Tsukumogami

In Japanese folklore, ''tsukumogami'' (付喪神 or つくも神, lit. "tool ''kami''") are tools that have acquired a kami or spirit. According to an annotated version of ''The Tales of Ise'' titled ''Ise Monogatari Shō'', there is a theory originally from the ''Onmyōki'' (陰陽記) that foxes and tanuki, among other beings, that have lived for at least a hundred years and changed forms are considered ''tsukumogami''. In modern times, the term can also be written 九十九神 (literally ninety-nine ''kami''), to emphasize the agedness.

According to Komatsu Kazuhiko, the idea of a ''tsukumogami'' or a ''yōkai'' of tools spread mostly in the Japanese Middle Ages and declined in more recent generations. Komatsu infers that despite the depictions in Bakumatsu period ukiyo-e art leading to a resurfacing of the idea, these were all produced in an era cut off from any actual belief in the idea of ''tsukumogami''.

Because the term has been applied to several different concepts in Japanese folklore, there remains some confusion as to what the term actually means. Today, the term is generally understood to be applied to virtually any object "that has reached its 100th birthday and thus become alive and self-aware", though this definition is not without controversy.

History and etymology

The word つくも髪, which is also pronounced , appeared in a '' waka'' poem in the 9th-century ''The Tales of Ise'', section 63. It is a compound of , of unknown meaning, and 髪 'hair'. In the poem, it referred to an old woman's white hair, so has been interpreted as meaning "old", often metaphorically represented as ninety-nine years.

The element 髪 'hair' is a homophone of 神 'spirit'; both may be pronounced in compound words. Thus the word has come to mean a 99-year spirit. The kanji representation for in this sense dates to a Tenpō period '' otogizōshi'', an ''emakimono'' called the ''Tsukumogami Emaki''. According to this ''emaki'', a tool, after the passage of 100 years, would develop a spirit (''kami''), and with this change would become a . This ''emaki'' has a caption stating that the word could also be written with the kanji , meaning 'ninety-nine' (years).

Outside of these uses, the word is not attested in the surviving literature of the time, and so the historical usage of the term itself has not been handed down in detail. The concept, however, does appear elsewhere. In collections such as the late Heian period ''Konjaku Monogatarishū'', there are tales of objects having spirits, and in the ''emakimono'' ''Bakemono Zōshi'', there are tales of a ''chōshi'' (a saké serving-pot), a scarecrow, and other inanimate objects turning into monsters, but the word itself does not appear.

The ''Tsukumogami Emaki'' describes how an object would become occupied by a spirit after one hundred years, By doing this, they prevented objects from becoming ''tsukumogami'', but according to the captions of this ''emaki'', it's written that ones that are "a year from one hundred," in other words, objects that are "''tsukumo''" (ninety-nine) years old would become angered and become a ''yōkai'' by some means other than the mere passage of time, and then cause a ruckus.

In the first place, the idea of becoming a ''yōkai'' at one-hundred or ninety-nine years old does not need to be taken literally. Those numbers can represent the idea that humans, plants, animals, or even tools would acquire a spiritual nature once they become significantly old, and thereby gain the power to change themselves. Writing ''tsukumo'' as 九十九 ("ninety-nine") is not simply referring to a number, since the word was used since old times to loosely mean "many".『熊野古道をあるく』 Jtbパブリッシング 2015�
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The ''yōkai'' that are depicted are not ones that gained the power to change themselves as a result of being used for a long time, but rather ones that were thrown away right before it, becoming a ''yōkai'' through some different means.

Paintings

In the ''Tsukumogami Emaki'', which depicted tsukumogami, it is written at the very beginning, "It's told in the Onmyō Zakki. A tool, after one hundred years pass, would change and acquire a spirit, and deceive people's hearts, and it's said these are referred to as tsukumogami," thus referring to changes or mutations of tools as "tsukumogami" (however, no book called the Onmyō Zakki has actually been confirmed to exist). In the emaki, it's written that they can take on "the appearance of people male and female, old and young" (appearance of humans), "the likeness of chimi akki" (appearance of oni), and "the shape of korō yakan" (the appearance of animals), among others. Its form after its change/mutation is referred to with words such as "youbutsu" ().

Even in emakimono that came before the ''Tsukumogami Emaki'', paintings of yōkai based on tools can be confirmed, and in the ''Tsuchigumo Zōshi'', there were depictions of gotoku (trivets) with heads, stamp mills with the body of a snake and two human arms attached to it, and a tsunodarai (four-handled basin) with a face and growing teeth, among others. Also, a face that appears to be what the tsunodarai is based on appears in the ''Yūzū Nenbutsu Engi Emaki'' ( 融通念仏縁起絵巻) and the ''Fudō Rieki Engi Emaki'' () where a yakugami with almost the same appearance appears. However, all of these were not merely tools, but ones that are a hybrid with a tool or oni. This characteristic can also be seen in the ''Tsukumogami Emaki'' and the ''Hyakki Yagyō Emaki''.

The ''Hyakki Yagyō Emaki'' ( 百鬼夜行絵巻) from the Muromachi period also depicts many of what appear to be yōkai of tools. In the present day, these tools yōkai are thought to be depictions of tsukumogami, and it has been inferred that the parade depicted in the ''Hyakki Yagyō Emaki'' is likely the "youbutsu" (aged objects) of the ''Tsukumogami Emaki'' in a festival parade.

