Zashiki-warashi, literally meaning “parlor child” or “little boy of the house”, is a household spirit that originates in northeastern Japan (Foster). They represent a type of tsukimono (spirits that possess) because they have “possessed” the houses in which they reside. These spirits usually take the form of a young boy (although instances of female zashiki-warashi are not unusual) between three and thirteen years old, typically having a red face and hair varying from long and unkempt hair to short bobs (Foster, Blacker).
In some representations of zashiki-warashi, there are also different types and rankings among the spirits. One of the more desirable types is the chōpirako, a white, beautiful spirit that brings greater wealth to households than the average spirit. These blessings come at a price as the chōpirako also requires more attention to remain happy. They are believed to be the spirits of deceased children from wealthy families who enjoyed such luxury during their lifetime (Meyer). There is also a variant of zashiki-warashi called the notabariko, “mortar-pounding child,” which lives on the dirt floor of houses. It is usually unhappy and causes a feeling of unease within the household. Although it has no positive or negative influence on the family’s wealth, the family will still experience misfortune if the spirit leaves (Murakami & Takahashi).
The zashiki-warashi is associated with northern Japan, in particular with Iwate Prefecture in the Tohoku region. Similar house spirits have been observed in other parts of Japan, such as ainukaisei in Hokkaido and the akaganta in Okinawa (Foster). Zashiki-warashi are also referred to by other names such as zashiki bokko, kurawarashi, kurabokko, and utshitukiko (Lin).
In the story of “Hinpuku-ron,” which appears in Ugetsu Monogatari, a money spirit visits the home of a warrior in what is currently Aomori prefecture. The spirit has the appearance of an old man, referring to himself as “Ōgon no Seirei” (golden spirit) and tells the warrior that he is glad that someone treats money with such importance. This money spirit is believed to be an older prototype of the zashiki-warashi. While the association with money has remained constant, these spirits of wealth take on the form of children (Abe).
The development of zashiki-warashi may be connected to mabiki, or infanticide, a practice carried out in rural Japan up to around the 18th century for the purpose of population control. Infants were not regarded as complete humans (Foster). The phenomenon of the zashiki-warashi may have come into being out of the religious ambiguity of the spirits of children and what happens when they pass. In medieval Japan, children up to the age of 7 were not considered fully present in the world of humans. Rather, it was believed that children were physically close to the world of gods and demons. They also did not have the attachments that bound adults to society such as social status or land holdings, which allowed for more freedom of movement. Not formally belonging to the world or society, children were relegated to the outskirts of both the Buddhist and the social realms. Children having such capabilities of living in the boundaries and moving between borders led to threshold deities in Japanese religion taking on the form of children. Such instances of protective threshold deities include the zashiki-warashi as well as the kamadogami (hearth god) and dōsojin (god of crossroads) (Lin). This marginal identity also explains the association of zashiki-warashi with the household.
Due to infants and children being boundary beings, their funerals followed different procedures. The infant’s body was allowed to be kept in the house, effectively bonding it to the area, and was regarded as a protective spirit. Households may have interpreted the decrease in financial burden of having one less person to support as the benevolence of the protective spirit (Foster). As these spirits usually reside in storage rooms, it is a point of interest whether this idea developed because families wanted to keep the infant close, yet at arm's length. This could explain why older interpretations of zashiki-warashi usually reside in the storage space in the back of the home, somewhere that is still part of the residence but seldom visited compared to other parts of the house. In An Introduction to Yokai Culture, yokai are understood to be the physical manifestation of fear experienced by humans (70). Reimagining deceased infants and children as these spirits could be a result of the fears of haunting by these spirits due to the early end of their lives and the living deifying them to nullify harmful intent that the spirits may have been harboring, similar to Sugawara no Michizane received posthumous rankings to calm his restless spirit.
The zashiki-warashi also bare resemblance to the gohō-dōji (gohō boys) who served under priests to assist in protecting Buddhist laws. The gohō boys not only helped with religious duties but also with household chores, similar to how some accounts of zashiki-warashi describe the spirits’ as caretakers, especially of the elderly. Similar to how the presence and type of zashiki-warashi were used as measures of wealth and status for families, the presence and strength of a priest’s gohō boy served as a source of proof of a priest’s holiness (Lin).
Earlier versions of zashiki-warashi transitioned from a spirit that could not be seen to one that could only be seen by children. In addition to bringing wealth to the household, they are also mischievous. The extent of the mischief ranges from simple curiosity around guests to utterly frightening anyone who would stay over at the homes. The common acts involve flipping pillows, pulling bedsheets, and making noise around the house (Foster). Actions such as flipping pillows have also led to some interpretation of the zashiki-warashi as a variant of the makura-gaeshi (pillow shifter), an idea supported by children and childlike spirits as threshold beings and the pillow itself being a threshold between the physical and spiritual worlds as one dreams (Meyer; Foster). A primary record of the zashiki-warashi and their interactions with humans is Yanagita Kunio's Tonō Monogatari (Foster).
