June 28, 2025 • 47 mins
In this classic episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe discuss Japan’s beloved yuru-chara, corporate and governmental mascots that are undeniably cute but with deeper connections to other aspects of Japanese culture. (originally published 7/11/2024)
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hello, and welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Joe McCormick. Today is Saturday, so we're heading
into the vault for an older episode of Stuff to
Blow Your Mind. This one originally aired July eleventh, twenty
twenty four, and it is part two of our series
on the Yurukiara Japanese mascots.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Enjoy Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, the production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
And I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with part
two of our series on Urukiara, the lovable wobbly mascot
characters of Japan. Now, if you haven't heard part one yet,
you should go back and listen to that episode first.
In that one, we talked about the origins of the
uru our concept. Rob shared some of his experiences with
(01:03):
these characters on a recent trip to Japan, and we
talked about a couple of our favorite examples, including the
Kuma Moto mascot, a real megastar called Kuma Man, which
looks like a bear but apparently is not a bear.
You'll listen to the episode, you'll understand and then the
more obscure park associated mascot Hako Geo, and we're back
(01:26):
today to talk about some more.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
That's right, Okay, So my last selection was more emotional
than I guess substantially interesting to everybody. But this next one,
I think is even more fascinating because it does include
ties into mythology and architecture. So this is one that
I definitely got to observe in the wild. So me
and my family were big studio Ghibli fans. Of course,
(01:50):
we made our way to visit Ghibli Park during our
trip to Japan, so we spent two nights in Nagoya
to do so, and while traveling on the Nagoya Municipal Subway,
we frequently encountered helpful signs that featured its mascot. It's
aficial mascot, Hatchie. Hatchie is well, I would say to
the uninformed Guidjin eye. Hat Schie is a humanoid uniform
(02:15):
Nagoya City Subway employee, but his head is a golden
fish with a human cartoon face, complete with fins on
the side and an upward cresting tail on the back
of the head.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
So when you say he has a fish head, you
were not saying his head is the head of a fish.
You're saying his head is an entire fish.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Right, but like you know, kind of like a flat
face fish with like a cartoon human nose. So there's
there's something interesting going on here. But at the very least,
you can say a subway employee with a fish for
a head.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
A human bodied subway employee with a fish for a head,
but the fish for a head has a human face.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Correct. Yeah, so already I'm on board, right, I mean,
he's cute, he's a bit weird, shown up and given
me helpful advice. You know, it often brings attention to
important signage or in particular the glass kind of like
glass paned doors in between subway cars. I found that
they had stickers on there, I guess to keep people
(03:15):
from bonking into them if they were you know too,
if they were free of smudges and so forth.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
As someone who has more than once in my life
walked straight into a glass door, I appreciate that.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
But this is where things get even cooler. So it's
not merely a fish that is serving as his head.
Hatschi has a shachi hoko or shachi for a head.
So what is this? Well, in Japanese mythology, this is
a fearsome sea monster, often described as a great fish
with either the head of a tiger or of a dragon.
(03:45):
It's also sometimes compared to a dolphin or an orca,
and shachi actually apparently means orca in Japanese. Now, the
origins of this mythical creature ex seemingly extend back through
Chinese and Vedic influences, namely connecting to the chai Win
and the Makara in those different mythologies, both creatures that
(04:09):
were often used as rooftop guardian sculptures, so comparable in
some ways to like a gargoyle in the West. Okay,
though some sources still when talking about the shatshi go
with more of a literal. This was modeled after a
killer whale. But as we often discussed in the show,
monsters are generally born of like multiple reference points. There
can be a lot of different things going on when
(04:31):
a monster has created wholesale, or when it makes the
journey from one culture into another, and then add you know,
one hundred two hundred years or more on top of that.
So the sashi joko, this golden fish with upturned tail
is frequently found as a traditional Japanese architectural flourish, so
(04:51):
great golden fish upward tail generally gleaming gold in appearance,
and traditionally employed as a means of supernatural fire prevention,
because because the mythical fish here was said to hold
water in its belly and it could control the rain,
So you know, you can think of this as an
invocation of a protective spirit while you're doing other things
(05:12):
as well, of course, to try and keep fires from
getting out of hand and burning down buildings or districts.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Almost like a symbolic sprinkler system.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Yeah, but why on the subway, you might ask. Well,
the main reason is because Nigoya's historic Nigoya Castle, originally
built in sixteen ten, partially destroyed in nineteen forty five,
and sort of continually restored since nineteen fifty seven, prominently
features a golden satchi on the roof, and I included
(05:40):
a picture of one here for you, Joe and everyone
out there. You can look these up as well. The
English for this word is shachi.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Oh okay so am I understanding this image correctly? If
I'm looking at it right. The fish's face is not
facing out from the roof. It's turned inward along the
roof line, and the fish is sort of waving its
tail out toward the rest of the world.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
That's correct, yes, and pretty much. I think all the
times that I saw it utilized while I was over
there and just looking around at various pictures, that that
seems to be the standard.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Interesting. I guess when I imagine artistic conventions of representing
like an animal or a creature on the outside of
a building, I would always have thought of it as
having the face facing out. But there's no reason it
has to be that way.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Yeah, And the front half of the creature is very impressive.
Again in these statues, it's very much of like a
dragonoid sort of head. You know, even I can see
the tiger associations, and also you can sort of see
roughly okay, I can imagine an orca or dolphin standing
in for this creature. Now on top of that, you know,
I guess we can also acknowledge that subway fires are
(06:49):
certainly always a possibility, So I imagine you could also make
a case for employing a mythological creature associated with fire
prevention against subway fires, or maybe more generally again unwanted
safety related scenarios in general, you know, like it's employed
on buildings as a protective spirit to help protect against
(07:09):
like sort of worst case scenarios. And likewise, in the subway,
our friend here, the mascot hot sheet is here to help.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Just looking at this fellow, I cannot help but feel assured.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
Yeah, he's very lovable. I highly recommend if you're interested
look him up. It's generally spelled h A t chi
I in English, or just look for Nagoya Municipal Subway
mascot and you'll find him.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Okay, you ready to talk about my next selection? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (07:38):
Yeah, here you got a very interesting choice. Is not
one that was that I was familiar with?
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Well, so, I think the most interesting thing about the
uukiara I'm about to talk about is that it is
the only one I'm aware of. There may be others
that have escaped to my attention. That is a successful
usurper king so I mentioned in the last episode coming
across Awesome mascot who was said to be a big
fan of heavy metal music, which it seems incongruous with
(08:06):
the vibe of most of these mascots, Like what soft
toddling character of this kind could be a metal head.
The answer is it's Funasi, the unofficial mascot of Funubashi, Chiba.
Now you might wonder unofficial. How does a city end
up with an unofficial mascot? So I was reading about
this in a couple of blog posts, one on a
(08:30):
Kawhi culture site called You May Twins, and also on
the Mondo Mascots blog. WHEB, I think you name dropped
this one in the last episode, didn't you.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Yeah. It's a great resource, especially if you just want
to overload on images of various mascots and eventually like learn,
like what they represent.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Yeah, and so the short story is that in the
year twenty thirteen, Funubashi City decided to get in on
the mascot hype and created its own official character. This
character was called Funeimon, who was widely considered by locals
to be excruciatingly bland and boring. Rob. I will let
(09:07):
you judge for yourself. Here I've included a picture. This
is a Funeimon on the right. He is described in
most of the sources I could find as an Edo
period salaryman or Edo period merchant. He's wearing typical clothing
for the period and glasses, and I have to agree
it is not a thrilling design. It's also not even
(09:28):
super cute. It's just like an adult guy.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Yeah, it just looks like somebody's dad. Who's you know,
I'm pretty cool dad. But as a mascot for the city,
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Yeah. So, in rebellion against this uninspiring official mascot, the
people of Funabashi City elevated I think a pre existing character.
This character is a hyperactive sentient pair named Funasi, who
was born in a pair orchard and loves headbanging Ozzy
(10:00):
Osbourne Fvnasi seems to have an appetite for extreme experiences
and thrill seeking, and also allegedly sustained an injury while
participating in a luchador exhibition in Mexico in twenty sixteen. Now,
for whoever's writing this character's sort of backstory, As we
mentioned in the last episode, a lot of these mascot
(10:22):
characters have more extensive personal histories and backstories and sort
of storylines than you might expect. You know, we talked
last time about the ones that were falling in love
with each other and all that stuff, but so this
one really likes getting into extreme experiences and you know,
the loud headbanging and all that. And I wonder if
(10:44):
that is, in fact a reaction to the fact that
this character filled the void of a character who was
perceived to be too boring.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
Hmmm, yeah, I can see that being the case. Maybe
combine that with some of this sort of attention seeking,
arguably at times out of control, enthusiasm for these various mascots.
You know, I was reading about about one the other day.
In fact, it was the one that was prominently featured
on John Oliver. How that particular mascot kind of got
(11:14):
into a little bit of trouble based on just sort
of being a little bit too aggressive and a bit
too extreme and it's stunts.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
That's not the same one, is it.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
It was different one.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
Oh okay, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
Different one. But I'm saying it seems like there's there
is a line somewhere in there where you could go
too far. But I guess Funasi's doing it right. I
looked up Funasi and wrestling to see, okay, well, what
is he doing? Where has he been engaging with like
Lucha Libre or whatever? And I couldn't find many immediate answers.
