Realms of Myth Playlist, Part 5: Demon Eaters and Possessed Tools

Meet the demon slayer Zhōng Kuí and follow a procession of spirits across the sea to Japan.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
And of course, if you've been listening to the show
for a while, you probably know that just about every
year we bring out some Lunar New Year themed content

(00:25):
and uh, this year, Lunar New Year fell right on
a Tuesday. Yeah, so how could we say no to that? Um? Now,
whether you celebrate Western New Year or you or you
like a good Lunar New Year or trip both or
Chinese New Year, well, I think there's always room for
both celebrations because you can you can shoot for your
Western New Year, you can make your various goals and resolutions,

(00:48):
and you can you have a good month to try
them out and fail with them, and then you have
another shot. You can say, all right, well I'm gonna
go for Lunar New Year. This is gonna be my
new beginning, because that first New Beginning didn't really take
off like I wanted it to. And if you feel
like you're early on you've already had your year kind
of infested with a lot of negative energy, you can

(01:09):
have some exorcisms, that's right. So that is one of
the things we're gonna be talking about in this episode.
It's this this episode, it might seem like something of
a of a potpourri episode, but but there there's there's
definitely a string connecting all of these together about the
exorcism of spirits, the exorcism of you can I mean,

(01:30):
you can even just think of them as negative emotional
states and associations from your life as you head into
some sort of new phase, which is kind of at
the heart of so many of our approaches to a
new year, we'll think about what most New Year's resolutions
actually are. I don't have empirical evidence for this, but
my gut feeling is that the majority of New Year's

(01:52):
resolutions are to stop doing something you see as a
negative presence in your life or reduce doing something you
see a sort of like a demon on your back. Right. Yeah.
And now there's been pushback against that, and a lot
of people say, we what we need to do. If
we are going to set little resolutions, in addition to
making them reasonable, we should try and make them more positive,

(02:13):
like things I Am going to do. Uh. And then,
of course realizing that you need to make it attainable.
I don't know, making an attainable sounds kind of scary
because then you'd have to actually do it. Yeah, but
then yeah, if you set it up too if you
set up too much of an obstacle, if the resolution
is too great, then you're just guaranteed to fail and
you're gonna feel bad about that. Anyway, what was it

(02:34):
we said one year in the past? We uh, we
decided the best New Year's resolution is that every year
you should decide you're gonna live forever. Maybe so, and
that might as well, right. Uh So we do have
to point out that this new year, there's a lot
of enthusiasm for the uh, the the ideas, the teachings
of Marie Condo. Oh yes, I've been hearing all about this,

(02:58):
and I will say so, I have not watched her show,
I've not read her stuff. I don't really know anything
about this except what I've gleaned second hand from the culture.
But I I sense that there is inherent controversy and
misunderstanding about her whole thing. But basically, what I gather
is that she's for sort of cleaning, cleansing your physical
surroundings and purging yourself of unnecessary, unwanted objects. Yeah, that's

(03:23):
that's my understanding. A lot of people have been watching
her Netflix series Tidying Up with Marie Condo, which which
was of course released January one, twenty nineteen, clearly aiming
for New Year's resolution minded folks. Uh. And she uses
what is what she calls the con Marii method, which
is said to be inspired by Shinto principles about the
spirit of things in one's life. And yeah, the basic

(03:46):
idea is throw out the stuff that isn't necessary and
doesn't believe the quote is spark joy. Oh yeah, I've
heard all about sparking joy. Yeah, and you know, I,
you know I, I see no problem with that. I
like that idea. I'd like to try and limit the
clutter in my own life. And if something isn't making
you happy, and it's a physical object and it's not necessary,

(04:07):
it's not holding up a bookcase or anything or enabling
you to make a living, like, what is it? What's
it doing right? Well? And I also certainly think that,
and I think I'm sometimes guilty of this myself, that
hanging on to lots of old objects and not getting
rid of them can essentially be a way of avoiding
processing and thinking about your own past, you know, Like

(04:29):
it can be a way like if you've got stuff
from previous years that you just know you're not going
to use again, but you don't want to go through
it and see what you need to get rid of.
That can often just be because you don't, you know,
you're kind of afraid to sit down and think about
what's been going on in your life, so like you
don't do it. Yeah, Or one of my favorites when
you find a box of old stuff that is quote

(04:52):
unquote meaningful, but you forgot you had it. You have
like looked in this box in years, and you ask youself, like,
I think this stuff was dead to me, and I
have brought it back to life by finding it. Maybe
it should have just stayed dead. Sometimes dead is better, right,
As a wise man once said, Uh so, you know,
not to spend a lot of time on mary condo,

(05:12):
but I imagine with with her work, Yeah, you're going
to see people who really dig it, who really get
enthusiastic about it, people who have a lot of problems
with it, people who try it and experience success, and
people who try it and find that, well, here's another
self help um guru whose advice has not fixed my life.
And I think that's part of the course with with

(05:34):
most teachings, uh that are aimed at changing the shape
of your life. I guess the more religious way of
thinking about it would be that these objects have like
a spirit to them, or spiritual energy. You obviously don't
have to think that there's such a thing as a
spirit in an object to recognize that objects have significance.
You know, the objects around you. They trigger certain like

(05:57):
cascades of memories and and and react actions and emotions,
and so in a certain way, they can sort of
have a spirit, even if they don't literally have a soul. Right,
It's something that we have clearly projected through our own
imaginations or own memories and even just through the like
the nature of of building being a tool building and

(06:17):
tool acquiring an object acquiring species. Yeah, I mean, is
there any other species that acquires objects in the way
we do? I mean, you could think about like birds
that build, you know, bower birds building building nests with
with strange attractive objects. But there is really nothing like
us in terms of all the objects we we bring

(06:39):
to surround ourselves with. Now you might think about a
lot of those objects is like, well, that's because we
are you know, primates with tool using intelligence, and most
of these objects are tools that we've figured out how
to use, but most of them you don't ever actually use.
They actually are more like the bower bird that you know,
most of them are not your kitchen knife that you
use every day. They might be a tool that could

(07:01):
maybe do something, but you never do that thing or
you never use them. So it is more like you're
just building a nest with strange bits of string intensil,
and it's not even attracting a mate or keeping your
in in the sense your collection of bubble heads or
you're like grandfather's collection of bubble heads. Whatever it happens
to be like something you even have you don't even

(07:22):
have direct emotional attachment to. Perhaps like it's it's no
longer winning you mates, it may be getting in the
way of your relationship with your existing mate. Um. Yeah,
so it's it's this weird byproduct of the human experience. Yeah.
Of course, then again, we we have a very complex
way of appreciating our aesthetic surroundings, and some of these

(07:43):
artificial objects we surround ourselves with are part of that.
So I guess I walked in here wondering if I
was going to have a take on the like whole
like purging all your unwanted old objects thing. I don't
have a take on it. I guess I just I'm
gonna say, do it if you want to do it. Well,
there's my boring pronouncement, folks. Well here's the definite fact.