Works about tools

In works about tools having a human personality, tools such as the "chōdo uta-awase" that would perform uta-awase can be found before the Muromachi period, and it is thought that these are close in concept to being the idea of "things that tools turn into" as depicted in the ''Tsukumogami Emaki''.

Understood by many Western scholars, tsukumogami was a concept popular in Japanese folklore as far back as the tenth century, used in the spread of Shingon Buddhism.

In Japanese folklore

According to Elison and Smith (1987), Tsukumogami was the name of an animated tea caddy that Matsunaga Hisahide used to bargain for peace with Oda Nobunaga.

Like many concepts in Japanese folklore, there are several layers of definition used when discussing Tsukumogami. For example, by the tenth century, the Tsukumogami myths were used in helping to spread the ''"doctrines of Shingon Esoteric Buddhism to a variety of audiences, ranging from the educated to the relatively unsophisticated, by capitalizing upon pre-existing spiritual beliefs in Tsukumogami."'' These ''"pre-existing spiritual beliefs"'' were, as Reider explains:

''Tsukumogami'' are animate household objects. An ''otogizōshi'' ("companion tale") titled ''Tsukumogami ki'' ("Record of tool kami"; Muromachi period) explains that after a service life of nearly one hundred years, ''utsuwamono'' or ''kibutsu'' (containers, tools, and instruments) receive souls. While many references are made to this work as a major source for the definition of ''tsukumogami'', insufficient attention has been paid to the actual text of ''Tsukumogami ki''.

By the twentieth century the Tsukumogami had entered into Japanese popular culture to such an extent that the Buddhist teachings had been ''"completely lost to most outsiders,"'' leaving critics to comment that, by and large, the Tsukumogami were harmless and at most tended to play occasional pranks, they did have the capacity for anger and would band together to take revenge upon those who were wasteful or threw them away thoughtlessly – compare mottainai. To prevent this, to this day some jinja ceremonies are performed to console broken and unusable items.

List of tsukumogami

* Abumi-guchi – A furry creature formed from the stirrup of a mounted soldier who died in battle
* Bakezōri – A possessed zōri (traditional straw sandals)
* Biwa-bokuboku – An animated biwa
* Boroboroton – A possessed futon
* Byōbunozoki - A possessed folding screen
* Chōchin'obake – An animated lantern, also known as ''burabura''
* Furu-utsubo - An archer's quiver
* Ichiren-bozu – Animated prayer beads
* Ittan-momen – A roll of cotton
* Jatai – Possessed cloths draped from folding screens
* Kameosa – A possessed sake jar
* Kasa-obake – An animated paper umbrella. Also known as ''karakasa-obake''.Although modern sources might guess that the kasa-obake is a tsukumogami, the initial sources that introduced it made no such reference (see page for kasa-obake). Therefore, its true nature is unknown.
* Kosode-no-te – A possessed kimono robe
* Koto-furunushi – An animated koto
* Kurayarō – An animated saddle
* Kutsutsura - Kutsutsura are tsukumogami of shoes. They can take either a human form or an animal form. In human form, they look like a court noble wearing a shoe as a hat. In animal form, they appear as a round, hairy beast with a fur boot for a snout.
* Kyōrinrin – Possessed scrolls or papers
* Menreiki – A spiritual creature formed out of 66 gigaku masks
* Minowaraji- An animated mino straw coat
* Morinji-no-kama – A possessed teakettle. Another variation is zenfushō
* Shamichoro – An animated shamisen
* Shirōneri – Possessed mosquito nettings or dust clothes
* Shōgorō – An animated gong
* Ungaikyō – A possessed mirror
* Yamaoroshi – A possessed vegetable grater
* Zenfushō - A possessed teakettle
* Zorigami – A possessed clock

See also

*Hyakkai Zukan
*List of legendary creatures from Japan

Notes

Komatsu Kazuhiko, in the book 「器物の妖怪 - 付喪神をめぐって」（『憑霊信仰論』 講談社〈 講談社学術文庫〉、1994年、326-342頁。） used the word "Tsukugami" widely to include any yōkai, including animals, from the Edo period and before that originally came from tools.

References

Citations

Sources

*『 室町時代物語大成』第9巻（たま-てん） 角川書店
* 平出鏗二郎 編校訂『室町時代小説集』 1908年 精華書院
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Further reading

*Kabat, Adam. ''"Mono"" no obake: Kinsei no tsukumogami sekai''. IS 84 (2000): 10–14.
*Kakehi, Mariko. ''Tsukumogami emaki no shohon ni tsuite''. Hakubutsukan dayori 15 (1989): 5–7.
*Keene, Donald. ''Seeds in the Heart: Japanese Literature from Earliest Times to the Late Sixteenth Century''. New York: Henry Holt & Co. (1993)
*Kyoto Daigaku Fuzoku Toshokan. ''Tsukumogami'' http://edb.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/exhibit/tsuroll/indexA.html and http://edb.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/exhibit/tsuroll/indexB.html
*Lillehoj, Elizabeth. ''Transfiguration : Man-made Objects as Demons in Japanese Scrolls''. Asian Folklore Studies, Volume 54 (1995): 7–34.
*National Geographic. ''National Geographic Essential Visual History of World Mythology''. National Geographic Society (U.S.) (2008)
*Shibata, Hōsei. ''Tsukumogami kaidai''. In Kyoto Daigaku-zō Muromachi monogatari, ed. Kyoto Daigaku Kokugogaku Kokubungaku Kenkyūshitsu, vol. 10, 392–400. Kyoto: Rinsen Shoten. (2001)
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