But I did see some clips of him being like
thrown and flung around by some pretty big name Japanese
(11:50):
professional wrestlers, So you know he's he's getting out there.
I mean, I don't think he's having official matches. He's
getting out there carpet m all right. The next one
I want to cover here is terreb tosin Aka Father
(12:14):
Television a Kaido Prefecture. This guy. I included a picture
of him before you here, Joe, tell me what you
get off of just an initial look here at terreb Toasin.
What do you say? What do you think he is?
Speaker 1 (12:28):
He is a red thing almost maybe like an upturned
flower pot for a head, a sort of a slightly
you know, like a upside down flower pot with a
little bit of soft corners on it, with a face.
The face looks very jolly hit, you know, a big,
big smile on the face. It has the best kind
(12:50):
of mustache, which is just four hairs, and then has
a sort of I don't know, a black spike reaching
up from the top of his head, which almost suggests
a piece of fruit, you know, like an apple has
a stem. Maybe it's a piece of fruit with a
stem poking off and then oh, also, so if his
head and body is an upturned clay flower flower pot,
(13:14):
he has two legs underneath that are right side up
clay flower pots of a smaller size, and then sort
of a green loin cloth. That that's what I get.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
Yeah, yeah, I looked at him and I instantly thought
like maybe pepper, like, maybe he's a hot pepper or
other kind of a yeah, vegetable or fruit. I showed
a picture of him to my wife and she was like,
I think he's a traffic cone. Also, I think a
valid guess.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
Yeah, that's that's good.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
But the reality here, and this makes sense once you
see the images side by side, is he's designed to
resemble the Supporo TV tower, and once once you see it,
you're like, okay, I can see it now. With the like,
he's very vaguely tower shaped. The tower in question has
this kind of like green band structure around the lower
(14:04):
portion of it that has been transformed into a belt
in his mascot form. And then that black apparatus on
the top of his head, well, that's those are the
upper extremes of the television tower itself.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
I see, yes, now, so I like that.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
You know, there's like a journey to for at least
for someone like me to figure out what he is.
But I was looking into it more, and I think
part of the appeal of this guy is that his
name in Japanese also has there's like a pun involved here,
like mister television tower, which does not translate all that well.
But I was instantly amused as well because someone's for
(14:40):
me ideas of TV as this kind of like stand
in parent or teacher, you know, father television. And it
also reminds me of that old Simpson's line from Treehouse
of Horror Television teacher mother, secret lover.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Yeah, are you kids hugging the TV?
Speaker 3 (14:59):
Yeah, I mean it's father television. He just has the
best of intentions for us. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
I like this one. He seems sage and redolent with pleasure.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
Yeah, and there's not a lot to him, I admit,
But it's another example of like what they can be
born of. They can be born of local landmarks, you know,
architectural touches and so forth. But the next one I
want to mention is interesting because it seems to be
very mission oriented, Like this is a Yuri kiara that
(15:29):
was dreamt up that was designed in order to fulfill
a particular objective in reaching the masses and conveying some
very important safety ideas.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Oh, I'm intrigued. Who is it? All right?
Speaker 3 (15:42):
This one is Zukimi moriy So this is another one.
I'm fairly certain that I got to see this one
in the wild because we were in Osaka. That's where
this one is utilized. Osaka is a really fun city though,
but and we had a little harder time navigating ourselves
on the public transportation, so I wasn't as on the
ball about like getting pictures and chronicling him. But basically,
(16:06):
this is a large, slightly scary purple and pink creature
with a single glowing eye with a yellow pupil, and
he lives in the gap in the subway stations.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Oh my lord, Rob, I was trying to think, what
does he remind me of? And he looks like a
purple version of the monsters from the Green Slime.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
He really does. Yeah, yeah, there's definitely a sense of
the Green Slime to him. If we were to see
him animated, I bet he would have some very Miyazaki
esque elements. He kind of reminds me of cat bus
a few times, but like a darkness cat bus. And
so his mission here is And there are a lot
of I think objectively cute signs warning people of all ages,
(16:55):
but especially children, about the dangers of closing doors and
the gap on Japanese trains and subways. So gaijen may
be more used to you know meor mind the gap
and watch for the closing doors announcements, but Japanese subway
and train systems are generally more proactive on this. Oftentimes
there are automatic gates in front of the gap that
(17:16):
help you know, that help make sure that people are
not getting too close, and then you have initiatives like this,
and uh yeah, I love him because Sukima Moury isn't
just a cute lax fellow to make you feel chill
about public transportation. He is very cute, but he could
also be mistaken for one of the darker pokemon, perhaps
(17:36):
you know some of the ghost types. But again, his
whole deal is about reminding you of the dangers of
the gap, so he needs to be a little bit scary,
even if he is not malicious. Like I want to
be clear, Soukima Moury is not here to grab your
children and pull them into the gap.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
I gotta say it looks like that in some of
the pictures you've supplied below, like he's peeking out below
the train with his like fingers ready as a child
is wandering by. It looks like he's going to snatch
the child, right.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
This has led to some comparisons in the West to
Penny Wise, the dancing clown, you know, the lur king
and the sewer to pull children down. That is not
what Suki memory is about. Okay, he is here. He's friendly,
but he is scary because he is scaring you away
from the danger dangerous part of the train, or one
of the dangerous parts. Because again remember he is a
(18:28):
creature of the gap. His name quite literally means the gap,
get go. And he was created by j R. West Railways,
again largely to serve as a reminder for children and
adults and parents, kind of a nursery bogie, you know,
to scare kids away from from the danger zone. And
(18:48):
this was in response to apparently troubling stats at the
time about gap related accidents with kids. So you know,
there is a real reason to roll out this mascot.
It wasn't just situation where wouldn't it be cool if
we had a cute mascot. This again seemed to have
been a very mission first scenario.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
We need a jinny green teeth of the subways exactly.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
Yeah. He's also really down on cell phone use on
the train and on the move, especially among parents who
should be helping their kids navigate that gap, and you know,
not get a footstuck or anything. We're told that he
does love to dance, and I love this detail. He
sleeps among the many lost things in the gap, so
there are various images of him like sleeping around like
(19:31):
lost shoes and lost cell phones and so forth, like
sort of sleeping in the junk down there, his own
treasure trove. He loves declaires, So you know, you do
have some just sort of like neutral information about him,
and we can we can relate to that.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
I guess, huh is that like a thing people drop
a Claire's through the gap?
Speaker 3 (19:50):
I don't know. I mean maybe one person dropped in
a Claire and he was like, this is good. I'm
a fan. Now I wait other Eclaires to be dropped
into the gap. So again, it would be unfair to
classify Zukima Moury as a malevolent force, but he's at
least adjacent to dangerous realities and as such, you know,
he reminds me a bit of past discussions of things
(20:11):
like Jenny Green Teeth and indeed like the Kappa, you know,
a superstitious, supernatural monster to warn people away from water
related dangers. And in this case it's it's subway oriented.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Yes, But though as soon as I said Jenny green
Teeth a few moments ago, I did realize, no, that's
still not quite right, because Jenny green Teeth does want
to snatch the children and Sukima Moury does not.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
That's right. Yeah, The the the energy here seems to
be to amuse, to entertain, but also to be a
little bit scary, because he is a scary but cute
creature that comes from a place that you should be
more aware of and you should have a little more
uncertainty about, because it is like a dangerous in between
zone when boarding the train. So look him up. This
(20:55):
one's There are a lot of interesting posters and images
of this guy, and so interesting reactions to him. But
he's doing good work, so I applaud him. So say
we all all right now, this brings us to some
more cultural connections that we can make about our euro kiara.
So most cultures have their various mythological and folkloric creatures.
(21:17):
Obviously we talk about a lot of them on the show.
We're always trying to drag them in from different parts
of the world, and it is, but it is often
observed that Japanese culture offers a particularly powerful trifecta of
cultural influences that may help us understand some of the
energy underlying the appeal of their mascots, of their euro kiara.
(21:38):
You know, why are they such a big deal compared
to other parts of the world that also have cute,
you know, imaginary beings that may be invoked in various
ad campaigns and public awareness and typical mascot work and
so forth. And on one hand, that there is certainly
and this is you know, sit in a a lot
of sources we're looking at. There is the polytheist stick
(22:00):
nature of Japan's Shinto religion and the presence of supernatural
kami in all things in Shintoism. So this absolutely can't
be overlooked. You know, it's a traditional worldview in which
there are multiple supernatural agents of power, that can reside
in pretty much anything that's very sort of like fast
(22:22):
and loose. There's a lot more to Shintoism than that,
but basically, like in terms of like the key points
we might reference in understanding something as far far more
simple as Japanese mascots, essentially, you can look at that
Shintoism as one possible leg of understanding them culturally. Now,
(22:42):
I think we do have to also be careful here
not to other the situation too much, because while there
does seem to be a uniquely Japanese emphasis in play here,
we can of course point to the coexistence of various mythic, folkloric,
and otherwise at least supernatural adjacent beings in various cultures,
regardless of the dominant religion or religions in that culture,
(23:02):
and beings from outside traditions have a way of working
their way into even those religions, at least into the periphery. Okay,
So there's Shintoism, and then, as we we've already referred
to several examples of this, but they're also the yokai,
which we've discussed in greater detail on the show before
it catch all, for various monsters, supernatural phenomenon and ghosts,
(23:24):
though yuri, which are more in line with the haunting
ghosts of Western tradition, are kind of their own separate category.
