Additional historical art image reproductions. Boys are often stereotyped as physically unattractive nerds and girls as petite and beautiful. Many Americans remain unaware of the diversity of ethnicities and races the term Asian American comprises, with Asian American adolescents proving to be more invisible than adults.
As a result, Asian American adolescents are continually searching for their identity and own place in American society. For these kids, being or considered to be American becomes a challenge in itself as they assert their Asian and American identities; claim their own ethnic identity, be they immigrant or American-born; and negotiate their ethnic communities.
The contributors to Growing Up Asian American in Young Adult Fiction focus on moving beyond stereotypes to examine how Asian American children and adolescents define their unique identities. Individual chapters, crossing cultural, linguistic, and racial boundaries, negotiate the complex terrain of Asian American children's and teenagers" identities.
Chapters cover such topics as internalized racism and self-loathing; hyper-sexualization of Asian American females in graphic novels; interracial friendships; transnational adoptions and birth searches; food as a means of assimilation and resistance; commodity racism and the tourist gaze; the hostile and alienating environment generated by the War on Terror; and many other topics.
Drawing on a dynamic set of "graphic texts of girlhood," Elizabeth Marshall identifies the locations, cultural practices, and representational strategies through which schoolgirls experience real and metaphorical violence. How is the schoolgirl made legible through violence in graphic texts of girlhood? What knowledge about girlhood and violence are under erasure within mainstream images and scripts about the schoolgirl?
Graphic Girlhoods focuses on these questions to make visible and ultimately question how sexism, racism and other forms of structural violence inform education and girlhood.
Trinian's cartoons to graphic memoirs about schooling by adult women, such as Ruby Bridges's Through My Eyes and Lynda Barry's One Hundred Demons texts for and about the schoolgirl stake a claim in ongoing debates about gender and education.
This volume examines the concerns of Asian American literature from to the present. This period was not only marked by civil unrest, terror and militarization, economic depression, and environmental abuse, but also unprecedented growth and visibility of Asian American literature.
This volume is divided into four sections that plots the trajectories of, and tensions between, social challenges and literary advances. Part One tracks how Asian American literary productions of this period reckon with the effects of structures and networks of violence. Part Two tracks modes of intimacy — desires, loves, close friendships, romances, sexual relations, erotic contacts — that emerge in the face of neoimperialism, neoliberalism, and necropolitics.
Part Three traces the proliferation of genres in Asian American writing of the past quarter century in new and in well-worn terrains. Part Four surveys literary projects that speculate on future states of Asian America in domestic and global contexts.
The nine essays in this volume, ranging chronologically from the tenth century to the present, bring to light both continuity and change in death practices over time. They also explore the interrelated issues of how Buddhist death rites have addressed individual concerns about the afterlife while also filling social and institutional needs and how Buddhist death-related practices have assimilated and refigured elements from other traditions, bringing together disparate, even conflicting, ideas about the dead, their postmortem fate, and what constitutes normative Buddhist practice.
Picking up from his pioneering book Your Brain on Latino Comics, he has gathered an insightful group of authors in Multicultural Comics that deftly engage, the intersectionality of race and identity, image and idea, theory and methods, and comics and politics. The impressive range of critical essays covers steep theoretical and cultural ground yet sure-footedly demonstrates that the grand fantasyscapes illustrated across various comic book configurations are a site of real and imagined racial differentiation intensely dialoguing with the self, the nation, and the world.
Without a doubt Chris Ware is one of the preeminent creators of comics today. He is a brilliant figure in a generation of extraordinarily talented people. They accumulate hoards. Kotengu collect and trade trinkets and valuable magical items. When angered they throw tantrums and go on destructive rampages, taking out their anger on anything near them.
I : Kotengu have little respect for humans. They feast on human flesh, and commit rape, torture, and murder for fun. Some of their favorite games are abducting people to drop them from great heights deep into the woods, or tying children to the tops of trees so all can hear their screams but none can reach them.
Kotengu kidnap people and force them eat feces until they go mad. They especially revel in sacrilege. They torment monks and nuns, rob temples, and try to seduce clergy. Kotengu's greatest weakness is overconfidence. There are countless folk stories about kotengu being duped into trading powerful magical items or giving up valuable information in exchange for worthless trinkets. Foolish kotengu overestimate their own intelligence when trying to trick humans, and end up being tricked themselves.