(08:04):
Marie Condo was not the first individual to say, hey,
it's a new beginning, maybe I should throw a few
things away. Right to think that the new year is
a time to exercise old demons, whether metaphorically in the
modern age or quite literally in the mythological context, that's right.
So in this episode of Stuff to Blow your Mind,
we are going to We're going to continue to explore

(08:26):
these themes, and in doing so, we're gonna waltz between
Chinese and Japanese myths and legends. And first of all,
we are going to meet a demon slayer. I love
a good demon slayer. Yeah, so this is gonna be
what Buffy. No, no, no, this is the true fact.
Buffy did slay demons in addition to vampires. Most for

(08:47):
the vampire thing. I guess it looks better on a
calling card. Most of the interesting ones were more demon
than vampire, I think. Yeah, the vampires became less essential
as the series went on. But but no, we're talking
about one of the greatest did not the greatest demon slayer,
demon queller, demon defeat exorcist of all time, demon eater,

(09:09):
demon eatery ghost banisher. Uh demon I Gauger, Yes, I Gouger.
He was a man, a spirit of of many skills.
We're talking about zen Quay, the demon queller from from
Chinese legend in mythology. There are a lot of fantastic
paintings of zen Quay that I have found all over

(09:32):
the internet. There's just a rich artistic tradition with this
guy who's got this severe face that's sort of part
of his mythology. That he's kind of like like nasty
looking in the face, but that he's this real tough
guy with a beard who's usually found commanding a troop
of demons to do his will. Yeah, he's he's kind
of a vulcan figure to a certain extent. Yeah, And

(09:53):
he's he's often kind of like this squat maybe slightly
ugly or ourid, disfigured individual. The depictions range from him
just looking like an eccentric um like middle aged scholar
to looking like an outright like troll with like red
or dusky skin, you know, like he It varies a lot.

(10:14):
Sometimes he's kind of serene seeming. Sometimes he is accompanied
by demons. Other times he is like actively perpetrating violence
against the demons, sometimes in a procession of demons as
if on parade, sometimes being carried in a sedan chair
by demons. So uh I actually, so there are different

(10:34):
versions of the story about him, different details regarding with
conflicting details, conflicting details about how he came to be,
what his role was, who tasked him with this role? Well,
tell me one version of the story, Robert, Okay, this
is the first version I came across in a book
of Chinese mythology. So they got the idea. Here's during
the eighth century uh Emperor Ming of Time who lived

(10:56):
six eighty five through seven sixty two. Uh an historic
individual suffered a fever one night and was assailed by
a rampaging demon dressed in red trousers. And though he
asked the demon what its name was, and the demon said,
my name is quote emptiness and desolation, and the Emperor
was just powerless to stop it. You know, it's just

(11:18):
still suffering under this fever. It's this demons running around
like cat in the hat, just messing anything up. I
think in some other tellings of it, it's running around
with a flute and a purse that it has stolen
from the emperor, which I think is a nice wrinkle
on everything, because here we see the introduction of objects,
objects with some sort of value or or or or

(11:41):
spirit to them. So who will come in to save
the emperor from this horrible ghost like figure. Well the
Emperor calls for his guards, of course, but you know
that that doesn't do any good. I don't even think
they just they show up. Instead. What happens is a
great frightening apparition storms into the chamber dressed in tattered
robes and a torn bandanna. It grabs this red demon up,

(12:02):
crunches it down into a ball cartoon style and then
swallows it whole well. And then the spirit introduces itself
to the Emperor as zong Quai, the soul of a
talented scholar who committed suicide after failing to achieve top
honors in the public examinations. The public examinations would have been.

(12:23):
This was like the test to determine like where you
were going to be professionally in society, so like if
you get a good score, you would get some kind
of good position in government service. Yeah, exactly. So it
was a huge, huge deal, not no mine or test. Okay,
So he he fails in achieving the score that he

(12:43):
was going for, and different versions of it play this differently,
and some he is kind of cheated out of top scores. Yeah.
I think I've read one where he did get a
top score but then something bad happened to him. Anyway.
I think there's a version where the emperor at the
time made fun of him for physical appearance and that
led to the despair that ends in suicide. So they're yeah,

(13:04):
there are different versions of exactly how it goes down,
but in all of them he ends up dying the
death of a suicide And is uh and is this
reduced to this raith like form? But here here's the
important detail. Since the imperial family had shown him honor
and buried him in green robes like a member of
the imperial household, despite his shame, he'd sworn to protect

(13:27):
the emperor and his successors from the demons of despair. Okay,
so you've got this beyond the grave demon fighter figure
who's paying back the debt of his honorable burial. Right, yeah,
you have a vengeful ghost who kills demons, kills rogue spirits.
Uh and and essentially as the I've seen him described
as the immortal exorcist of Chinese mythology. And so the

(13:51):
emperor in this case and this story ends up putting
up a picture of him to honor him and to
an invoke his presence over any you know, rogue spirits
that might mess with his demeanor. And so this hanging
up of a picture of gen Qui does sort of
become a tradition, right Oh, yes, absolutely, generally you know,
by doorways. So yeah, he's this tragic figure, clearly talented

(14:12):
and driven. And again the details very depending on the telling.
In one of them, I ran across. So he he dies,
and he ends up in the tin hells of dai U,
where the Tin Yama King's reside over the dead. And
here the lords of the underworld recognize zen Quays potential
and they offer him the position of King of Ghosts,