Yokai ghosts are they're more in line with this idea
of kami and that they're they're everywhere, and they might
be just completely neutral to humans, or they might be
a little bit mischievous. It just depends. So we've talked
(23:46):
about them before. They occur in various places throughout one's
daily life, according to the traditions, often associated with things
such as bathrooms, restaurant kitchens, alleys, and so forth. And
there's a very strong case to be made that the
Pokemon as well, oh a lot of their popularity to
these traditions, and various Pokemon are directly based on yokai,
(24:07):
and some Yokai and some Pokemon are also Eurokiara, so
you know, it's all kind of interconnected. I should also
know that we've discussed sukumogami on the show before, household
objects that are thought to become animant through age and
Japanese traditions. There seems to be this slide towards personification,
(24:29):
which of course ties into the very basic human tendency
to identify human like qualities and animals, plants, and various
inanimate or even non corporeal things. I think sometimes examples
like this from another culture just give us the distance
to recognize the larger global phenomena. Also kind of I'm
going to present as kind of like the third leg
(24:50):
of the tripod here potentially to understand eurokiara as and
this also ties into sort of cuteness in general and kauai.
But as Eddie ya El Chang points out in the
twenty eighteen article, let the Eurokiara do the job, there's
also this long standing popularity of small things in Japanese culture,
particularly the small sculpture art form of netsuki, combined with
(25:14):
long standing appreciation for animal forms and cute things in general.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
All Right, so you've got this sort of pyramid of
different influences that could be feeding into the eurokiara phenomenon.
On one hand, the traditional Shinto beliefs about the spirits
or entities all throughout nature. On the other hand, you've
got the sort of yokai, the various sort of like
monsters or beings that we've talked about on the show.
(25:40):
And then also this tradition of making these cute small
sculptures like Netsuki, specifically regarding the one leg of the
tripod here of Yokai. I wanted to come back to
(26:03):
something from an essay that I mentioned in Part one,
so and the last time I talked about the essay
about Kumaman, the bear or not Bear urukyara of the
Kumamoto Prefecture. This essay was called Kumaman, Japan's surprisingly Cheeky Mascot.
That was in a book called Introducing Japanese Popular Culture
(26:26):
twenty twenty three from Rutledge, edited by Elisa Friedman. The
essay was by Deborah j Ochi, and this part that
I'm about to mention was in the context of a
paragraph talking about how urukyara are sometimes deployed by authorities
after large, frightening public events. One big example is the
(26:46):
March twenty eleven earthquake, tsunami and subsequent nuclear incident at Fukushima,
after which Ochi says that the number of mascots in
Japan increased, as did the perception of their healing power
for the people. And I've also read that the figure
of Kumaman specifically was widely used to comfort the public
(27:06):
after the devastating twenty sixteen Kumamoto earthquakes. So there's a
sense that part of the role, part of the cultural
role of these like these sort of cute, positive informal characters,
is that they help people feel better after a tragic event.
On the topic of linking kumaman to pre existing yokai,
(27:29):
here's the quote I wanted to discuss, Ochi writes quote.
During the COVID nineteen pandemic, yurukiara were again mobilized across
the linguistic landscape, appearing on public notices and backdrops for
televised official announcements. Kumaman occasionally appeared along with his Kumamoto
ancestor Amabi, a folkloric yokai spirit associated with pandemic relief
(27:54):
who was also widely used. So I had to learn
more about this Amabi, and I did so by consulting
the Book of Yokai by the folklorist Michael Dylan Foster.
I've talked about this book before on the show. He
is a scholar currently affiliated with UC Davis, and the
section on the Amabi I think it's from the expanded
(28:15):
recent edition of the book. So, according to Foster, the
earliest image we have of this yokai is printed on
a kowaraban broadsheet from the year eighteen forty six. Now
kowaraban means tile block printing, and it was a type
of media similar to a newspaper or a tabloid, considered
(28:39):
very ephemeral, so printed roughly on cheap paper, with the
idea that it would be read once and then tossed away.
And it was used in the Edo period for reporting
major news events and for reporting official announcements, but also
on scandals, rumors, and gossip, including things of a supernatural character.
(29:00):
So you might read about the effects of a recent typhoon,
you might read about the siege of a castle or
a murder in the city, but also you might read
about a ghost woman who turned into a giant spider.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
Why not, I mean it's basically just an extension of
your rumor mill and your gossip columns, right, I don't
want to know what the ghost women are up to
around town.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Yes, So there is a particular eighteen forty six coorabon
preserved in the library of Kyoto University that includes both
a narrative and an illustration about a Kumamoto official's encounter
with a spirit from the ocean. So the text reads
as follows in translation, every night, something brightly lit would
(29:43):
appear in the sea of he Go. And that's off
of a present day Kumamoto Prefecture, when a local official
went out to take a look, something like what is
in the picture here appeared and said, I live in
the sea and am called a mobi. For the next
six years, there will be abundant harvests throughout the provinces,
(30:05):
but disease will spread. So make haste to copy an
image of me and show it to the people. So
saying it returned back into the sea, and Rob, I've
included here a photograph of this broadsheet, including the illustration.
So this is the first representation of the Amabi and
the text that showed up next to it. Now, I
(30:26):
was thinking, man, the face really reminds me of something,
but I was not able to figure out what it was. Rob,
in the notes, you figured out what it was it
was reminding me of. But the Amabi is a three
legged Avian mermaid. So it's got a bird's beak, a
diamond shaped eyes, though we can usually only see one
(30:48):
of its eyes because its head is turned in profile.
It's got long hair reaching down to her feet and
of which there are three. By the way, she has
three feet, three toes on each foot, and a body
covered in shingled rounded scales like a fish. But I
was trying to think, what does the face remind me of?
And you got it exactly What is it?
Speaker 3 (31:10):
Oh man? I thought it was just me, But I
look at this creature and monstrous aspects of the creature aside,
I get strong Kathy vibe Kathy from your chemical newspaper
cartoon section.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
Yes, it's Kathy. It's the combination of like the hair
and something about the eye.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
It's yeah, like Kathy has like her eyes are depicted
like so close to each other they're touching. And then yeah,
the long hair and sort of the general shape of
Kathy is also present in this creature from the sea.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
So the Amabi in this illustration is not fearsome, I
will say it. Instead, it looks strange, and I think
it is supposed to look strange, But it's closer to
cute than scary. Yes, I would agree, but again, the
details of the narrative. So off the coast of what
is now Kumamoto, people would see a bright light in
(32:01):
the darkness at night. An official goes out there to
figure out what it is. I guess he goes out
in a boat, though it doesn't say how he investigated.
I'm assuming I'm picturing a boat. Trip sees this three
legged avan mermaid with a beak. It says, I live
in the sea. I'm called a Mabi. You're gonna have
six years of good harvests, but you are also going
(32:21):
to have an epidemic of deadly disease. Share my picture
with people, and the implication that I read into it
here and I think this is what it is meant,
is that sharing the image will prevent the disease from spreading.
And then finally the yokai goes back underneath the waves. Now,
Foster writes that this is the first written record we
(32:42):
have of belief in the Amabi, but there is a
very similar being that slightly precedes it, called the Amabiko
or sometimes Amahiko, which appears in at least eleven documents
from the eighteen forties through the eighteen eighties, and Foster
cites a folklore scholar named Yumoto Koichi who argues that
(33:02):
these are actually the same creature and that Amabi is
simply a transcription error of the word amabiko that caught
on and then got copied done the line. So possibly
the same, possibly different, but in either case they're very
similar creatures. What's the deal with the amabiko? Some are
said to rise out of the sea, others appear in
the mountains, but they tend to give similar predictions and
(33:25):
warnings to what we heard in the first story. For example,
there's an eighteen forty four story of an amabiko that
appears in the Bay of Echigo and says disease is
going to spread and seven out of ten people in
Japan are going to die. But if you look at
a picture of me, you will be spared. And then
rob I've attached a picture of what the amabiko looks
(33:47):
like in this eighteen forty four document. Different kind of
look more like a three legged black octopus dolphin.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
Yes, I think that's an accurate description. Yeah, totally different characters. Still,
I wouldn't say hmm, I wouldn't say fearsome. But if
I get a far more more of a I get
far more of a neutral vibe off of this guy.
I don't know for sure if he leans more benevolent
or benevolent Yeah, different, different sort of creature, but definitely
(34:16):
three legs. You know, the sort of snout is still there,
so I can see, I can see the lineage between
these two designs.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
Yeah, ambiguous, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
But I mean by the according to the story, clearly
wants to help or wants to exploit an upcoming disaster
or fear of disaster into getting people to look at
pictures of him.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
Right, So a pattern emerges between these stories. There will
be an epidemic, many will die, but if you see
a picture of me, you will live. So spread this
illustration far and wide. And it's funny because this reminds
me of stuff in the modern era, like those email
forwards you would get in the early two thousands that
are like, you know, you will see a ghost in
the mirror and die three days from now unless you
(34:58):
send this email to ten of your friends.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
Ends. Yeah, because as far as I'm understanding, there's nothing
really informational in this image. It's not like study this,
you know, it's not like various big pieces of religious art,
you know, particularly I'm thinking of like Tibetan Buddhism where
or or also you see the examples of this in
Buddhism in Japan, where like a very complex piece has
a number of messages to convey to you about, say,
(35:22):
how to reach meditative states and so forth. This is
just a picture of very simple drawing of a strange creature,
and it's just it's more like, know that I exist,
see what I look like, and that will give you
an advantage against disease.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
Yeah, I don't think there's a lesson in how it looks.