They hold a singular place in Japanese folklore—worshiped as gods, reviled as demons, and revered as reincarnations of great heroes and wise men. Tengu are noble warriors, honorless thieves, wise sages, wicked villains, prophets, protectors of nature, and harbingers of war. Tengu are feared and honored for their vast knowledge and mystical secrets. They know magical spells, and keep the secrets of heaven and earth.
Fierce martial artists, tengu are skilled in multiple forms of combat. According to Buddhist lore, tengu are born when a person dies who is not wicked enough to go to hell, but is too angry, vain, proud, or heretical to go to heaven. The tengu is a personification of those excessive vices, magnified and empowered in a new, demonic form. Tengu are divided into two castes: daitengu and kotengu. Of these, the daitengu are more powerful and wiser—and more likely to be known by name and revered by humans.
The kotengu are vicious, savage, and cruel. During the Edo period, scarier tengu stories were gradually supplanted by amusing folk tales, dampening the vicious images of earlier lore.
By the 19th century, the warlike nature and martial demeanor of the tengu came to be seen as honorable traits unique to these powerful bird-like spirits. Their knowledge and skills were popularized in the arts like ukiyoe prints and noh and kabuki theater.
From then on, tengu have remained one of the most well-known and beloved subjects of Japanese folklore. They appear in a more human-like form; usually that of a man dressed in the robes of an ascetic monk, with a red face, an incredibly long and phallic nose the longer the nose, the more powerful the tengu. Large, feathered wings sprout from their backs. Only rarely do they appear in the more primitive avian form of the lesser tengu.
B : Daitengu live solitary lives on remote mountaintops, far removed from humanity. Their lives are spent in thoughtful meditation, intent on perfecting themselves. Daitengu possess greater pride, wisdom, and power than their kotengu cousins, although they can also be just as savage and unpredictable. This savagery combined with intelligence makes daitengu more dangerous.
In fact, natural disasters and other great catastrophes are sometimes attributed to the wrath of a powerful daitengu. However, daitengu also possess more self-restraint; there are stories of daitengu giving aid to worthy humans. I : While kotengu terrorize people whenever they could, over the centuries daitengu were viewed less as the enemy of mankind and more as a race of god-like sages living deep in the mountains. The mountain mystics grew close to the tengu, seeking their wisdom and worshiping them as divine beings.
It is perhaps through this mystic religion that humankind was eventually able to earn the respect of the tengu. Occasionally, tengu would teach secrets and impart magical knowledge to the worthiest of these men. Size, appearance, and mannerisms vary from region to region and account to account. Some giants are only slightly larger than a human while others are as big as a mountain.
Some are saviors of men, while others are man-eaters. These giants delight in terrorizing humans— sometimes hunting them to eat, sometimes pillaging and destroying villages out of rage, and other times terrifying lone travelers just for the fun of it.
They have been known to perform good deeds such as turning stuck waterwheels, moving heavy objects, or doing other things that require incredible amounts of strength. Though helpful, they are not always friendly. The two are functionally indistinguishable. They are only evidenced by their footprints or discarded trash.
It is generally wise to leave them be. It could be assumed that old Japan did not have a very high opinion of the Buddhist clergy In ancient Japan, these words were used as endearing nicknames, humorous euphemisms, or colloquialisms to refer to strangers. Just as the English "sir" and "madam" actually refer to nobility but are used as polite terms of address in daily life, these Japanese words for the clergy have broader meanings outside of their religious context.
Their palanquins are surrounded by a splendid precession fit for a corrupt abbot or a rich lord. The fantastic procession is enough to make most travelers stop and stare, speculating about what nobleman or lady might be riding inside. They roam the roads and highways outside of the cities, assaulting lone travelers unfortunate enough to get in their way. Like many giants, they are able to increase and decrease their size at will.
They can grow taller than the highest trees and trample forests to crush any who might be hiding within. With their long legs they are faster than any human. Running away is impossible.
L : A legend from Wakayama tells how a man, traveling along a wooded road, came across a splendid procession unlike any he had ever seen.