(14:35):
thus tasking him with policing unruly spirits and demons, which
I think is a pretty awesome origin story as well. Yeah,
in fact, I I like that one more because it's
you know, the the the agency here is not with
the Emperor but with the lords of Hell. Yeah, they're like, hey,
look we've got some spirits out here, some demons. They're
given the tin hell is a bad name. I actually

(14:57):
need you to go out and police them one by one.
Like that's a whole that's a TV series right there.
Like he's a cowboy or he's like an outlaw who's
given a bounty to go collect or exactly. Yeah, and
this type of figure I feel like this does this
trope does show up in in even modern fictions. Certainly
there are plenty of modern fictions that actually use zen

(15:20):
Quay as a as a title character. You will find
zen Quay to this day in Chinese television shows, movies.
I think I saw there was a video game apparently
video games, the opera, um, etcetera. So he's he's no
minor figure, as will continue to discuss. So, but basically
he's roman about out on the land, uh, putting down rogues,

(15:42):
spirits and ghosts and demons. Oh yeah, he's putting him
to the sword. He's a he's gouging out their eyes.
There's there's a painting or a tradition in paintings that
show him gouging out the eye of a demon. So
he's pretty ruthfully, he's a frightening figure, you know. With
then again, there's a long tradition of having like a
frightening figure to frighten away the demons and the spirits

(16:03):
and and all the malicious uh unseen entities that might
mess with with your health and happiness, and and he
is he is one of them. So he's like a figure,
a legendary figure embodying the spirit of apotropaic magic, the
magic of warding off evil spirits and curses and stuff exactly. Now,
as you mentioned earlier, not only is he happy to

(16:26):
quell and uh and slay and sometimes mutilate and eat
the demons that are running about, but he'll also bend
them to his will. He'll make them serve him, carry
him around on a litter for example, um as well
as his sister who in the tellings U he's part
of his gratitude to the emperor is Uh is betrothing

(16:49):
his his sister to the emperor, I believe. So you
end up with these illustrations such as the gong Kai
scroll from the Late Song dynasty, which depicts Zong eat
it in a litter carried and the litter is carried
by two male demons, while another litter is carrying his
sister carried by two female demons. And then you have
two demon attendants carrying a dog a package. All in all,

(17:13):
it's an eighteen demon servant entourage marching across this scroll.
And there are also seven smaller captured demons, some trust
up or in one case imprisoned in a jar like
an octopus filling a beer bottle. Yeah, so he's not
like in a sence, he is like the original Ghostbuster,
but he's not content to just shove the captured ghosts

(17:35):
into the containment unit. No, he is here to to
make all the slimmers and what have you uh carry
him about and then aid him in his ongoing war
against the demons. This is an awesome scroll, by the way.
I mean I mentioned earlier that there's a really cool
artistic tradition and this is one great example. The demons though,

(17:55):
so they're doing his will, But often the demons also
appear to be kind of having a good time, like
they'll be jumping about and doing cartwheels and sometimes playing instruments. Maybe, yeah,
there is there is definitely a sense of a of
a parade to what we're seeing here, and it's a
type of parade that to certainly too Western audiences, it

(18:15):
instantly makes one think of these crampus parades that one
sees where you have both um good st Nicholas marching
through the street, but also the unruly or slightly unruly crampuses.
And indeed, uh that that actually is there's actually a
strong comparison to be made between these two when we
start looking at some of the associations that Zong has

(18:39):
with New Year's exorcisms in Chinese traditions. Oh yeah, so
we started with the idea of the lunar new year
and with exercising the old. So how does zen Quai
tie back into that? Obviously I can begin to see
the exorcism part. Oh yes, yeah, so, so I have
actually a wonderful passage here I want to read. This

(18:59):
is from a late eighteenth century description of festivities in
Han Xiao from Wu Zimmu, as quoted by Sherman E.
Lee in an Artibus Asia article from nine quote. On
the four day of the twelfth Lunar month, regardless of
poverty or wealth, all prepare vegetarian food and sweet dishes
to sacrifice to Zal, the stove god. On the market

(19:23):
streets are poor beggars three to five men in a
company costumed as the figures of such as spirits and demons,
Panguan zong Quai and his younger sister, beating gongs and
striking drums from house to house they beg for money.
The end of the twelve month is termed chu Ye,
the eve of change. The official and commoner families, whether

(19:46):
of greater or small households, prepare wine, sweep the gates
and beams, remove the dust and dirt, clean the halls
and doors. Change the door guardians. Door guardians are are
a tradition h Chinese households with opi on the doors
or by the doors uh you know, guarding the household.
Interestingly enough, one has seen uh Santa Claus when when

(20:09):
transferred into modern Chinese holiday traditions, Santa Claus has sometimes
been utilized as twin doric guardians and hang pictures of
Zong Quay, so again helped put it put up a
picture of Zong to help keep the bad spirits away,
and the passage continues. In the forbidden interior of the

(20:30):
Imperial Palace, a great exorcism is carried out in a
demon expelling ceremony. Face masks are placed on the head,
and clothes and costumes with multi colored embroidered designs are worn.
Hands grasp golden spears, silver Halbard's painted wooden knives and swords,
multi huge dragons and phoenixes, and many colored flags and pinions,

(20:52):
and for amusement, the musicians are costumed as Panguan, Zong, Qua,
Zao Yun, etcetera. And the Forbidden interior, the drumming and
blowing begin and the exorcism of evil spirits proceeds at
the don Hua gate and goes around a dragon pond bay.
So this is this in a nutshell, you know, it

(21:13):
throws in a number of different New Year's traditions in
Chinese culture. But also there is this sense of of
the parade, the spectacle uh and people embodying themselves and
kind of a Mummers tradition as the spirits, spirits and
demons that are serving zen Quai or even zen Quay himself,
but also the idea of linking the New Year with

(21:36):
a type of exorcism and purging ritual exactly. Yes, you know,
and Zong remains an important part of Chinese New Year iconography.
You'll see him in parades certainly as ceremonial wall hangings
as well. And again he remains a popular figure in
Chinese opera, TV, movies, video games. For instance, there's a
two thousand fifteen film titled zhen Quai Snow Girl in

(21:58):
the Dark Crystal that centers around our demon hunter. I
assume it's a different Dark Crystal than correct, no relation
to Hintston at all. But I bet if you had
a Gartham infestation, he would get him right out of Yeah,
he could clear some Gartham right out, sweep him right
out of the out of the tomb. Alright. So, thus
far have we spoken mainly of Chinese mythology. But the

