Bai Ze

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Portrait of the Bai Ze on a Japanese picture scroll.

Bai Ze (Traditional Chinese: 白澤; Simplified Chinese: 白泽; Hanyu Pinyin: Baí Zé; Wade-Giles: Pai Tse), or hakutaku (白沢, hakutaku^?) in Japanese, is a fantastic beast from Chinese legend. Its name literally means "white marsh".

The Bai Ze was encountered by the Yellow Emperor while he was on patrol in the east. The Bai Ze dictated to Huang Di a guide to the forms and habits of all 11,520 types of supernatural creature in the world, and how to overcome their hauntings and attacks. The emperor had this information written down in a book called the Bai Ze Tu (白澤圖). This book no longer exists, but many fragments of it survive in other texts.

[edit] In Japan

According to legend a creature called kutabe, thought to be identical to the Bai Ze of China, once appeared on Mount Tateyama in Toyama Prefecture and predicted that a deadly plague would sweep through in the next few years. The beast prescribed that its own image be used as a talisman to ward off the disease, and since then the hakutaku has been worshipped as a guardian spirit of herbal medicine.

[edit] References

Harper, Donald (December 1985). "A Chinese Demonography of the Third Century B.C.". Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 45 (2): pp. 491-492.
Mizuki, Shigeru (2004). Mujara 6: Sekai, Tokubetsu-hen (in Japanese). Japan: Soft Garage, p. 31. ISBN 4-8613-3030-0.
Mizuki, Shigeru (2003). Mujara 6: Chūbu-hen (in Japanese). Japan: Soft Garage, p. 60. ISBN 4-8613-3005-X.