Talk:Baku (spirit)

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Contents 1 Tapir 2 Baku, tapirs, and references 3 Here is a detailed reference about baku 4 I have a revision of the Baku (spirit) article 5 Corrected a mistake and clarified the references 6 Added a reference to a manga with a baku

[edit] Tapir

What exactly is the relationship between the baku and the tapir? The Japanese Wikipedia article on tapirs uses the same Chinese character. — Pekinensis 05:52, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Japanese names many same name on mythical and real animals. The Japanese text for Kirin is the same as giraffe. How do you explain that? I thought if you can share your name with a vegetable, you would know what is going on.  :-) Kowloonese 07:19, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)

I had always heard that Baku IS a tapir... (sry I don't have a log-in, just passing thru)

The relationship between the "baku" and the tapir is NOT simple. Yes, it is like the word "kirin," which has several meanings. Lots more on this below and on the Tapir talk page, plus a reference on the Kirin page. Timothy Perper 16:10, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Baku, tapirs, and references

Two years later... the Nakagawa reference is not very useful. It says only (in footnote 39, if anyone is interested) that the baku is "...believed to devour bad dreams." Believed by whom? On what basis did Nakagawa say this? We need more information.

Timothy Perper 19:13, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

You should be looking at creature number 30, the "mo", which is the Chinese reading of the "baku" character. Kotengu 小天狗 20:05, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

That's the creature I'm looking at -- and it is NOT a tapir. For more information, see the discussion page for "tapir," where I've posted more detailed comments. The gist of it is as follows.

Here is a reference to an image from 1791 that shows a “dream-eating” Japanese supernatural creature that has an elephant’s trunk and tusks. It is NOT a zoological tapir.

Kern, Adam L. 2007 Manga from the Floating World: Comicbook culture and the kibyoshi of Edo Japan. Cambridge: Harvard University Asian Center. page 236, figure 4.26.

It has tusks, a long trunk, a semi-human face, horns, and a body drawn in swirls and whorls rather like a dragon. Kern calls this creature a “baku.” I’d download the image except that that really would be copyright violation.

By contrast, *modern* dream-eating creatures in manga and anime are unmistakably zoological tapirs. Here’s a reference to Takahashi Rumiko’s dream-eating tapir (the original dates from the early 1980s):

Takahashi Rumiko 1995 Waking to a nightmare. In: The Return of Lum: Urusei Yatsura. San Francisco: Viz. pages 141-156.

So there you have it. The Edo period dream-eater was drawn in at least some contemporary Japanese sources with an elephant’s head. Modern Japanese dream-eaters are zoological tapirs. They are NOT the same.

Timothy Perper 14:40, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Wait, what's the problem here? I understand (and fully support) your disdain for anime-lore, but the word for the folklore critter and the zoological animal are the same, so an overlaping of the terms is to be expected, nes pa? TomorrowTime 22:45, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the question. It's a matter of keeping words straight and it's why Wikipedia has a disambiguation feature if the confusion amongst words is great enough to create problems. Note, though, that I don't think we need to go THAT far in this case.

For example, Cadillac the car, Cadillac the town in Michigan, and Cadillac the explorer are not the same. So, when people on the Internet cite Wikipedia to "prove" that in Japan "people" believe that tapirs, biological ones, eat dreams, well, it's not so. The Japanese FOLK belief refers to a creature called a baku, which has a history prior to 1854 in Japanese art and (we assume) folklore as a chimera with an elephant's head, tiger's claws, and so on. That beast simply isn't a zoological tapir, no matter what word is used.

Well, OK, the article needs to say that and cite some references. I haven't had the time to make the changes but I will over the next week or so.

Do you see what I'm driving at? There's more material on this in the Tapir discussion page, with a bunch of references. You might want to read it.

Timothy Perper 23:13, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Here is a detailed reference about baku

Hori, Tadao 2005 Cultural note on dreaming and dream study in the future: Release from nightmare and development of dream control technique. Sleep and Biological Rhythms, Volume 3, pages 49-55.