(22:18):
interesting thing about dozen Qua is that he travels. He
travels eventually over into Japanese traditions as well as due
depictions of demon and spirit processions. In Japan, he's known
as shokai and the oldest images a date back to
the twelfth century. So we're going to take a quick
break and when we come back, we're going to pick

(22:38):
up with Japanese traditions and another take on harmful spirits
and things that need to be expelled in order to
have a new beginning in your life. Alright, we're back
and we returned to Japan. Yes, it is time to
take a look at another lunar New Year related uh
spirit exorcism and and cleaning up tradition that also ties

(23:02):
in with demons. What a wonderful confluence of concepts. And
who could be surprised that we're brought back to our
old friend, the scholar Nariko t writer whose work on
the monsters of Japanese folklore and literature we have cited
multiple times on the show in the past. Oh, yes,
we've dealt with what giant spiders, the Kappa. Yeah, she
wrote that paper on the transformation of ony from from

(23:26):
monstrous and diabolical to cute and sexy, which we talked
about in I think an October past maybe a couple
of years ago. Yeah, I'll make sure to link to
that episode and some of these other Lunar New Year
related episodes we've recorded in the past. On the landing page.
For this episode, it's Stuff to Blow your Mind dot Com. Now,
I want to look to a book that Nariko T.
Writer wrote called Seven Demon Stories from Medieval Japan from

(23:49):
the University Press of Colorado, where she discusses the tradition
known as the suku Mogami narratives. And I'll explain what
those are in just a second. But the Sukamogami are
attested in old illustrated scrolls, with some with unknown authors,
and there are multiple versions of this story that are

(24:10):
reproduced across different sources. But writer writes that due to
an aristocrats diary entry about one of these stories from
fourteen eighty five, we know that the scrolls telling about
this stuff emerged no later than the late fifteenth century.
So definitely by late fifteenth century Japan, you've got these
stories of the suku Mogami, which are tool specters. Yeah,

(24:33):
the so the idea of tools coming alive can be
found in stories from as early as the hay On period,
which is through five, but they first get their common
name the Suku mogami later in the medieval period, and
one particularly prominent story of tool specters is the Sukamogami
Key The Record of the Tool Specters, a text which

(24:56):
comes from sometime in the Moral Machi period thirt thirty
six to fifteen seventy three, as we mentioned a minute ago,
definitely no later than like the fourteen eighties. So you
might wonder what our tool specters. Well, I think we
should turn directly to the Sukumgami Key to get the
full story. So this is gonna be I'm gonna be
summarizing and quoting from writers full translation of an illustrated

(25:20):
scroll of the Record of the Tool Specters from the
Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, published in two thousand nine.
So the scroll starts off by discussing a Japanese ritual
known as the susu Horai literally the sweeping suit, which
is this year end house cleaning ritual. And according to
this tradition, every year people bring out old tools and

(25:44):
discard them in alleyways before the change of the new year.
And the author of the scroll extends this concept to
quote renewing the hearth, fire, drawing fresh water, and renewing
everything from clothing to furniture at the new year so
we're seeing a few parallels and similarities some to some
of the Chinese Lunar New Year UH rituals we were
just talking about. Yeah, related to the like the physical

(26:06):
cleansing of the space of of your home UH and
in doing that also the removal of negative spirits and on.
Then the idea of removing old tools. I mean that
that that is a that's something that I think UH
speaks to everybody. Like what is sadder than an old,
unused tool in a drawer, you know, like a pair

(26:27):
of rusted duh hedge clippers that are no longer even
functional but you still have for some reason. Uh yeah,
that's like, yeah, throw it in the alleyway, begone with it.
Oh well, you still have them in case you ever
need props for like a sauce equal I guess yeah.
They're they're shooting at your house and you you know,
so they're like, oh, where are the rusty tools and
you're like, hold on, I got this, they had that.

(26:48):
Or you open a cracker barrel right now. You know,
there are always two options like what should I do
with all this junk? Is it a cracker barrel? Or
saw a movie? Which one is is in fashion at
the moment, or if the things you be throwing out
are like old road signs and alligators with sunglasses and
hats on, you could open up early two thousands chilies.
There you go. I would I would love to hear

(27:09):
from anyone out there who who has some some hard
facts on the the business of repurposing junk as as
decoration in restaurants. I've noticed they don't do that as
much these days. If you've go into a Chili's nowadays,
the walls are very clean. I don't know how that happened.
I have not been in one recently. Like, that's my
other theories that we just simply don't go to restaurants

(27:30):
with a junk on the walls anymore, you know. Okay,
But let's go back to the ritual, the yearly ritual
of the sweeping suit, the susu Hurai. Why this yearly ritual, Well,
the author of this medieval scroll says, well, originally some
scholars assume this to be based on like people emulating
the extravagant wastefulness of the rich, but the author of

(27:52):
the scroll says that this tradition is now known instead
to be rooted in the avoidance of mischief and misfortune
from a class of demons called the Suku mogami. In
explaining this, the author relates a legend supposedly from an
ancient Chinese text called Miscellaneous Records of Yen and Young,
and writer notes that if this text exists, we don't

(28:13):
really know anything about it. So, according to this legend,
any common tool, container or instrument essentially gets granted a
soul on its one birthday, and after that it becomes
a type of sentient trickster demon that you don't want
in your house. It's interesting, It's almost it makes sense, right.

