The Dōjōji Serpent

This one took awhile to finish.

Long ago there was a priest who broke his vows and took advantage of a young woman. When he finally decided to end the relationship and abandon her, she was so infuriated that she transformed into a gigantic serpent and pursued him to his temple. The head abbots hid the priest under their giant bell, but the serpent caught his scent and coiled so tightly around the bell that it glowed red hot. When they lifted the bell all that remained of the priest was ash...

There are several variants on this story. Some have the priest as innocent, some have the girl as being misled about the priest by her father, and a great number of them end with the Buddhist equivalent of "women, am I right?" Buddhism doesn't have this reputation in the west where it is often considered to be more of a philosophical tradition than a religion, but the truth is a lot of Buddhist scripture has really questionable attitudes towards women. The variants of this story that appear in Japanese scripture use the serpent woman as a metaphor for how relationships with ANY women lead to tragedy because ALL of them are over-emotional monsters just waiting under the surface and will kill your spiritual career.

Unsurprisingly, there have been a number of feminist interpretations of this story as well. Pre-Buddhist Japan had a tradition of very powerful female shamans, and so the patriarchy had a very real reason to fear the "power" and "monstrous" energy inside the gender they had usurped. In this reading, the serpent woman isn't a villain, but a heroine to root for whose time will come again. She takes on the form of a serpent, representing both the female energies labeled "demonic" as well as the male phallic shape, to burn away hypocrisy in the new order.

I made the snake white because when I was thinking about this legend I mixed it up with a separate (but perhaps related? I'm no expert) snake lady from Chinese legend named Bai Suzhen. She was a white serpent demon who wanted to become a goddess by doing good deeds, but was hounded by a sorcerer who believed all demons to be pure evil that must be destroyed.

Nue take Two

See? I told you I could do a better one. The nue is a fearsome monster from Japan, often compared with the Greek chimera for the way it combines attributes of three different creatures. It has the head and cruelty of a monkey, the body and strength of a tiger, and the tail and toxins of a serpent. Traditionally they are thought to bring misfortune and illness. The most famous account of a nue takes place in the Japanese epic The Tale of the Heike, where Emperor Konoe falls ill and suffers terrible nightmares after a dark cloud covers his palace. The legendary hero, Minamoto no Yorimasa staked out the roof and shot an arrow into the mass of darkness. Despite the darkness, the arrow found its mark and the corpse of the nue fell out of the cloud. The body was dumped into the sea, where it washed up on the shore of a small fishing village. Naturally, the villagers were shocked and buried the creature. Supposedly, you can still see the burial mound to this beast today.

As you may have noticed, I'm quite fond of Japanese monsters. I studied Japanese art and folklore at university and spent all together about a year and a half living in Japan. Japan is an important part of my own history, and Tokyo in particular is one of my favorite cities in the world. So as you can guess, I've been paying close attention to the news from there right now. Thankfully, all my friends in Japan have been safe so far, but a still I wouldn't feel right if I didn't remind everyone who stumbles upon this post that a lot of people there could use help. If you're not sure who to donate to, the Red Cross is always a good one. Doctors Without Borders is also a good choice. You can't donate to them specifically for Japan, but one of the reasons they've been so quick in response to disasters like in Japan and Haiti is because of long term funding and preparing.

I have lots of drawings this week, stay tuned.

Baku

Today we have the baku, one of my personal favorite monsters from Japan. I've always liked chimerical monsters, they're always so interesting looking and fun to draw. Plus baku look great either as ferocious or as adorable. Today I've gone with adorable.

The baku is a dream-eating monster that devours nightmares and is therefore often beneficial to mankind. Because of this ability, baku were depicted on amulets to protect against nightmares or other sleep problems. Sleepers could even invoke a baku to come and protect them. Like many famous Japanese monsters, it is thought to have originated in Chinese folklore. The baku has been depicted in Japan since the Muromachi period (1336 to 1573). In ancient times it was usually depicted as a ferocious creature with sharp claws, huge tusks and glaring eyes. This appearance helped scare off demons and spirits that brought bad dreams. Of course, the idea of a monster that devoured dreams wasn't only used for feel-good happy stories. There are a few tales of baku that devoured all kinds of dreams, not just nightmares, leaving the poor sleeper restless and mad.

The classical baku is described as looking like a cross between an elephant and a tiger/lion. Today the elephant aspect (or indeed, the entire creature) is instead depicted as a tapir. Why the change? Well baku is also the Japanese word for tapir. The Chinese and Korean names for tapir also correspond to their forms of the legendary baku. Presumably, Asian zoologists thought that the Malaysian tapir's famous proboscis and its 50/50 split coloration was reminiscent of the legendary chimera. Japanese children were taught about the baku by their parents as a playful bedtime story. Young Japanese people growing up in the 20th century grew up hearing both uses of the word, and of course many of them went on to become filmmakers, artists or writers. The baku is, alongside the kappa, tanuki and tengu, one of the most common Japanese monsters to appear in modern pop culture, and so eventually the tapir-baku became the dominant archetype.

For an interesting non-traditional baku, I suggest checking out Satoshi Koh's excellent movie Paprika.

Some Japanese monsters

In honor of my last week in America before I begin my year working in Japan, here are a handful of Japanese folk monsters. I dunno though, I'm not really feeling this one. Maybe I'm just irritated because the design I liked the best got kind of muddled by my inking. But hey, I didn't start this blog to be all "look how perfect I am!" I started it to produce work and get over the "abloo bloo bloo its not good enough to show anyone" post-art school hump.

Anyways, I might as well offer a little context and history. The large ox-spider guy is an Ushi-oni (cow devil). They're big sea ogres who behave similarly to crabs. Evil crabs. According to the internet they often hang out with these snake women called Nure-onna. Nure-onna (wet woman) are pretty boring, really. You can probably guess their whole deal just by looking at them. The last fellow is a Kamikiri (hair cutter). They're little spirits that resemble a cross between a shrimp and a vulture. They fly around cutting people's hair off just for laughs.