Hori provides some detailed history of Japanese beliefs in dream-eating and/or nightmare-neutralizing amulets, talismans, and supernatural creatures, including the baku. It's a lot more complicated than merely believing that zoological tapirs eat dreams. Timothy Perper 01:22, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Who exactly is saying that zoological tapirs eat dreams? Quoting that article:

I introduce two examples, Baku and Dream Catcher, that are still popular in Japan. The Baku, an existing animal (a tapir), from the horse family. It is a chubby animal, about 1.5-2 m long, with a stretched nose. It lives in the Malaysian mountains in Asia. According to "Nihon-Saiji-ki" written by Yosifuru Kaibara (1664-1700), the Baku used to be regarded as a charm animal in China, and was later introduced to Japan, but with extreme exaggerations: the nose of an elephant, the eyes of a rhinoceros, the tail of a cow, the legs of a tiger, the hair of a lion, the spot in black and white. The Baku used to be believed to eat bizarre foods, eating irons, coppers, and bamboos.

So a folkloric, supernatural alteration of the actual natural tapir by people who lived very far away from the real thing. What exactly are you trying to argue here, that the two creatures are completely unrelated? I'm not seeing that in this reference or anywhere else. Kotengu 小天狗 03:08, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your comment. I won't include references here, since I’ve put them onto the talk pages before, both for tapir and baku (spirit).

Let’s look at this again. On the one hand, there is good evidence in (older) Japanese folklore and art that a supernatural creature called a “baku” could neutralize and/or devour dreams and nightmares. The descriptions and artwork show a chimerical beast, with the head of an elephant, long trunk, tusks, head, and so on. Nakagawa and Hori both describe the baku this way, and artists like Hokusai and the artist who drew the kibyoshi reproduced in Kern’s book draw this creature. Whatever its origins (the references say it’s originally Chinese), it is not a zoological tapir.

On the other hand, there are a good many (recent) drawings in manga and anime, as well as in various websites (some of them citing Wiki as proof), that show the baku as a zoological tapir that quite explicitly eats/neutralizes dreams. The earliest I have so far found is Takahashi’s manga, but there may be earlier examples.

Thus, what I’m doing is a kind of disambiguation or clarification. None of it implies anything about the relationship between the two kinds of baku. We’re free to speculate, but speculation isn’t Wiki-verifiable, so we can skip it. Let’s get the facts straight first: dream-eating baku have been depicted in two distinctly different ways in modern and in traditional Japanese art and folklore.

And also let’s discuss why the entry on “Baku (spirit)” needs some editing. It’s my belief that any entry should be as precise and as well-referenced as we can make it, and that holds not merely for Wikipedia but for any piece of intellectual-scholarly work. However, I strongly believe that merely making changes without prior discussion is not a good idea. The Wiki-injunction to be bold in editing is *sometimes* a good idea but I think some degree of consensus first is better. And therefore I’ve been putting the raw material on the talk pages first, so that anyone interested can read and comment.

Are we in agreement or do you have a different view?

Timothy Perper 14:41, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] I have a revision of the Baku (spirit) article

I put all the comments I've been making into a single coherent article, including most (but not all) of the original article plus a bunch of new material, like references.

As you've figured out, if you've read any of this, I'm not a Wikipedian, and don't know much at all about the mechanics of editing. I'm a subject matter expert. So, a question -- what do I do next? Go into the article, highlight everything, delete it, and paste in the revision?

Timothy Perper 16:50, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, with the help of Twooars, I've made the changes in the article. It still needs a few fix-ups, but they're trivial. The links all worked when I just tested them. Timothy Perper 20:34, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Corrected a mistake and clarified the references

Someone recently added something to the article that is inaccurate, and I corrected the error. I also clarified the referencing, since this person said that tapir-like baku appeared in anime but not manga even though the article already cited two examples from manga. Now it's very clear that tapir-like baku appear in manga. I hope it's clear... (sigh) I wish people would read articles before they "correct" them and add mistakes (sigh).

I also fixed up = wikified some of the references. The entry still needs more citations.

Timothy Perper 22:10, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Added a reference to a manga with a baku

Hakase Mizuki 2007. Ba_ku. Los Angeles, CA: TokyoPop..

Yes, the underscore is correct. The title is Ba_ku.

Timothy Perper 16:20, 11 October 2007 (UTC)