(28:35):
It sounds like after a hundred years, if you've had
an object that has been around for an entire century,
it's probably picked up a number of different associations. It
has its own personal history, it has perhaps, uh you know,
been shadowed by the death of a previous owner. It's
taken on a life of its own. I mean, we
see this to a certain extent with the consideration of

(29:00):
like buildings and whatnot. Right when when a when a
building or a location is old enough in uh, in
various countries, certain new protections kick in. Like it is
no longer treated like a like just any other building.
Now it is an historic building, but to a certain thing.
We kind of think this right when we when we
look at it an item, we're like, oh, I can't

(29:21):
throw that out that's a hundred years old has a soul? Now, well, yeah,
what kind of jerk would I be? Exactly? We we
do think this way. I mean, obviously we're not literally
literally advocating the idea that objects have souls, but they
gain something, and the something is in you. It's in
your brain, Like you can't stop thinking about all the
other hands that touched this thing and what it was
used for. I mean, there's a common thing about like

(29:43):
to get rid of the things that were owned by,
say an ancestor of yours might make you feel like
you're making your ancient ancestor more dead or more gone.
You know, you're erasing their legacy or something. Absolutely, and
of course we have we have so many different horror
stories and ghost stories. They revolve around this basic concept.
And speaking of I know, there has to be a

(30:05):
story here, oh yeah, yeah. So in this particular story
and the record of the Tool Specters, it starts with
a bunch of tools getting thrown out in the trash
during the susuhurai one year, the the yearly sweeping of
the soot, the yearly cleansing. And so this group of
old tools gather around after they're thrown out, and they
become really angry about how they were mistreated. They say, quote,

(30:27):
we have faithfully served the houses as furniture and utensils
for a long time. Instead of getting the reward that
is our due, we are abandoned in the alleys to
be kicked by oxen and horses. Insult has been added
to injury, and this is the greatest insult of all.
Whatever it takes, we should become specters and exact vengeance.
And I've got I've added an illustration here of meeting

(30:50):
of all the tools hanging out, but beside a tree.
We've got like a it's hard to tell what a
lot of those are. There's obviously a Buddhist rosary, and
there's something that looks like a whip. Yeah, somethink it
was kind of like a foot rest or a side table.
There's something looks like a plunger. I don't think that's
what it is anyway. So one of the discarded tools was,
as I just mentioned, a Buddhist Rosary, and it was

(31:12):
called each year en Novice and h the each year
in Novice counseled against vengeance, saying that well, our our
karma probably earned us the fate of being thrown out,
and we should instead turn the other cheek. But the
others do not like this, and the discard there was.
There's one discarded tool, which is a club, the discarded club,

(31:32):
which Nariko t Rider translates as rough John, and rough
John insults the eat your in novice and beats him
within an inch of his life. I guess he beats
him with himself. So the Rosary doesn't die. The Rosary
escapes with the help of his disciples. I guess he's
a Buddhist teacher Rosary and he's got disciples. But then

(31:54):
there's another discarded tool. This discarded tool is an old
scroll named Professor Classical Chinese literature. Um, that's I don't
know that, maybe could have a more creative name. But
I bet there's probably a pun in the original language there.
I bet so there's something lost in the translation. Well,
writer mentions that this thing is full of puns and

(32:15):
word play, that a lot of it just doesn't come
through in the English But so the professor Scroll addresses
everybody with a plan. He says, quote, the beginning of
creation is chaos, and there is no form for humans,
grasses or trees. But because of yin Yang energy and
the heavenly furnace, things are given temporary shapes. If we

(32:36):
chance upon the art of yin Yang and heavenly craft,
we inanimate beings will surely be given souls. Aren't such
stories as the old pebbles talking and Mr Goose turning
into a carriage? And Writer mentions that nobody knows what
that means testimony to the transformation of beings at the
time of yin yang change. So let us wait for

(32:59):
the Setsubun, which is the lunar New Year's eve, when
Yin and Yang change their places and shapes are formed
out of entities. At that time we must empty ourselves
and leave our bodies to the hands of a creation god.
Then we will surely become specters. So the eve of
the lunar New Year comes around, and the tools do

(33:21):
what the professor advised them. They empty themselves and the
creation God uses its power to change them into vengeful specters. Quote.
Some tools became men or women, older, young, others took
the shape of demons or goblins. Still others became beasts
such as foxes and wolves. These various shapes were indeed

(33:42):
fearful beyond description. And I've got another image here of
what they look like once they're transformed. And and this
is where we begin to see these spirits take on
the the often common kind of comical appearance that you
see in these various Yokai paintings. Yeah, you know, we
will see this weird it looks like an umbrella, that
sort of thing. Well, it's interesting the way you see

(34:03):
this mingling of sort of like this comical trickster thing
with this horrible, violent, malevolent spirit thing. They seem to
exist right alongside each other. Like it's not like a
demon is either just funny and playing jokes on you,
or it's like eating you and kidnapping your children and
boiling them alive. It's doing both. So after this transformation

(34:25):
of the spirits, the reign of terror really begins. So
they go in and out of the capital city taking
out their anger against humans of all kinds. They steal
animals and eat them, They kidnap humans and eat them.
They're invisible, so the people don't really have any way
of protecting themselves against them except for prayers, and so
the tool Specters have a fabulous time exacting their revenge.

(34:47):
They hold banquets and festivals around around their tricks and
and their their vengeance. They have dances, they have drinking
poetry readings, and eventually quote building a castle out of
flesh and creating a blood fountain. Damn. So things are
officially out of hand at this point. They are talking
about building things out of flesh and making blood fountains. Yes,

(35:12):
and that's all it says about that. No, no further
commentary about the flesh castle or the blood fountain. But
this all comes to a head when the tool Specters
attack a Prince regent's party as it's proceeding through the streets,
and the Prince Regent repels the tool Specters with the
help of a magical amulet, and this leads to a

(35:33):
long section. The story in terms of just scroll length,
is not nearly over by this point, because it gets
into all this involved stuff about the imperial powers invoking
the help of Buddhist religious leaders to summon spirits known
as the Divine Boys to banish the Sukumogami, and then
after the Sukumogami are defeated and humbled by the Divine Boys,

(35:55):
the tool specters convert to Buddhism, and after that the
scroll descends into this highly didactic parable about religious doctrine,
about like attaining Buddha hood and the virtues of specifically
the right kind of Buddhism, which is Shingon esoteric Buddhism.
Like the scroll is sectarian, it's working hard for the

(36:17):
Shingon sect with the Tools all repenting and joining up
and achieving Buddha hood through their devotion to the Shingon program.
And it kind of reminds me of like those Christian
apocalypse movies that have a thriller plot about the Antichrist
early on, but then the last twenty minutes is just
a sermon about full immersion baptism. Yes, yeah, I know
exactly the sort of thing look like going to haunted