I think it's just apotropeic magic's seeing me gives you
magical protection against the disease that's coming.
Speaker 3 (35:44):
And you know that's this good news for the viewer, Right,
It's like, what do I have to do to get
this reduction? Look at a picture I'm in. Yeah, don't
even have to read anything. It's easy to do. But also,
if you want to help your friends, you better make
a copy of this picture or buy another copy of
the broadsheet show it to them. So it has great
mimetic power because it includes its own intrinsic motivation to
(36:05):
spread the meme.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
Interesting now, according to Foster, the amabi and the Amabiko
are not even the only yokai that give these types
of warnings and offer protection through replication and spreading of
the image. He also cites a creature called the Kudabe,
which does pretty much the same thing. There's the Jingjahime,
which has the body of a fish and the head
(36:28):
of a woman, but with two horns. She predicts both
seven years of plenty, but also the spread of a
deadly disease, a named disease in this case called koori.
And if you draw her picture and share it with
everyone you know, they will be spared. There's another one
called the hime Uo, which is said in an Eddo
based tale to have emerged off the coast of the
(36:49):
island of Hirado. And interesting detail here, Foster writes, quote
Hirado might have been selected as the location for the
hime Uo because it was a distant, marginal location and
also a region historically associated with foreign ships and traders,
and thus a gateway for both prosperity and potential disease.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
There you go.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
So it's interesting that in the Edo period there are
lots of yokai with the power of prophecy, predicting the future,
often predicting disease, epidemics and plague, often predicting bounty or
both at the same time. And the image of this
creature can provide apotropaic immunity to anyone who lays eyes
(37:31):
on it, so you better copy it quickly and show
it to everyone you know. And these are categorized by
some scholars such as Eumoto Koichi as yoginju or prophecy beasts,
and Foster talks about the many different kinds of motivations
somebody might have to spread a story like this. On
one hand, it could just be a desire to excite
(37:51):
and entertain the reader, you know, it's kind of like
an interesting, entertaining story. In some cases, it could be
a simple desire to sell broadsheet. In some cases, it
could be a genuine desire to give people the hope
of protection in the face of frightening, uncontrollable forces like
infectious disease.
Speaker 3 (38:09):
Oh, that's a great point, and it ties into what
we've been talking about too, Like a golden fish on
your roof is not going to actually protect you against fire,
but it gives you that sense of hope. It gives
you like this, this additional layer on top of knowledge
of preparation or statistics and so forth. Yeah, and you know,
I can see how that would apply to our Eurokiara
(38:30):
as well. You know, here's one of these cute creatures
giving me information, giving me helpful advice. But there is
an optimism to it. There's a hope intrinsic in the
design of the creature that is giving me this.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
Information exactly right, And that in fact brings us back
to the Amabi's appearance during the COVID pandemic. So before
twenty twenty, the Amabi was a relatively obscure okai foster
it says, you know, it probably would have only been
known to like certain types of historians or or you know,
like real hobbyists or obsessives, though it did appear in
(39:04):
some work by the manga artist Mazuki Shageru in the
nineteen eighties. But after news of COVID nineteen first began
to spread in early twenty twenty, the image of the
Amabi surged in popularity on the Internet. Foster mentions several
posts on Twitter from February and even one at the
end of January twenty twenty that included renderings of the
(39:28):
Amabi communicated the lore that we've just talked about, and
I think jokingly encouraged the proliferation of its image as
a protective measure against infection. And while it's pretty clear
to me that most of these posts had a spirit
of irony about them, like the use of the amabi
was sort of meant as kidding, the amabi really caught
(39:49):
on as a symbol of defense and vigilance against the virus,
both virtually and in physical media and consumer culture. So
there was like a vib roll Twitter hashtag called Amabi
Challenge where people posted alongside they posted the hashtag along
with like images of homemade renderings of the mer bird,
(40:12):
and the amabi imagery was also used on all kinds
of products, from like keychains, t shirts, tote bags, to
rice crackers and beer. There were actual invocations of the
amabi in public religious rituals and prayers. And then eventually
the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare officially produced
(40:32):
an amabi logo warning people that they could spread COVID
nineteen without realizing it and advising people to take measures
to limit exposure.
Speaker 3 (40:42):
Ah and you included this poster art for me here
in our outline, and I believe I did, in fact
see this during my travels in Japan, So either they're
still putting them up, or there's still you know, there's
still some out there that haven't been digging down, or
people keep putting them up. Yeah, because again that's kind
of the that's what you're encouraged to do with the amami.
Speaker 1 (41:02):
Yeah. So I think it's interesting connecting this back to
the urukyara we were talking about, because both the amabi
and kumaman were in some cases used in top down
public health messaging and in bottom up cultural processing of
events during the COVID pandemic. And I wonder if this
(41:22):
tells us anything about the broader role filled by urukiara
and how that relates to this yokai. I want to
read a passage from Foster here. Foster writes, quote, the
Amabi's sudden rise exemplifies the eloquent adaptability of yokai, with
perfect ease and no contradiction. The Amabi straddles life and
death concerns like COVID nineteen and lighthearted fun T shirts
(41:46):
and beer, vernacular creativity, individuals circulating their own versions, and
institutional promotion, a government icon, heartfelt belief in religious ceremonies,
and rampant commodification. In charms and key chains. So he
notes that this kind of goes along with the fact
that beliefs about yokai seem to thrive in the context
(42:10):
of uncertainty as like a way of coping with mysterious
threats and questions that can't be answered or can't yet
be answered. I think we can all recall those like
early months of the pandemic when there was just like
so much uncertainty and we just didn't you know, there
was just like so much not knowing what to do,
And so the beliefs of this kind sort of provide
(42:34):
people a sense of control in some way. And while
the traditional apotropaic use of the amabi image may have
been interpreted as like literally efficacious in protecting against disease
back in the day, the way I'm reading it is
that I think the majority of the use in the
early months of twenty twenty was more playful and symbolic.
(42:56):
Not that most people sharing it thought that it would
literally mechanistically prevent the virus from entering and infecting their tissues,
but that it actually would do something, because of course,
on one hand, would provide a type of psychological comfort
and that feeling of control over an uncontrollable situation, but
also that by spreading the image of the okai you
(43:21):
were increasing front of mind public consciousness of the virus,
which meant people would be more likely to take actual
direct steps to limit contagion. And it strikes me that
apart from messaging about the pandemic, urukiara like kumaman have
a similar dual function. There's like, on one hand, you
have emotional comfort, and then on the other hand you
(43:42):
have information consciousness, and that could mean either spreading information directly,
like telling you something you don't know, or increasing the
salience of information you already have making you think about what.
Speaker 3 (43:54):
You do know. Yeah, I mean it's enough to if
you wanted to go all ancient astronauts on this, you
could say that Amabe was an actual visitor from space
and or the ocean that realize that that the information
is one of the key tools you can use against pandemics,
and was like, hey, start spreading images of me in
(44:16):
response to illness. It's not going to really pay off
right away, but there will come a time where this
could make some small difference. But anyway, obviously I love this,
this idea that you know, these various eurok Era much
like these older forms. You know that again they have
the information, they also have this emotional comfort like you've
(44:36):
been discussing that brings with it, you know, sort of
cuteness and hope all sort of tied together in a package.
And I wish there was more of this in the world,
you know, because aside from messaging aimed directly at children,
I feel like so much of the more serious messaging
out there, at least in the US, is is just
purely fear based, or at least that's how it often
(44:57):
feels to me. You know. Sometimes there's this layer of
hope to it, or an image of like a smiling
adult where it's like, oh, this is what happiness looks like,
this is what this is what protection looks like, or
so forth, or or you know, the hope is wrapped
up in the purchase of something that's going to protect
you from the scary thing. And I don't know, I
would rather live in a culture of cuteness and hope
(45:19):
than a culture of fear. I feel like we could, overall,
we could all push things a little more towards hope
and cuteness and away from just the pure fear. I mean,
the fear is always going to be there. The cuteness
and the hope doesn't erase that fear, but you know,
it makes it feel a little like if your experience
going to the subway is less like, don't you dare
(45:39):
get near the gap because you'll be torn in half?
You know, less shake hands with danger and more rukiara. Sorry,
it's a bit of a rant there.
Speaker 1 (45:48):
Oh yeah, I see. There's a difference between taking proper
precautions and wallowing in fear.
Speaker 3 (45:55):
Yeah, yeah, and realizing that that kind of messaging, that
sort of leveling of the message can apply to everybody
and not just children, you know, and you can do
it in a way that's also not you know, sugarcoating anything.
Or maybe you are sugarcoating it a little bit, but
they're still medicine in the middle.
Speaker 1 (46:10):
Yeah, all right.
Speaker 3 (46:12):
We're gonna go ahead and close out this episode, but
we'd love to hear from everyone out there. What are
your experiences with Yurukiara, with the lax mascots, what are
your favorites? Write in because we'd love to hear from you.
Just a reminder that Stuff to Blow your Mind is
primarily a science and culture podcast with Core episodes and
Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Wednesdays we do a short form episode.
(46:33):
On Fridays we do Weird House Cinema. You can get
all of this in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind
podcast feed.
