Suddenly from my mother's bedroom,
Bow-legged and lame
Runs out the washstand And shakes his head.
Roots Chukovsky. "Moidodyr"
As a child, we took these lines quite seriously and believed that the old washbasin may well have magical power, sufficient to punish a slob. We talked with our favorite toys, worried about the bunny that the hostess left.
With age, this clear, unclouded world, where toys and household things are spiritualized, can think, feel, communicate with each other and with us, closes up for us, turns into a fairy tale, that is, into fiction. But to the Japanese, the existence of a walking and talking washbasin will not seem like something strange and implausible. They will say it is tsukumogami.
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Statistics are sometimes a very funny thing. For example, she says that 70% of Japanese people consider themselves Buddhists. And at the same time, 94% of the inhabitants of the Land of the Rising Sun are adherents of the more ancient and primordial Shinto national cult.
A Japanese family can offer prayers on a holiday in a Buddhist temple, and after returning home, make a sacrifice to the Shinto deities - the keepers of the hearth.
By the way, in Russia, people who consider themselves Orthodox put candles in front of the icons in the red corner, and on the first day of each month, somewhere in a cubbyhole, they certainly put a saucer of porridge for the brownie.
Shinto philosophy is based on animism, that is, the deification of natural forces and phenomena, reverence for the spirits of nature. And these ideas are manifested at times in the most bizarre way. The Japanese believe that many things, especially old ones that are at least a hundred years old, have their own spiritual essence - kami.
It lies in a material object and can manifest itself under certain conditions. In other words, the old thing acquires its own individuality and soul, that is, it comes to life. Such spiritualized objects are called tsukumogami.
It can be anything: a sword, a kimono, an umbrella, a sandal … The old teapot, which has served the family for a hundred years, seems to have acquired a personality, accumulated life experience, thanks to which it is already able to show its character and mood.
And sometimes it may take less time to transform into tsukumogami, for example, when the item has been lost and seeks to return to the owner.
Tsukumogami faces and names
Each tsukumogami has its own face. It depends on the appearance of the object, the attitude of the owner to it, the emotional atmosphere in the house.
For example, if you tore a shoe and threw it into the trash out of anger, be prepared for the fact that he will acquire sharp teeth and intend to bite you on one not very beautiful night.
And the old teapot, in which delicious, aromatic tea was brewed, will retain its good-natured character in its new incarnation. Therefore, tsukumogami cannot be divided into good and evil: one and the same object can harm and help, depending on the situation.
But basically, the transformed things are completely harmless, although sometimes they like to make fun of the owners or even scare them, as the well-known best ghost in the world with a motor did.
In rare cases, when the owner treated him with special cynicism and cruelty, tsukumogami is able to harbor resentment and, on occasion, take revenge.
They say that in the old days there were some among them that ate livestock and even people. And it was useless to fight them in the usual ways.
I had to call an exorcist monk to calm the raging demon. But in our time, such monsters are no longer found.
Tsukumogami are given different names depending on the original item. For example, an old straw sandal that runs funny around the house is called bake-zori, a revived temple gong is called a waniguchi, and a ragged paper partition with a nasty character is called a mokumokuren. Some tsukumogami acquire magical properties. For example, a kameosa is a bottle that, no matter how much you pour out of it, will always be full. Or ungaikyo is a mirror that reflects the true essence of people and things (not everyone can endure the neighborhood with this object).
And the most popular character in Japanese folklore is the caracasa obake, an umbrella that comes to life. Instead of a handle, he has grown a leg, and an eye has appeared in the middle of the dome, and now he can jump, staring at the sides.
Terrible ittan-momen
There is a whole cycle of horror stories about tsukumogami - like those that our kids tell on a dark night in summer camps. Specialists in the study of folklore believe that this kind of urban legend appeared in ancient times, and for purely educational purposes.
Adults worked late, there were many children in the families, and there was often no one to look after them.
So the parents came up with all the new horror films about different-sized babays so that the kids would not play on the street and rush home at nightfall.
A striking example of such horror stories are stories about ittan-momen. It is a piece of white cloth that flies through the air as it rotates.
The fabric is most often cotton, 30 centimeters wide and up to 30 meters long. There are many options for how she turned into a tsukumogami. But the result is the same: ittan-momen flies at night and strangles people.
First, she, like a python, wraps around the victim's neck, then rises up, taking the prey with it. It is said that one man was lucky enough to survive after meeting the terrible tsukumogami. The man was returning home late at night. Ittan-momen attacked and strangled him. The brave man was not at a loss, but pulled out a knife and slashed it along this tape. Ittan-momen immediately disappeared, as if disappearing into thin air. But there were bloody wounds on the man's neck.
Candidates for the Red Book
It is difficult to say how modern Japanese feel about tsukumogami. It can be assumed that the younger generation perceives them as cartoon characters rather than as mystical creatures.
And in general, these amusing monsters are becoming less and less, so it's time to put them in the Red Book. But this does not make this cultural phenomenon less interesting.
Interestingly, among the characters of horror stories, there are practically no gadgets like a smartphone and a laptop. Perhaps the fact is that the use of electronics is still the lot of young people who are skeptical about the folklore heritage of the past.
However, among the older generation, the belief in tsukumogami is quite tenacious. At the request of old people, Buddhist monks still perform jinja rituals on broken and discarded objects so that they, "awakening", do not harbor evil against people.
In Russia, tsukumogami does not seem to be observed. And yet, as the saying goes, God protects those who are saved. And if you decide to free your pantry from old junk, take a closer look at those items that you are going to send to the landfill. What if there will be a candidate for tsukumogami among them, who will not fail to acquire a bad temper and take revenge on you for a bad attitude towards his age and merits?
Nikolay VALENTINOV