(36:38):
tractional haunted house. And then after after you get out
of the house, you're you have to listen to a sermon.
Like the plot kind of stops and you realize what
this whole exercise was really about, yeah, or at least
what paid for it. But I think that the tool
specter's part is not incidental to the religious message because
it actually does make a theological point. I think basically
it's saying, hey, if even beings who are non sentient

(37:02):
tools can achieve enlightenment through the awesome power of the
shingle on esoteric Buddhism, think what a human could do.
That's right. Yeah, If this you know, umbrella or you know,
a discarded UH shovel, it can essentially gain a soul
and UH and achieve Buddha hood, then then certainly a

(37:23):
human can do that as well, like you already have
this tremendous advantage over a pair of head shears. Yeah.
And actually, in her book, writer goes on to talk
about like the traditions of UH. There's this isn't not
the only story like this. There's this whole tradition of
non human things attaining Buddha hood. This is fascinating because
especially when we're talking about Japanese traditions here. Uh. There

(37:47):
is a Japanese wrestling promotion professional wrestling promotion called DDT,
and they have one championship in the promotion. I think
it's there like their hardcore title UM and it started
off with just various people holding the belt, but then
various inanimate objects began to win the championship as well,

(38:09):
Like I think a ladder has won the championship. I
think the championship itself won itself at some point. I
can't remember the entire um you know, lineage there, but
but I wonder to what extent that plays in with
these traditions, the idea that an inanimate object can can
achieve something with its spirit, with its soul, then of

(38:29):
course it can also win a championship professional wrestling belt. Yeah,
despite the fact that this scroll descends into like making
theological points, there's clearly like that kind of cheekiness about it,
Like the the author of the story is having a
lot of fun and writer, as I mentioned earlier, points
out that there's a lot of there are a lot
of like puns and word play that don't come through

(38:51):
in the English version, but that this is I think
supposed to be entertaining and funny. Like it's a little
bit absurd the idea of like a club gaining a ole,
or like a you know, the Rosary having disciples and
all that, but that it actually does end up being
part of the theological point that's being made. So is
that that sweet spot that's mixing, Like, is it absurd

(39:12):
just for comedy or is it actually making a point.
It's kind of both, yeah, And it can be difficult
to to really judge outside of its language or outside
of its time and culture. Now, as for the idea itself,
writer points out on our scholarship that the legend of
the Suka Mogami does not come from this story. Rather,
this story was created as an entertaining vehicle to sell

(39:35):
the virtues of Shingon Buddhism to a wide audience by
capitalizing on the pre existing belief in the Sukamogami, which
is just this popular folk idea that tools must be
discarded before they become too old and gain a soul
and start getting up to no good. Uh. And so
in the record of the tool specters itself, it almost
seems a little bit backwards, right, because the tools somehow

(39:58):
already seemed to be sent to in at least by
the time like right after they get thrown out. Then
it's the throwing out that causes them to want revenge
on people and become monsters and build the flesh Palace
and the blood fountain, when originally the tradition is that
the throwing out is what's supposed to prevent this right.
By throwing them out is what's supposed to keep them
from becoming vengeful spirits that that mess with you. So

(40:21):
the mythology in this one particular scroll seems a little. Uh.
I'm not sure what the order of causation is here,
but I'm captivated by the idea of like wanting to
get rid of household items for the fear that they
become endowed with a soul and do harm to their owners. Well,
I mean it comes back to to some of the
Baitic basic Buddhist ideas concerning attachment right and having too many,

(40:45):
too many things or or you know, physical things or
non physical things in your life that you are shackle
to in one way or another. You know, and you
can imagine it coming to the point where you essentially
are in a household where the items no longer serve you,
but you serve them because they all have taken on
a life of their own. You know. I did not

(41:06):
think at all about the parallel to the idea of
attachment and Buddhist I don't know how that went over
my head. But yeah, yeah, absolutely, it's like part profound
insight on the nature of suffering and attachment and part
Brave Little Toaster. Know what's to deal with the Brave
Little Toaster? You don't know the Brave Little Toaster children's book.
It's a children's movie in which household items have uh

(41:27):
there there, they have humanlike characteristics, and they get abandoned
in an old house. And I think after journey across
the wilderness, it's like homeward bound, except instead of like
dogs and a cat, it's a toaster and a lamp
and a radio. Well, you know this makes this, of course,
reminds me of Maximum Overdrive Stephen King film. I wondered
to what extent Maximum Overdrive is a treatment of these

(41:49):
same ideas. Probably be reaching we get there, Yeah, probably
reach and probably reaching after the Maximum Overdrive content here.
All right, let's take a second break, and when we
come back we will talk a little bit about the
idea of anthropomorphizing objects. Thank alright, we're back. You know,
I joked about Maximum Overdrive, But as I've mentioned before,

(42:12):
Maximum Overdrive is a less ridiculous film. The more we
um we imbue our our daily objects in our vehicles, etcetera,
with with with some level of gadgetry, with internet connections
and human voices and in a sense, but the Internet
of things is kind of like a we were filling

(42:34):
our objects with more unruly spirits or opening them up
to malicious spirit um possession. Well that's an interesting idea
because I actually so I want to look at a
study that sort of puts together a framework for thinking
about when we anthropomorphize a non human objects. So, of course,
anthromorphization or anthropomorphism is when you attribute human characteristics, thoughts, feelings,

(43:00):
or tendencies to non human objects. So this could be
two animals, or it could be to robots or a computer,
or even just like a you know, a coffee mug.
You put a smiley face on a coffee mug, and
you're gonna be afraid to shatter it because you've given
it a face. You've given it some like the slight
sliver of human identity. Yeah, and tons of studies have

(43:21):
shown that we are we are so bad at not
doing this, Like we we really just give ourselves over
to anthropomorphism very easily. It takes almost no work at all.
Once people get a room, but they essentially think about
it as another person that lives in the house. It's
I mean, we are this. This is just an absolutely

(43:42):
insanely weak point of entry into our brains. This is
how the skynet, the anti sky Net resistance defenses get penetrated.
You just barely ask people to think of a machine
as human and they'll do it. And it's an interesting
question to think, like what the adaptive value that kind
of like broadly inclusive idea of humanity is because on

(44:04):
on the other hand, you often just it seems like
people are way too quick to dehumanize each other real
other humans, Right, you know, you don't like somebody for
some reason, and you start thinking of them is not
really human. And yet the you know, the room by
bumping into your feet is like, that's a person. Yeah,
we can be so selective about it when it comes
to other humans and categorizations of humans. But yeah, when