Speaker 1 (46:39):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.
Speaker 2 (47:01):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hello, and welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Joe McCormick. Today is Saturday, so we're heading
into the vault for an older episode of Stuff to
Blow Your Mind. This one originally aired July eleventh, twenty
twenty four, and it is part two of our series
on the Yurukiara Japanese mascots.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Enjoy Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, the production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
And I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with part
two of our series on Urukiara, the lovable wobbly mascot
characters of Japan. Now, if you haven't heard part one yet,
you should go back and listen to that episode first.
In that one, we talked about the origins of the
uru our concept. Rob shared some of his experiences with
(01:03):
these characters on a recent trip to Japan, and we
talked about a couple of our favorite examples, including the
Kuma Moto mascot, a real megastar called Kuma Man, which
looks like a bear but apparently is not a bear.
You'll listen to the episode, you'll understand and then the
more obscure park associated mascot Hako Geo, and we're back
(01:26):
today to talk about some more.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
That's right, Okay, So my last selection was more emotional
than I guess substantially interesting to everybody. But this next one,
I think is even more fascinating because it does include
ties into mythology and architecture. So this is one that
I definitely got to observe in the wild. So me
and my family were big studio Ghibli fans. Of course,
(01:50):
we made our way to visit Ghibli Park during our
trip to Japan, so we spent two nights in Nagoya
to do so, and while traveling on the Nagoya Municipal Subway,
we frequently encountered helpful signs that featured its mascot. It's
aficial mascot, Hatchie. Hatchie is well, I would say to
the uninformed Guidjin eye. Hat Schie is a humanoid uniform
(02:15):
Nagoya City Subway employee, but his head is a golden
fish with a human cartoon face, complete with fins on
the side and an upward cresting tail on the back
of the head.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
So when you say he has a fish head, you
were not saying his head is the head of a fish.
You're saying his head is an entire fish.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Right, but like you know, kind of like a flat
face fish with like a cartoon human nose. So there's
there's something interesting going on here. But at the very least,
you can say a subway employee with a fish for
a head.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
A human bodied subway employee with a fish for a head,
but the fish for a head has a human face.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Correct. Yeah, so already I'm on board, right, I mean,
he's cute, he's a bit weird, shown up and given
me helpful advice. You know, it often brings attention to
important signage or in particular the glass kind of like
glass paned doors in between subway cars. I found that
they had stickers on there, I guess to keep people
(03:15):
from bonking into them if they were you know too,
if they were free of smudges and so forth.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
As someone who has more than once in my life
walked straight into a glass door, I appreciate that.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
But this is where things get even cooler. So it's
not merely a fish that is serving as his head.
Hatschi has a shachi hoko or shachi for a head.
So what is this? Well, in Japanese mythology, this is
a fearsome sea monster, often described as a great fish
with either the head of a tiger or of a dragon.
(03:45):
It's also sometimes compared to a dolphin or an orca,
and shachi actually apparently means orca in Japanese. Now, the
origins of this mythical creature ex seemingly extend back through
Chinese and Vedic influences, namely connecting to the chai Win
and the Makara in those different mythologies, both creatures that
(04:09):
were often used as rooftop guardian sculptures, so comparable in
some ways to like a gargoyle in the West. Okay,
though some sources still when talking about the shatshi go
with more of a literal. This was modeled after a
killer whale. But as we often discussed in the show,
monsters are generally born of like multiple reference points. There
can be a lot of different things going on when
(04:31):
a monster has created wholesale, or when it makes the
journey from one culture into another, and then add you know,
one hundred two hundred years or more on top of that.
So the sashi joko, this golden fish with upturned tail
is frequently found as a traditional Japanese architectural flourish, so
(04:51):
great golden fish upward tail generally gleaming gold in appearance,
and traditionally employed as a means of supernatural fire prevention,
because because the mythical fish here was said to hold
water in its belly and it could control the rain,
So you know, you can think of this as an
invocation of a protective spirit while you're doing other things
(05:12):
as well, of course, to try and keep fires from
getting out of hand and burning down buildings or districts.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Almost like a symbolic sprinkler system.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Yeah, but why on the subway, you might ask. Well,
the main reason is because Nigoya's historic Nigoya Castle, originally
built in sixteen ten, partially destroyed in nineteen forty five,
and sort of continually restored since nineteen fifty seven, prominently
features a golden satchi on the roof, and I included
(05:40):
a picture of one here for you, Joe and everyone
out there. You can look these up as well. The
English for this word is shachi.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Oh okay so am I understanding this image correctly? If
I'm looking at it right. The fish's face is not
facing out from the roof. It's turned inward along the
roof line, and the fish is sort of waving its
tail out toward the rest of the world.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
That's correct, yes, and pretty much. I think all the
times that I saw it utilized while I was over
there and just looking around at various pictures, that that
seems to be the standard.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Interesting. I guess when I imagine artistic conventions of representing
like an animal or a creature on the outside of
a building, I would always have thought of it as
having the face facing out. But there's no reason it
has to be that way.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Yeah, And the front half of the creature is very impressive.
Again in these statues, it's very much of like a
dragonoid sort of head. You know, even I can see
the tiger associations, and also you can sort of see
roughly okay, I can imagine an orca or dolphin standing
in for this creature. Now on top of that, you know,
I guess we can also acknowledge that subway fires are
(06:49):
certainly always a possibility, So I imagine you could also make
a case for employing a mythological creature associated with fire
prevention against subway fires, or maybe more generally again unwanted
safety related scenarios in general, you know, like it's employed
on buildings as a protective spirit to help protect against
(07:09):
like sort of worst case scenarios. And likewise, in the subway,
our friend here, the mascot hot sheet is here to help.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Just looking at this fellow, I cannot help but feel assured.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
Yeah, he's very lovable. I highly recommend if you're interested
look him up. It's generally spelled h A t chi
I in English, or just look for Nagoya Municipal Subway
mascot and you'll find him.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Okay, you ready to talk about my next selection? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (07:38):
Yeah, here you got a very interesting choice. Is not
one that was that I was familiar with?
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Well, so, I think the most interesting thing about the
uukiara I'm about to talk about is that it is
the only one I'm aware of. There may be others
that have escaped to my attention. That is a successful
usurper king so I mentioned in the last episode coming
across Awesome mascot who was said to be a big
fan of heavy metal music, which it seems incongruous with
(08:06):
the vibe of most of these mascots, Like what soft
toddling character of this kind could be a metal head.
The answer is it's Funasi, the unofficial mascot of Funubashi, Chiba.
Now you might wonder unofficial. How does a city end
up with an unofficial mascot? So I was reading about
this in a couple of blog posts, one on a
(08:30):
Kawhi culture site called You May Twins, and also on
the Mondo Mascots blog. WHEB, I think you name dropped
this one in the last episode, didn't you.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Yeah. It's a great resource, especially if you just want
to overload on images of various mascots and eventually like learn,
like what they represent.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Yeah, and so the short story is that in the
year twenty thirteen, Funubashi City decided to get in on
the mascot hype and created its own official character. This
character was called Funeimon, who was widely considered by locals
to be excruciatingly bland and boring. Rob. I will let
(09:07):
you judge for yourself. Here I've included a picture. This
is a Funeimon on the right. He is described in
most of the sources I could find as an Edo
period salaryman or Edo period merchant. He's wearing typical clothing
for the period and glasses, and I have to agree
it is not a thrilling design. It's also not even
(09:28):
super cute. It's just like an adult guy.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Yeah, it just looks like somebody's dad. Who's you know,
I'm pretty cool dad. But as a mascot for the city,
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Yeah. So, in rebellion against this uninspiring official mascot, the
people of Funabashi City elevated I think a pre existing character.
This character is a hyperactive sentient pair named Funasi, who
was born in a pair orchard and loves headbanging Ozzy
(10:00):
Osbourne Fvnasi seems to have an appetite for extreme experiences
and thrill seeking, and also allegedly sustained an injury while
participating in a luchador exhibition in Mexico in twenty sixteen. Now,
for whoever's writing this character's sort of backstory, As we
mentioned in the last episode, a lot of these mascot
(10:22):
characters have more extensive personal histories and backstories and sort
of storylines than you might expect. You know, we talked
last time about the ones that were falling in love
with each other and all that stuff, but so this
one really likes getting into extreme experiences and you know,
the loud headbanging and all that. And I wonder if
(10:44):
that is, in fact a reaction to the fact that
this character filled the void of a character who was
perceived to be too boring.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
Hmmm, yeah, I can see that being the case. Maybe
combine that with some of this sort of attention seeking,
arguably at times out of control, enthusiasm for these various mascots.
You know, I was reading about about one the other day.
In fact, it was the one that was prominently featured
on John Oliver. How that particular mascot kind of got
(11:14):
into a little bit of trouble based on just sort
of being a little bit too aggressive and a bit
too extreme and it's stunts.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
That's not the same one, is it.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
It was different one.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
Oh okay, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
Different one. But I'm saying it seems like there's there
is a line somewhere in there where you could go
too far. But I guess Funasi's doing it right. I
looked up Funasi and wrestling to see, okay, well, what
is he doing? Where has he been engaging with like
Lucha Libre or whatever? And I couldn't find many immediate answers.
But I did see some clips of him being like
thrown and flung around by some pretty big name Japanese
(11:50):
professional wrestlers, So you know he's he's getting out there.
