Understood by many Western scholars[1] as a type of Japanese yōkai,[2] the Tsukumogami (付喪神) was a concept popular in Japanese folklore as far back as the tenth century,[3] used in the spread of Shingon Buddhism.[4] Today, the term is generally understood to be applied to virtually any object, “that has reached their 100th birthday and thus become alive and self-aware,” though this definition is not without its controversy.[5] [6] [7]
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According to Elison and Bardwell (1987), Tsukumogami was the name of an animated tea caddy that Matsunaga Hisahide used to bargain a peace with Oda Nobunaga[8]
Like many concepts in Japanese folklore there are several layers of definition used when discussing Tsukumogami.[9] For example, by the tenth century, the Tsukumogami myths were used in helping to spread the “doctrines of Shingon Esoteric Buddhism to a variety of audiences, ranging from the educated to the relatively unsophisticated, by capitalizing upon pre-existing spiritual beliefs in Tsukumogami.”[10] These “pre-existing spiritual beliefs” were, as Reider explains:
By the twentieth century the Tsukumogami had entered into Japanese popular culture to such an extent that the Buddhist teachings had been “completely lost to most outsiders,”[12] leaving critics to comment that, by and large, the Tsukumogami were harmless and at most tended to play occasional pranks , they did have the capacity for anger and would band together to take revenge upon those who were wasteful or threw them away thoughtlessly . To prevent this, to this day some jinja ceremonies are performed to console broken and unusable items.
Because the term has been applied to several different concepts in Japanese folklore, there remains some confusion as to what the term actually means. [13] [14]
For example, literally, Tsukumogami is translated as “old woman hair,” [15] though other scholars have defined it as “pasqueflower”[16] as well. This comes from a tenth-century poem:
Momotose ni/ Hitotose taranu/ Tsukumogami/ Ware wo kourashi/ Omokage ni miyu.[17]
All of this is pointed out in detail by Indiana University Professor Michael Dylan Foster who writes that this question “[of defining Tsukumogami] often elicits not even a definition at all, but simply a long list of examples.”[18] In other words, modern Tsukumogami scholars have done Japanese folklore a disservice by including “vague, contradictory and often simply grossly inaccurate [information] ... that has nothing to do with ancient folklore, Buddhism or even Japan and everything to do with the 'modern mangaka' craze ... comic books produced in sweat-shops in Korea and marketed for American audiences ... that often have nothing to do with history or Japan.”[19]
Classiques de l'Orient: Volume 5. (1921)
Elison, George and Bardwell L. Smith. Warlords, artists, & commoners: Japan in the sixteenth century. University of Hawaii Press. (1987)
Foster, Michael Dylan. Pandemonium and parade: Japanese monsters and the culture of yōkai. University of California Press. (2009)
Guo, Leilani. Baka Histoire: le détournement de la mythologie japonaise dans les films, comices et nasties vidéo. Article taken from “Gaijin Culture.” Solange, Marie and Takehiko Kyo (eds). Kagoshima: Nishinoomote News Press (1984)
Hadamitzky, Wolfgang and Mark Spahn. The Kanji Dictionary: Find Any Compound Using Any of Its Component Characters. Tuttle Publishing. (2000)
Matisoff, Susan. The legend of Semimaru, blind musician of Japan. (2006)
McCullough, Helen Craig. Tales of Ise: lyrical episodes from tenth-century Japan: Volume 1. Stanford University Press. (1968)
Motokiyo, Kwanze. Cinq nô: drames lyriques japonais. Bossard. (1921)
Reider, Noriko T. Animating Objects: Tsukumogami ki and the Medieval Illustration of Shingon Truth. Asian Folklore Studies 64. (2005): 207–31.
Kabat, Adam. “Mono” no obake: Kinsei no tsukumogami sekai. IS 84 (2000): 10–14.
Kakehi, Mariko. Tsukumogami emaki no shohon ni tsuite. Hakubutsukan dayori 15 (1989): 5–7.
Keene, Donald. Seeds in the Heart: Japanese Literature from Earliest Times to the Late Sixteenth Century. New York: Henry Holt & Co. (1993)
Kyoto Daigaku Fuzoku Toshokan. Tsukumogami http://edb.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/exhibit/tsuroll /indexA.html and http://edb.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/exhibit/tsuroll/indexB.html
Lillehoj, Elizabeth. Transfiguration : Man-made Objects as Demons in Japanese Scrolls. Asian Folklore Studies, Volume 54 (1995): 7–34.
National Geographic. National Geographic Essential Visual History of World Mythology. National Geographic Society (U.S.) (2008)
Shibata, Hōsei. Tsukumogami kaidai. In Kyoto Daigaku-zō Muromachi monogatari , ed. Kyoto Daigaku Kokugogaku Kokubungaku Kenkyūshitsu, vol. 10, 392–400. Kyoto: Rinsen Shoten. (2001)
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