(44:27):
it comes to household items, we can just fall down
this well of of of placing way too much value
on all of our possessions. Yeah. Now, I wanted to
look at one study that U the just basically put
forward an interesting three part framework for thinking about the
conditions under which we anthropomorphize objects. So this was by Epley,

(44:49):
Weights and Capoccio in Psychological Review in two thousands seven
called on Seeing Human a three factor theory of anthropomorphism,
and basically I'll just do the short version. The authors
here put forward a framework that suggests people are more
likely to anthropomorphize under certain conditions, like you don't always
anthropomorphize everything, equally, certain things are more likely to get anthropomorphized,

(45:13):
and certain things make you more uh increase your tendency
to do so. So one of the things they put
forward is uh quote the accessibility and applicability of anthropocentric
knowledge elicited agent knowledge. And this just means like when
you can think of ways that this object actually is
like a person, So like you can identify characteristics that

(45:36):
are in some ways actually like what a person is like,
Like if there is an object, even if it's a
garbage can, that a peers to sort of have a head,
or it's sort of has two feet, you know, or
or the way that two screws or holding like a
coat rack on the wall, it may look like those
are eyes. The second is quote the motivation to explain

(45:58):
and understand the behavior your of agents, which or they
call this effectantce motivation. So essentially here this is just
like when a thing's behavior is confusing to you and
you're trying to understand why it's doing what it's doing.
Under that condition, people start thinking of the thing as
being like a human because they're they're trying to find
some avenue to explain behavior, and that's like the easiest

(46:21):
thing to go to. It's a poor carpenter who blames
his tools, and yet at the same time that's exactly
what we're talking about here. Well, yeah, it's like when
your computer is screwing up and you don't know what's
causing it, Like you can't actually troubleshoot it from a
mechanical point of view, so you just start attributing malice
to be like, what is this computer doing to me? Now, yeah, yeah,

(46:41):
it's it's acting up. It is it is, it is.
It takes on this malicious spirit. Yeah, and this is
actually a useful way of thinking. I mean, this is uh,
this is, in Daniel Dennett's terms, the intentional stance, Like
if you can't think of why something is happening from
the physical stance or the design stance, like you can't
actually get into the code and troubleshoot your computer. You

(47:02):
just start thinking about it as if it has intentions,
because that's the only level that you're capable of accessing, right,
And I basically think about printers this way all the time.
I just I'm just a step away from just assuming
that there is a malicious spirit that resides in every printer.
And then the third motivation that they pose it is
the desire for social contact and affiliation, which they called

(47:25):
the sociality motivation. And this is when people feel they
need social contact and relationships. When you're when you're feeling lonely,
when you're feeling a desire for stronger social bonds, you
are more likely they hypothesize to anthropomorphized non human objects.
And then there were some follow up studies, actually one
by Epley A, Kalis, Weights and Capoccio in two thousand

(47:49):
eight in Psychological Science. Uh that essentially it tested out
this question about loneliness and anthropomorphization. So they took gadgets
like an alarm clock and air purifier and so forth,
and ask people to rate how much they saw human
qualities in these objects. Like the questions that would suss
out do you think it has feelings, do you think

(48:10):
it has intentions? And they found essentially that the lonelier
you are, the more likely you are to anthropomorphize non
human objects. And uh so that is one of the
you know, that's one of those kind of like social
science studies, like I wonder if that could be replicated.
There is a replication of it from sixteen by Bart's,
Chilova and uh Finurci, and so this was also in

(48:34):
psychological science. It replicated the last study with a larger sample.
They also found that this is kind of interesting. So
people who are more psychologically lonely are more likely to
think that inanimate objects have intentions and thoughts and stuff.
But if you just ask people to think about a
close personal relationship with someone that they could depend on,

(48:55):
that caused people to anthropomorphize gadgets less if you just
spin to minute thinking about that relationship in that person
and then I just want to read another quote quote.
Last we showed the attachment anxiety, characterized by intense desire
for and preoccupation with closeness, fear of abandonment, and hyper
vigilance to social cues, was a stronger predictor of anthropomorphism

(49:20):
than loneliness. Was. This finding helps clarify the mechanisms underlying
anthropomorphism and supports the idea that anthropomorphism is a motivated
process reflecting the active search for potential sources of connection.
So we know that it's extremely common to to sort
of see a spirit in inanimate object. Even if you
rationally know that, you know there's no reason to think

(49:43):
that this old inanimate object from my house, this old
gardening tool or whatever, actually has a soul or a
spirit or anything magic about it or thoughts or intentions.
We we have this tendency to see it that way,
to think it has maybe bad energy that needs to
be gotten rid of or good energy that needs to
be protected. In pres irved. Clearly this energy is in us,

(50:03):
It's in our brains. But this is this, This is
a powerful feeling that lots of people share, and this
seems to be one thing that could be going on
when we project intentions on objects this way. It's not
just about the object itself. A lot of times, it's
about what we need socially, right, And so you could
you can you can have these in situations where if

(50:23):
an individual doesn't have enough like personal connections in their
life and it makes them more susceptible to the sort
of the siren song of the spirits and their possessions. Yeah,
and you can see it going both ways, right, Like
you could see it if people are more likely to
anthropomorphize objects, inanimate objects in a friendly way when they're

(50:43):
more lonely. You can see how like having fear about
loss of social connections, this attachment anxiety kind of state
of mind could make you more likely to want to
want to not let go of things to keep them,
because it would almost be like if you let go
of them, it's more like losing friends or like losing pets.
And it's certainly I'm not going to be the person
to say, uh, throw your dolls away if they're making

(51:06):
you happy, you know, I mean, if it's if it's
not helping you cope with, say, kind of a lonely
time in your life, or just helps you cope with loneliness.
In general, life can be lonely. It's all right to
have a few bobble heads around. Yeah. Well, I mean,
another thing that's clearly coming through in these studies is
that loneliness is not an objective state. It's a subjective state.
Loneliness does not go away if you just actually physically

(51:31):
have people around you. Loneliness depends on how you feel
about your relationships, you know. I want to actually go
back to Nariko t Writer for a minute in her
Seven Demon Stories book, because she she has a long
section in that book discussing all kinds of interesting ideas
about the Suka mogami. But one of the things in
there is the idea of, like, where does this come from?