I mean, I don't think he's having official matches. He's
getting out there carpet m all right. The next one
I want to cover here is terreb tosin Aka Father
(12:14):
Television a Kaido Prefecture. This guy. I included a picture
of him before you here, Joe, tell me what you
get off of just an initial look here at terreb Toasin.
What do you say? What do you think he is?
Speaker 1 (12:28):
He is a red thing almost maybe like an upturned
flower pot for a head, a sort of a slightly
you know, like a upside down flower pot with a
little bit of soft corners on it, with a face.
The face looks very jolly hit, you know, a big,
big smile on the face. It has the best kind
(12:50):
of mustache, which is just four hairs, and then has
a sort of I don't know, a black spike reaching
up from the top of his head, which almost suggests
a piece of fruit, you know, like an apple has
a stem. Maybe it's a piece of fruit with a
stem poking off and then oh, also, so if his
head and body is an upturned clay flower flower pot,
(13:14):
he has two legs underneath that are right side up
clay flower pots of a smaller size, and then sort
of a green loin cloth. That that's what I get.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
Yeah, yeah, I looked at him and I instantly thought
like maybe pepper, like, maybe he's a hot pepper or
other kind of a yeah, vegetable or fruit. I showed
a picture of him to my wife and she was like,
I think he's a traffic cone. Also, I think a
valid guess.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
Yeah, that's that's good.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
But the reality here, and this makes sense once you
see the images side by side, is he's designed to
resemble the Supporo TV tower, and once once you see it,
you're like, okay, I can see it now. With the like,
he's very vaguely tower shaped. The tower in question has
this kind of like green band structure around the lower
(14:04):
portion of it that has been transformed into a belt
in his mascot form. And then that black apparatus on
the top of his head, well, that's those are the
upper extremes of the television tower itself.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
I see, yes, now, so I like that.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
You know, there's like a journey to for at least
for someone like me to figure out what he is.
But I was looking into it more, and I think
part of the appeal of this guy is that his
name in Japanese also has there's like a pun involved here,
like mister television tower, which does not translate all that well.
But I was instantly amused as well because someone's for
(14:40):
me ideas of TV as this kind of like stand
in parent or teacher, you know, father television. And it
also reminds me of that old Simpson's line from Treehouse
of Horror Television teacher mother, secret lover.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Yeah, are you kids hugging the TV?
Speaker 3 (14:59):
Yeah, I mean it's father television. He just has the
best of intentions for us. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
I like this one. He seems sage and redolent with pleasure.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
Yeah, and there's not a lot to him, I admit,
But it's another example of like what they can be
born of. They can be born of local landmarks, you know,
architectural touches and so forth. But the next one I
want to mention is interesting because it seems to be
very mission oriented, Like this is a Yuri kiara that
(15:29):
was dreamt up that was designed in order to fulfill
a particular objective in reaching the masses and conveying some
very important safety ideas.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Oh, I'm intrigued. Who is it? All right?
Speaker 3 (15:42):
This one is Zukimi moriy So this is another one.
I'm fairly certain that I got to see this one
in the wild because we were in Osaka. That's where
this one is utilized. Osaka is a really fun city though,
but and we had a little harder time navigating ourselves
on the public transportation, so I wasn't as on the
ball about like getting pictures and chronicling him. But basically,
(16:06):
this is a large, slightly scary purple and pink creature
with a single glowing eye with a yellow pupil, and
he lives in the gap in the subway stations.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Oh my lord, Rob, I was trying to think, what
does he remind me of? And he looks like a
purple version of the monsters from the Green Slime.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
He really does. Yeah, yeah, there's definitely a sense of
the Green Slime to him. If we were to see
him animated, I bet he would have some very Miyazaki
esque elements. He kind of reminds me of cat bus
a few times, but like a darkness cat bus. And
so his mission here is And there are a lot
of I think objectively cute signs warning people of all ages,
(16:55):
but especially children, about the dangers of closing doors and
the gap on Japanese trains and subways. So gaijen may
be more used to you know meor mind the gap
and watch for the closing doors announcements, but Japanese subway
and train systems are generally more proactive on this. Oftentimes
there are automatic gates in front of the gap that
(17:16):
help you know, that help make sure that people are
not getting too close, and then you have initiatives like this,
and uh yeah, I love him because Sukima Moury isn't
just a cute lax fellow to make you feel chill
about public transportation. He is very cute, but he could
also be mistaken for one of the darker pokemon, perhaps
(17:36):
you know some of the ghost types. But again, his
whole deal is about reminding you of the dangers of
the gap, so he needs to be a little bit scary,
even if he is not malicious. Like I want to
be clear, Soukima Moury is not here to grab your
children and pull them into the gap.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
I gotta say it looks like that in some of
the pictures you've supplied below, like he's peeking out below
the train with his like fingers ready as a child
is wandering by. It looks like he's going to snatch
the child, right.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
This has led to some comparisons in the West to
Penny Wise, the dancing clown, you know, the lur king
and the sewer to pull children down. That is not
what Suki memory is about. Okay, he is here. He's friendly,
but he is scary because he is scaring you away
from the danger dangerous part of the train, or one
of the dangerous parts. Because again remember he is a
(18:28):
creature of the gap. His name quite literally means the gap,
get go. And he was created by j R. West Railways,
again largely to serve as a reminder for children and
adults and parents, kind of a nursery bogie, you know,
to scare kids away from from the danger zone. And
(18:48):
this was in response to apparently troubling stats at the
time about gap related accidents with kids. So you know,
there is a real reason to roll out this mascot.
It wasn't just situation where wouldn't it be cool if
we had a cute mascot. This again seemed to have
been a very mission first scenario.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
We need a jinny green teeth of the subways exactly.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
Yeah. He's also really down on cell phone use on
the train and on the move, especially among parents who
should be helping their kids navigate that gap, and you know,
not get a footstuck or anything. We're told that he
does love to dance, and I love this detail. He
sleeps among the many lost things in the gap, so
there are various images of him like sleeping around like
(19:31):
lost shoes and lost cell phones and so forth, like
sort of sleeping in the junk down there, his own
treasure trove. He loves declaires, So you know, you do
have some just sort of like neutral information about him,
and we can we can relate to that.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
I guess, huh is that like a thing people drop
a Claire's through the gap?
Speaker 3 (19:50):
I don't know. I mean maybe one person dropped in
a Claire and he was like, this is good. I'm
a fan. Now I wait other Eclaires to be dropped
into the gap. So again, it would be unfair to
classify Zukima Moury as a malevolent force, but he's at
least adjacent to dangerous realities and as such, you know,
he reminds me a bit of past discussions of things
(20:11):
like Jenny Green Teeth and indeed like the Kappa, you know,
a superstitious, supernatural monster to warn people away from water
related dangers. And in this case it's it's subway oriented.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Yes, But though as soon as I said Jenny green
Teeth a few moments ago, I did realize, no, that's
still not quite right, because Jenny green Teeth does want
to snatch the children and Sukima Moury does not.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
That's right. Yeah, The the the energy here seems to
be to amuse, to entertain, but also to be a
little bit scary, because he is a scary but cute
creature that comes from a place that you should be
more aware of and you should have a little more
uncertainty about, because it is like a dangerous in between
zone when boarding the train. So look him up. This
(20:55):
one's There are a lot of interesting posters and images
of this guy, and so interesting reactions to him. But
he's doing good work, so I applaud him. So say
we all all right now, this brings us to some
more cultural connections that we can make about our euro kiara.
So most cultures have their various mythological and folkloric creatures.
(21:17):
Obviously we talk about a lot of them on the show.
We're always trying to drag them in from different parts
of the world, and it is, but it is often
observed that Japanese culture offers a particularly powerful trifecta of
cultural influences that may help us understand some of the
energy underlying the appeal of their mascots, of their euro kiara.
(21:38):
You know, why are they such a big deal compared
to other parts of the world that also have cute,
you know, imaginary beings that may be invoked in various
ad campaigns and public awareness and typical mascot work and
so forth. And on one hand, that there is certainly
and this is you know, sit in a a lot
of sources we're looking at. There is the polytheist stick
(22:00):
nature of Japan's Shinto religion and the presence of supernatural
kami in all things in Shintoism. So this absolutely can't
be overlooked. You know, it's a traditional worldview in which
there are multiple supernatural agents of power, that can reside
in pretty much anything that's very sort of like fast
(22:22):
and loose. There's a lot more to Shintoism than that,
but basically, like in terms of like the key points
we might reference in understanding something as far far more
simple as Japanese mascots, essentially, you can look at that
Shintoism as one possible leg of understanding them culturally. Now,
(22:42):
I think we do have to also be careful here
not to other the situation too much, because while there
does seem to be a uniquely Japanese emphasis in play here,
we can of course point to the coexistence of various mythic, folkloric,
and otherwise at least supernatural adjacent beings in various cultures,
regardless of the dominant religion or religions in that culture,
(23:02):
and beings from outside traditions have a way of working
their way into even those religions, at least into the periphery. Okay,
So there's Shintoism, and then, as we we've already referred
to several examples of this, but they're also the yokai,
which we've discussed in greater detail on the show before
it catch all, for various monsters, supernatural phenomenon and ghosts,
(23:24):
though yuri, which are more in line with the haunting
ghosts of Western tradition, are kind of their own separate category.