In his collection Tonō Monogatari, Yanagita details brief descriptions of zashiki-warashi behavior (sometimes alternately referring to them as okura-bokko). A commonality among these stories is the misfortune that befalls families when the spirits leave their households. Not only is there a reversal of the wealth the household received from the spirit’s presence but additional grievances such as food poisoning, other sicknesses, and even death that befall the families upon the spirit’s leaving. Another trope is the visibility of the zashiki-warashi. The spirits typically remain hidden, the only visual hints of their presence being footprints left in scattered rice chaff. If the spirit becomes visible to everyone, it is a sign that it will soon leave (Morse). This may be due to the fact that once the spirit is visible to everyone, it is no different from a regular child who would place some burden on a family's finances, explaining the beginning of the dwindling of the household's wealth. A point of interest is that in excerpts where the spirit was encountered by children, there were no negative consequences that befell the family beyond the fright and surprise on the behalf of the children. This is likely due to the spirits empathizing with children, as seen in their popular culture adaptations, and possibly having been children themselves in their previous lives. Other signs of a spirit that was ready to leave involved the color red, such as the spirit carrying a red object, wearing red clothing, or even its face becoming red (Morse).
In addition to associations with infanticide, representations of zashiki-warashi in popular culture picture the spirits with a desire to be born. In Osamu Tezuka’s manga “Inai Inai Baa” (1976), a man visits a hotel to study for exams, but his attempts are disturbed by the zashiki-warashi living in his room who continuously invites, the man to play (Spetter). The man decided to give up studying to play with the spirit, and to his surprise does very well on his exams, an interesting twist on the good fortune of these spirits. In exchange for the good exam grades, the spirit has him promise that when he gets married to let it enter the body of his unborn child so that is can be born. To the annoyance of his wife, he takes the tatami mat that the spirit resides in back to their home and the spirit is able to enter the wife’s body to be born. This desire to be born may indicate the relation of zashiki-warashi with abortion. Other popular culture representations also incorporate zashiki-warashi as wanting to be a part of a family.
These spirits can be seen adopted into families in "Natsushojo" and Itoshi no Zashikiwarashi (Spetter). In the film “Natsushojo” (1995) by Hayasaka Gyo, in the immediate aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima a young couple faces hardship as the man watches a former classmate drown, unable to save her, and the wife miscarriages. Years later, a young girl appears at their doorstep seeking shelter. Although they both interpret the little girl to be a zashiki-warashi, the husband sees the child as a reincarnation of his deceased classmate while the wife sees the child as a manifestation of the child the couple would have had, had she not experienced a miscarriage. This ambiguity as to what the child represents supports the idea of yokai as physical representations of human emotion, and while they manifest the fear and anxiety that people have as a collective, there can also be individual significance and representation of positive feelings such as hope from new beginnings. The novel Itoshi no Zashikiwarashi (Our Dear Zashikiwarashi, 2008), which was also adapted into a film of the same name, has a similar narrative of hardship followed by renewal. The main characters are a family going through hardships following moving to the Japanese countryside due to the father’s job transfer. A female zashiki-warashi comes to live in the household, bringing fortune to the family, even as it gradually reveals itself to members of the family. Similar to the husband in “Natsushojo,” the grandmother sees the spirit as a reincarnation of her brother, who died as a child. Even though the father is unable to see the spirit, he fully accepts it into the family as noted by the spirit being counted as an extra child (an extra child being counted or an extra seat placed at the table often served as an indication of a zashiki-warashi’s presence in a household). Modern adaptations of these spirits also draw attention to contemporary issues.
Tales of zashiki-warashi have been used in association with hikikomori in Japan as seen in the novel, Yuta and His Strange Friends (2006) (Spetter). A boy named Yuta is bullied and befriends five zashiki-warashi who teach him self-defense so that he can fight back his bullies. Oddly enough, the reason these spirits befriend Yuta is because his friend always wears a baby doll on her back, a sign to the spirits that she likes children and another instance of the spirit’s fixation on babies. When he confronts the bullies, the fighting turns into dancing, which persuades the bullies to be less violent as they now enjoy dancing more than the bullying they did. Yuta realizes that rather than withdrawing, he can become a positive contributor to society, which may be reference to the hikikomori phenomenon in Japan. This story indirectly portrays the hikikomori as a modern equivalent of the zashiki-warashi. As the zashiki-warashi stay out of sight, hikikomori are similarly withdrawn from the people around them. Such as in Yuta's case, when these spirits become more open to being around people, thy can have a more positive influence compared to staying hidden. In a similar vein, the author may be communicating that although hikikomori choose to stay secluded, if they were to "become visible" and integrate themselves into society, they could achieve similar successes (Spetter).
In popular culture adaptations of zashiki-warashi, there is a clear inversion of the trope of visibility. Whereas older tales relegated the visibility of these spirits to bad omens of coming misfortune, modern tales associate visibility with positive change that benefits both spirits and humans. These modern adaptations also humanize the spirits. In the older tales, there are references to the mischief of the spirits but little detail about how they feel about their relationship with humans while being pictured by humans as distant, mysterious beings. In these popular culture pieces, we see their openness to helping people, rather than the seeming fickleness of traditional spirits that would change households on a whim. In these tales, the mystery of the spirits fade and they are allowed to be and treated as children, rather than spirits to keep at a distance. These differences could represent a cultural shift in the perception of children. Although in early Japan, the thoughts and feelings of children may not have been regarded, contemporary society recognizes the significance of children in daily life and the benefits of fully accepting them into the family.
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