(51:52):
Like what's the possible origin of the tool specter's belief?
And one of the things she points to is um
the possibility of uh this belief coming from rituals in
which an evil possessing demon is exercised from a person
and deposited into a physical thing. And she gives an

(52:13):
example of records about this type of purification ceremony that
quote was held twice a year in the Imperial Palace,
when the Emperor, Impress and Crown prints transferred their impurities
as well as the accumulated impurities of the nation into
five bamboo scales, swords, and a pot into which they

(52:33):
breathed these agomano things into which pollution, defilement, and crimes
are transferred for a purification ceremony. Were then to be
thrown away in the river or on river banks. The
discarded agomano, paper, dolls, jars, and whatever was used for
the purification ceremony were to be abandoned with people's breath
and impurities. These abandoned objects may have been thought to

(52:56):
contain evil spirits and to act vengefully. Again, tools and
utensils used in rituals seem to have had a deep
relationship with the formation of Sukumagami beliefs, So this is
tracing it back to like another sense of purging, like
that not only do you purge bad old objects to
get rid of them and get their you know, get

(53:18):
the spirit that you've imbued them without of your way.
That they were like literal rituals where you purge the
badness out of yourself, you put it in a physical,
inanimate object, and then you get rid of that object
to take it away. It's sort of a classic type
of like the sort of version of sympathetic magic, you know,
where you're like you're transferring something to something else by
touch or by ritual breathing or contact, and then you

(53:41):
purge it, you get it out of your surroundings and
it takes away the bad stuff with it. Oh yeah,
kind of like writing a nasty email and then deleting
it instead of sending it, that sort of thing. Kind
of like that. Though, I think I've I've said on
this show before that I have mixed feelings about the
virtues of venting actually, like expressing your frustrations to get

(54:02):
them out. I feel pretty convinced that sometimes enumerating all
your frustrations with a person does not actually make you
feel better in the long run, does not improve your
state of mind, but can actually tend to make you
just feel more frustrated, Like, you know, listing all the
things you're mad about. It might be good to like
have somebody sympathetic to talk to about your frustrations. But

(54:26):
but I I have seen lots of cases in my
life where venting that was supposed to help somebody feel
better makes them feel worse and just makes them make
themselves matter and matter. Yeah, I can just gonna get
you riled up and and then there's no real way
to shut it off. This this all does make like
we're talking about kind of like literal um ways of

(54:48):
venting and releasing here. I'm trying to think if there
are any modern like secular or even just Western traditions
that really entail this kind of like the the sympathetic
magic of taking uh the bad out of you, putting
into into something else, and than discarding it. Yeah. Well,

(55:09):
I mean I wonder if this is this is the
kind of thing that more secular people could benefit from
without having to literally believe in any sort of magic,
to just sort of enact a psychological drama that where
where you like take all the bad stuff out and
you put it in an object and you get rid
of that object. If even even though you're not believing

(55:32):
that this has literal magic power or their souls or
spirits or ghosts or anything like that, the doing the
physical ritual does something healthy and healing to your mind. Yeah. Yeah,
and into a certain extent, various like self help scenarios,
you you are dealing with a spirit, and the spirit
you're you're kind of trying to go exercises yourself in

(55:54):
the sense that you're trying to become a new person. Uh.
You know, we've talked about an the show before, like
how you know how ridiculous that may seem, because we
are always becoming a new person. We are essentially we're
a different person now than we were earlier this morning,
will be a different person this afternoon. But we're also
creatures of habit, and we tend to do what we've

(56:15):
done before, and we tend to think what we've thought before.
And without without some kind of rupturing of those habits cycles,
without something to to come in and force a change
of routine, we will just tend to do the things
we've done before. And sometimes those things are are things
that make us feel bad. Right, And of course, if
we're trying to change our routine, it's I've often seen

(56:38):
it pointed out that it's easier to change your routine
if you are, say on a trip, you know you're
going vacations. Suddenly you can, you know, for many number
of reasons, you can do things you don't do in
a typical week. But sometimes, like just having a different
physical environment allows you to break some of these habits
that you've kept before. And physical ritual could be like
that too, right, and certainly, changing your immediate physical uh circumstances,

(57:03):
you know, purging yourself with various items could give you
the advantage that you need in creating some new habits
in your life. You know what I started at the
beginning saying, I don't have a take because I've never
watched the Marie Condo stuff or whatever, But I think
maybe I'm coming around. I think through the course of
this episode, I've talked myself into the idea that maybe,

(57:25):
like changing your physical surroundings, purging yourself of old items
that that you don't actually need anymore or have in
a metaphorical way, become imbued with some kind of bad spirit,
that's the associations in your memory that could actually have
a really positive impact on your life. Maybe people should
try it out. This episode is not paid for by
the Marie Condo Show or anything like that, by the way, No, no,

(57:47):
not at all. But speaking of Netflix, they've got Marie Condo. Okay,
it's it's a hit. They have the Sabrina show where
she fights demons, and it's a hit. They need to
bridge these two. They need a show in which Marie
Eacondo physically battles demons. If he goes to people's house,
the houses to help them deal with their clutter, and
then she physically battles the spirits of these items with

(58:10):
a sword, gouges their eyes out, real real good. This
proposal is definitely sparking some joy in me. I'm I'm yeah,
I'm with you here. But in any case, yeah, I've
been brought around. I think whether it's a Western style
New Year's resolution, whether it's a ritual for lunar New Year,
or whether it's good old fashioned spring cleaning, I think
maybe maybe some good physical environment exorcism is actually a

(58:34):
healthy thing to consider. All right, we're gonna end it
right there, But if you want to check out more
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(58:55):
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That's right, talking about the importance of things in your life?
Where do those things come from, who invented them, who

(59:18):
improved upon the designs? And then how did they change
our lives? Why are we so resistant to throw them out?
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producers Alex
Williams and Try Harrison. If you would like to get
in touch with us directly with feedback on this episode
or any other, with a suggestion for a topic on
the show in the future, or just to say hi,
you can email us at blow the Mind at how

(59:39):
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(01:00:00):
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