Yokai ghosts are they're more in line with this idea
of kami and that they're they're everywhere, and they might
be just completely neutral to humans, or they might be
a little bit mischievous. It just depends. So we've talked
(23:46):
about them before. They occur in various places throughout one's
daily life, according to the traditions, often associated with things
such as bathrooms, restaurant kitchens, alleys, and so forth. And
there's a very strong case to be made that the
Pokemon as well, oh a lot of their popularity to
these traditions, and various Pokemon are directly based on yokai,
(24:07):
and some Yokai and some Pokemon are also Eurokiara, so
you know, it's all kind of interconnected. I should also
know that we've discussed sukumogami on the show before, household
objects that are thought to become animant through age and
Japanese traditions. There seems to be this slide towards personification,
(24:29):
which of course ties into the very basic human tendency
to identify human like qualities and animals, plants, and various
inanimate or even non corporeal things. I think sometimes examples
like this from another culture just give us the distance
to recognize the larger global phenomena. Also kind of I'm
going to present as kind of like the third leg
(24:50):
of the tripod here potentially to understand eurokiara as and
this also ties into sort of cuteness in general and kauai.
But as Eddie ya El Chang points out in the
twenty eighteen article, let the Eurokiara do the job, there's
also this long standing popularity of small things in Japanese culture,
particularly the small sculpture art form of netsuki, combined with
(25:14):
long standing appreciation for animal forms and cute things in general.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
All Right, so you've got this sort of pyramid of
different influences that could be feeding into the eurokiara phenomenon.
On one hand, the traditional Shinto beliefs about the spirits
or entities all throughout nature. On the other hand, you've
got the sort of yokai, the various sort of like
monsters or beings that we've talked about on the show.
(25:40):
And then also this tradition of making these cute small
sculptures like Netsuki, specifically regarding the one leg of the
tripod here of Yokai. I wanted to come back to
(26:03):
something from an essay that I mentioned in Part one,
so and the last time I talked about the essay
about Kumaman, the bear or not Bear urukyara of the
Kumamoto Prefecture. This essay was called Kumaman, Japan's surprisingly Cheeky Mascot.
That was in a book called Introducing Japanese Popular Culture
(26:26):
twenty twenty three from Rutledge, edited by Elisa Friedman. The
essay was by Deborah j Ochi, and this part that
I'm about to mention was in the context of a
paragraph talking about how urukyara are sometimes deployed by authorities
after large, frightening public events. One big example is the
(26:46):
March twenty eleven earthquake, tsunami and subsequent nuclear incident at Fukushima,
after which Ochi says that the number of mascots in
Japan increased, as did the perception of their healing power
for the people. And I've also read that the figure
of Kumaman specifically was widely used to comfort the public
(27:06):
after the devastating twenty sixteen Kumamoto earthquakes. So there's a
sense that part of the role, part of the cultural
role of these like these sort of cute, positive informal characters,
is that they help people feel better after a tragic event.
On the topic of linking kumaman to pre existing yokai,
(27:29):
here's the quote I wanted to discuss, Ochi writes quote.
During the COVID nineteen pandemic, yurukiara were again mobilized across
the linguistic landscape, appearing on public notices and backdrops for
televised official announcements. Kumaman occasionally appeared along with his Kumamoto
ancestor Amabi, a folkloric yokai spirit associated with pandemic relief
(27:54):
who was also widely used. So I had to learn
more about this Amabi, and I did so by consulting
the Book of Yokai by the folklorist Michael Dylan Foster.
I've talked about this book before on the show. He
is a scholar currently affiliated with UC Davis, and the
section on the Amabi I think it's from the expanded
(28:15):
recent edition of the book. So, according to Foster, the
earliest image we have of this yokai is printed on
a kowaraban broadsheet from the year eighteen forty six. Now
kowaraban means tile block printing, and it was a type
of media similar to a newspaper or a tabloid, considered
(28:39):
very ephemeral, so printed roughly on cheap paper, with the
idea that it would be read once and then tossed away.
And it was used in the Edo period for reporting
major news events and for reporting official announcements, but also
on scandals, rumors, and gossip, including things of a supernatural character.
(29:00):
So you might read about the effects of a recent typhoon,
you might read about the siege of a castle or
a murder in the city, but also you might read
about a ghost woman who turned into a giant spider.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
Why not, I mean it's basically just an extension of
your rumor mill and your gossip columns, right, I don't
want to know what the ghost women are up to
around town.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Yes, So there is a particular eighteen forty six coorabon
preserved in the library of Kyoto University that includes both
a narrative and an illustration about a Kumamoto official's encounter
with a spirit from the ocean. So the text reads
as follows in translation, every night, something brightly lit would
(29:43):
appear in the sea of he Go. And that's off
of a present day Kumamoto Prefecture, when a local official
went out to take a look, something like what is
in the picture here appeared and said, I live in
the sea and am called a mobi. For the next
six years, there will be abundant harvests throughout the provinces,
(30:05):
but disease will spread. So make haste to copy an
image of me and show it to the people. So
saying it returned back into the sea, and Rob, I've
included here a photograph of this broadsheet, including the illustration.
So this is the first representation of the Amabi and
the text that showed up next to it. Now, I
(30:26):
was thinking, man, the face really reminds me of something,
but I was not able to figure out what it was. Rob,
in the notes, you figured out what it was it
was reminding me of. But the Amabi is a three
legged Avian mermaid. So it's got a bird's beak, a
diamond shaped eyes, though we can usually only see one
(30:48):
of its eyes because its head is turned in profile.
It's got long hair reaching down to her feet and
of which there are three. By the way, she has
three feet, three toes on each foot, and a body
covered in shingled rounded scales like a fish. But I
was trying to think, what does the face remind me of?
And you got it exactly What is it?
Speaker 3 (31:10):
Oh man? I thought it was just me, But I
look at this creature and monstrous aspects of the creature aside,
I get strong Kathy vibe Kathy from your chemical newspaper
cartoon section.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
Yes, it's Kathy. It's the combination of like the hair
and something about the eye.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
It's yeah, like Kathy has like her eyes are depicted
like so close to each other they're touching. And then yeah,
the long hair and sort of the general shape of
Kathy is also present in this creature from the sea.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
So the Amabi in this illustration is not fearsome, I
will say it. Instead, it looks strange, and I think
it is supposed to look strange, But it's closer to
cute than scary. Yes, I would agree, but again, the
details of the narrative. So off the coast of what
is now Kumamoto, people would see a bright light in
(32:01):
the darkness at night. An official goes out there to
figure out what it is. I guess he goes out
in a boat, though it doesn't say how he investigated.
I'm assuming I'm picturing a boat. Trip sees this three
legged avan mermaid with a beak. It says, I live
in the sea. I'm called a Mabi. You're gonna have
six years of good harvests, but you are also going
(32:21):
to have an epidemic of deadly disease. Share my picture
with people, and the implication that I read into it
here and I think this is what it is meant,
is that sharing the image will prevent the disease from spreading.
And then finally the yokai goes back underneath the waves. Now,
Foster writes that this is the first written record we
(32:42):
have of belief in the Amabi, but there is a
very similar being that slightly precedes it, called the Amabiko
or sometimes Amahiko, which appears in at least eleven documents
from the eighteen forties through the eighteen eighties, and Foster
cites a folklore scholar named Yumoto Koichi who argues that
(33:02):
these are actually the same creature and that Amabi is
simply a transcription error of the word amabiko that caught
on and then got copied done the line. So possibly
the same, possibly different, but in either case they're very
similar creatures. What's the deal with the amabiko? Some are
said to rise out of the sea, others appear in
the mountains, but they tend to give similar predictions and
(33:25):
warnings to what we heard in the first story. For example,
there's an eighteen forty four story of an amabiko that
appears in the Bay of Echigo and says disease is
going to spread and seven out of ten people in
Japan are going to die. But if you look at
a picture of me, you will be spared. And then
rob I've attached a picture of what the amabiko looks
(33:47):
like in this eighteen forty four document. Different kind of
look more like a three legged black octopus dolphin.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
Yes, I think that's an accurate description. Yeah, totally different characters. Still,
I wouldn't say hmm, I wouldn't say fearsome. But if
I get a far more more of a I get
far more of a neutral vibe off of this guy.
I don't know for sure if he leans more benevolent
or benevolent Yeah, different, different sort of creature, but definitely
(34:16):
three legs. You know, the sort of snout is still there,
so I can see, I can see the lineage between
these two designs.
Speaker 1 (34:22):
Yeah, ambiguous, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
But I mean by the according to the story, clearly
wants to help or wants to exploit an upcoming disaster
or fear of disaster into getting people to look at
pictures of him.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
Right, So a pattern emerges between these stories. There will
be an epidemic, many will die, but if you see
a picture of me, you will live. So spread this
illustration far and wide. And it's funny because this reminds
me of stuff in the modern era, like those email
forwards you would get in the early two thousands that
are like, you know, you will see a ghost in
the mirror and die three days from now unless you
(34:58):
send this email to ten of your friends.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
Ends. Yeah, because as far as I'm understanding, there's nothing
really informational in this image. It's not like study this,
you know, it's not like various big pieces of religious art,
you know, particularly I'm thinking of like Tibetan Buddhism where
or or also you see the examples of this in
Buddhism in Japan, where like a very complex piece has
a number of messages to convey to you about, say,
(35:22):
how to reach meditative states and so forth. This is
just a picture of very simple drawing of a strange creature,
and it's just it's more like, know that I exist,
see what I look like, and that will give you
an advantage against disease.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
Yeah, I don't think there's a lesson in how it looks.
