, Japan
Volume". This scroll was painted by 16th-century Japanese yokai painting --- Tosa Mitsunobu. With a total length of 7.35 meters and a height of 33 centimeters, the "Hundred Ghosts Nocturnal Scroll" can be described as a national treasure in the ancient Japanese painting art. Tosa Mitsunobu (1434-1525) was a man who liked to paint with strange monsters as a material, and he originally served as the "Imperial Teacher" of Ashikaga Yoshimasa, the eighth shogun of the Muromachi shogunate in Japan, but because Tosa was personally good at "Yamato-e", Tosa Mitsunobu gradually became a painter in the Muromachi period painting studio.
In Japanese folklore, there are often legends that artifacts abandoned by their masters or that have been badly damaged, such as wooden fish, pipa, porcelain bowls, tea pots, umbrellas, etc., will turn into monsters in a rage. The "Hundred Ghosts" in Tosa's "Hundred Ghosts Nocturnal Scroll" refers to the various yokai that people use in their daily lives, because they are attached to the soul, so they have vitality.
4. Edo period in Japan
Gathering a population of more than one million, creating more than 250 years of peace and prosperity in Japan's Edo period (1603-1867), whether it is various strange talk in literature to various yokai paintings about Japanese yokai, Japan's yokai culture ushered in its cultural heyday in the Edo period, after the stability of the people's livelihood and the stability of the shogunate's political regime, color overprinting technology and printmaking technology based on China had spread to Toei in Japan at that time, and also promoted Japanese painting ukiyo-e, storytelling, popular literature, With the further development of emerging cultures such as opera, it can be said that these cultures flourished extremely and unprecedentedly in Japan during the Edo period.
At this time, under the extremely high-pressure unified concept of the Edo shogunate in Japan, on the other hand, the freedom of speech of the Edo people was restricted, and in the middle and late period, the social and political turmoil of the Edo period was ushered in, and various political programs were constantly abolished, resulting in various headaches and criminal incidents in Japanese society at that time. As a result, various yokai legends slowly arose silently in the face of fear and dissatisfaction among the people of Edo.
The pinnacle of the myth about Japanese yokai culture was Akiari Ueda's 1734-1809 1776 book The Tale of the Rainy Moon, which he completed at the age of thirty-five. With beautiful stylistic style, observation, portrayal and in-depth, "The Tale of the Rain Moon", a work of high artistic value, introduces a large number of literary elements such as Chinese allusions, folklore and Japanese history, and is regarded by Japan as the precursor to the creation of modern novels about monsters and monsters, and "The Tale of the Rain Moon" is more known as the "pressed volume of Japanese novels" in Japanese history.
5. Meiji period in Japan
The Meiji period (1868-1912) can be said to have "changed" Japanese yokai culture in both form and content.
Relatively large an era. In the 19th century, in 1858-1919, in the "Meiji Yokai Doctor" Inoue Motoya (1858-1919), he wrote many "Yokai Studies" works on Japanese yokai, such as "A Hundred Talks on Yokai" and "Lecture Notes on Yokai Studies". However, it was because of him that the fire of modern Japanese superstition was ignited.