I think it's just apotropeic magic's seeing me gives you
magical protection against the disease that's coming.
Speaker 3 (35:44):
And you know that's this good news for the viewer, Right,
It's like, what do I have to do to get
this reduction? Look at a picture I'm in. Yeah, don't
even have to read anything. It's easy to do. But also,
if you want to help your friends, you better make
a copy of this picture or buy another copy of
the broadsheet show it to them. So it has great
mimetic power because it includes its own intrinsic motivation to
(36:05):
spread the meme.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
Interesting now, according to Foster, the amabi and the Amabiko
are not even the only yokai that give these types
of warnings and offer protection through replication and spreading of
the image. He also cites a creature called the Kudabe,
which does pretty much the same thing. There's the Jingjahime,
which has the body of a fish and the head
(36:28):
of a woman, but with two horns. She predicts both
seven years of plenty, but also the spread of a
deadly disease, a named disease in this case called koori.
And if you draw her picture and share it with
everyone you know, they will be spared. There's another one
called the hime Uo, which is said in an Eddo
based tale to have emerged off the coast of the
(36:49):
island of Hirado. And interesting detail here, Foster writes, quote
Hirado might have been selected as the location for the
hime Uo because it was a distant, marginal location and
also a region historically associated with foreign ships and traders,
and thus a gateway for both prosperity and potential disease.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
There you go.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
So it's interesting that in the Edo period there are
lots of yokai with the power of prophecy, predicting the future,
often predicting disease, epidemics and plague, often predicting bounty or
both at the same time. And the image of this
creature can provide apotropaic immunity to anyone who lays eyes
(37:31):
on it, so you better copy it quickly and show
it to everyone you know. And these are categorized by
some scholars such as Eumoto Koichi as yoginju or prophecy beasts,
and Foster talks about the many different kinds of motivations
somebody might have to spread a story like this. On
one hand, it could just be a desire to excite
(37:51):
and entertain the reader, you know, it's kind of like
an interesting, entertaining story. In some cases, it could be
a simple desire to sell broadsheet. In some cases, it
could be a genuine desire to give people the hope
of protection in the face of frightening, uncontrollable forces like
infectious disease.
Speaker 3 (38:09):
Oh, that's a great point, and it ties into what
we've been talking about too, Like a golden fish on
your roof is not going to actually protect you against fire,
but it gives you that sense of hope. It gives
you like this, this additional layer on top of knowledge
of preparation or statistics and so forth. Yeah, and you know,
I can see how that would apply to our Eurokiara
(38:30):
as well. You know, here's one of these cute creatures
giving me information, giving me helpful advice. But there is
an optimism to it. There's a hope intrinsic in the
design of the creature that is giving me this.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
Information exactly right, And that in fact brings us back
to the Amabi's appearance during the COVID pandemic. So before
twenty twenty, the Amabi was a relatively obscure okai foster
it says, you know, it probably would have only been
known to like certain types of historians or or you know,
like real hobbyists or obsessives, though it did appear in
(39:04):
some work by the manga artist Mazuki Shageru in the
nineteen eighties. But after news of COVID nineteen first began
to spread in early twenty twenty, the image of the
Amabi surged in popularity on the Internet. Foster mentions several
posts on Twitter from February and even one at the
end of January twenty twenty that included renderings of the
(39:28):
Amabi communicated the lore that we've just talked about, and
I think jokingly encouraged the proliferation of its image as
a protective measure against infection. And while it's pretty clear
to me that most of these posts had a spirit
of irony about them, like the use of the amabi
was sort of meant as kidding, the amabi really caught
(39:49):
on as a symbol of defense and vigilance against the virus,
both virtually and in physical media and consumer culture. So
there was like a vib roll Twitter hashtag called Amabi
Challenge where people posted alongside they posted the hashtag along
with like images of homemade renderings of the mer bird,
(40:12):
and the amabi imagery was also used on all kinds
of products, from like keychains, t shirts, tote bags, to
rice crackers and beer. There were actual invocations of the
amabi in public religious rituals and prayers. And then eventually
the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare officially produced
(40:32):
an amabi logo warning people that they could spread COVID
nineteen without realizing it and advising people to take measures
to limit exposure.
Speaker 3 (40:42):
Ah and you included this poster art for me here
in our outline, and I believe I did, in fact
see this during my travels in Japan, So either they're
still putting them up, or there's still you know, there's
still some out there that haven't been digging down, or
people keep putting them up. Yeah, because again that's kind
of the that's what you're encouraged to do with the amami.
Speaker 1 (41:02):
Yeah. So I think it's interesting connecting this back to
the urukyara we were talking about, because both the amabi
and kumaman were in some cases used in top down
public health messaging and in bottom up cultural processing of
events during the COVID pandemic. And I wonder if this
(41:22):
tells us anything about the broader role filled by urukiara
and how that relates to this yokai. I want to
read a passage from Foster here. Foster writes, quote, the
Amabi's sudden rise exemplifies the eloquent adaptability of yokai, with
perfect ease and no contradiction. The Amabi straddles life and
death concerns like COVID nineteen and lighthearted fun T shirts
(41:46):
and beer, vernacular creativity, individuals circulating their own versions, and
institutional promotion, a government icon, heartfelt belief in religious ceremonies,
and rampant commodification. In charms and key chains. So he
notes that this kind of goes along with the fact
that beliefs about yokai seem to thrive in the context
(42:10):
of uncertainty as like a way of coping with mysterious
threats and questions that can't be answered or can't yet
be answered. I think we can all recall those like
early months of the pandemic when there was just like
so much uncertainty and we just didn't you know, there
was just like so much not knowing what to do,
And so the beliefs of this kind sort of provide
(42:34):
people a sense of control in some way. And while
the traditional apotropaic use of the amabi image may have
been interpreted as like literally efficacious in protecting against disease
back in the day, the way I'm reading it is
that I think the majority of the use in the
early months of twenty twenty was more playful and symbolic.
(42:56):
Not that most people sharing it thought that it would
literally mechanistically prevent the virus from entering and infecting their tissues,
but that it actually would do something, because of course,
on one hand, would provide a type of psychological comfort
and that feeling of control over an uncontrollable situation, but
also that by spreading the image of the okai you
(43:21):
were increasing front of mind public consciousness of the virus,
which meant people would be more likely to take actual
direct steps to limit contagion. And it strikes me that
apart from messaging about the pandemic, urukiara like kumaman have
a similar dual function. There's like, on one hand, you
have emotional comfort, and then on the other hand you
(43:42):
have information consciousness, and that could mean either spreading information directly,
like telling you something you don't know, or increasing the
salience of information you already have making you think about what.
Speaker 3 (43:54):
You do know. Yeah, I mean it's enough to if
you wanted to go all ancient astronauts on this, you
could say that Amabe was an actual visitor from space
and or the ocean that realize that that the information
is one of the key tools you can use against pandemics,
and was like, hey, start spreading images of me in
(44:16):
response to illness. It's not going to really pay off
right away, but there will come a time where this
could make some small difference. But anyway, obviously I love this,
this idea that you know, these various eurok Era much
like these older forms. You know that again they have
the information, they also have this emotional comfort like you've
(44:36):
been discussing that brings with it, you know, sort of
cuteness and hope all sort of tied together in a package.
And I wish there was more of this in the world,
you know, because aside from messaging aimed directly at children,
I feel like so much of the more serious messaging
out there, at least in the US, is is just
purely fear based, or at least that's how it often
(44:57):
feels to me. You know. Sometimes there's this layer of
hope to it, or an image of like a smiling
adult where it's like, oh, this is what happiness looks like,
this is what this is what protection looks like, or
so forth, or or you know, the hope is wrapped
up in the purchase of something that's going to protect
you from the scary thing. And I don't know, I
would rather live in a culture of cuteness and hope
(45:19):
than a culture of fear. I feel like we could, overall,
we could all push things a little more towards hope
and cuteness and away from just the pure fear. I mean,
the fear is always going to be there. The cuteness
and the hope doesn't erase that fear, but you know,
it makes it feel a little like if your experience
going to the subway is less like, don't you dare
(45:39):
get near the gap because you'll be torn in half?
You know, less shake hands with danger and more rukiara. Sorry,
it's a bit of a rant there.
Speaker 1 (45:48):
Oh yeah, I see. There's a difference between taking proper
precautions and wallowing in fear.
Speaker 3 (45:55):
Yeah, yeah, and realizing that that kind of messaging, that
sort of leveling of the message can apply to everybody
and not just children, you know, and you can do
it in a way that's also not you know, sugarcoating anything.
Or maybe you are sugarcoating it a little bit, but
they're still medicine in the middle.
Speaker 1 (46:10):
Yeah, all right.
Speaker 3 (46:12):
We're gonna go ahead and close out this episode, but
we'd love to hear from everyone out there. What are
your experiences with Yurukiara, with the lax mascots, what are
your favorites? Write in because we'd love to hear from you.
Just a reminder that Stuff to Blow your Mind is
primarily a science and culture podcast with Core episodes and
Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Wednesdays we do a short form episode.
(46:33):
On Fridays we do Weird House Cinema. You can get
all of this in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind
podcast feed.
Speaker 1 (46:39):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.
Speaker 2 (47:01):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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