Entranced, he climbed a tree to get a better look. As the procession approached, it stopped just as it reached his tree. There was a frighteningly large palanquin, and out from it stepped a giant, one-eyed monster. The creature went after the man, climbing the tree he was hiding in. Renowned for his strict discipline, in life he was known for expelling lazy monks from his temple.
He saw the world as growing increasingly secular and wicked, and he constantly lamented and criticized the corruption and sin of the monks of his day. This allowed him to continue punishing the wicked and impious clergy. They appear to be harmless traveling priests or monks, no taller than an ordinary person; but in an instant they grow abnormally tall, with long claws and hair like a wild beast. This causes the person to look up so high and fast that they lose their balance and tumble backwards.
Much depends on the person's reaction. The same fate is met by those who turn and try to run away. Meet it face-to-face, eye-to-eye, and show no fear. Then, look from its head down to its feet, rather than starting at the feet and looking up.
If done properly, the giant's power to grow will be sapped. Telling the giant, "You lost! I anticipated your trick! In particular, itachi and tanuki transform into these giants in order to hunt humans. Kitsune and mujina are known to occasionally take this form as well, though less often.
This tool is where the shape-shifter's true body is stored. Some say they can also be outsmarted by carrying a ruler or other measuring utensils and attempting to calculate their height before it can react.
The confused giant usually leaves in disgust and will not bother the same person again. They are content with simply scaring its victims instead of ripping their throats out or crushing them with trees. Its true form is often a tanuki, kitsune, or kawauso. It looks like a squat humanoid with a large, ugly head like a potato or a stone.
It wears a straw-woven raincoat. Abura sumashi are extremely rare, only found deep in the mountains or along mountain passes in the southern parts of Japan— throughout the range where wild tea plants grow.
The most well-known abura sumashi lives in the Kusazumigoe Pass in Kumamoto, but only ever appears briefly to travelers. Occasionally, an old grandmother walking the pass with her grandchildren will say, "You know, a long time ago, an abura sumashi used to live in these parts. O : The name abura sumashi means "oil presser," and comes from the act of pressing oil out of the seeds of tea plants which grow in Kumamoto.
Though its origins are a mystery, it is commonly believed that abura sumashi are the ghosts of oil thieves who escaped into the woods. Oil was a difficult and expensive commodity to make. It required time and hard work to extract it from tea seeds, so its theft was a serious crime. Oil thieves who went unpunished in life reincarnated as abura sumashi—a divine punishment for their sins.
Y T : snow woman H : mountain passes; anywhere there is snow D : life energy; can also eat ordinary food A : Yuki onna prey on travelers lost in the heavy snowstorms that blanket the Japanese Alps in winter. They have an otherworldly beauty, with long black hair and dark, piercing eyes. Their skin is ageless and as white as snow, but their bodies are as cold as ice. A mere touch is enough to give a human a deep, unshakable chill.
They feed on life force, sucking it from human's mouths with an icy breath that freezes their victims solid. I : Yuki onna spend their lives hunting humans in the snow. They stay near mountain roads and prey on the travelers coming and going, or break into homes and flash-freeze the inhabitants during the night.
While they are killers, Yuki onna are not entirely cold blooded. Legends say they can fall in love with their intended prey and let them go free. Some go so far as to marry humans and live happily together. As supernatural spirits never age, however, their husbands inevitably discover their true identities.
This revelation usually ends these happy marriages. L : In Niigata Prefecture, an elderly man operated an inn on a mountain trail with his wife. One snowy night, the inn was visited by a young lady traveling alone. She warmed herself by the fire and ate with the innkeeper and his wife.
She was sweet and charming and extremely beautiful. So it was even more of a surprise when, in the middle of the night during a fierce blizzard, she stood up and made to leave the inn. The innkeeper begged her not to go outside, and took her hand to hold her back. It was as cold as ice. Merely touching it sucked all the warmth from the innkeeper's body. As he tried to keep the girl in the house, her entire body turned into a fine icy mist, and shot up the chimney and out into the night.
A man from Yamagata Prefecture claimed that he had been married to a yuki onna. His wife was beautiful, with piercing eyes and skin as white as a marble statue. While he loved to take long hot baths every night, his wife always refused to bathe. This puzzled him greatly. One particularly cold and snowy night, he insisted that his wife take a bath. Otherwise she would freeze to death in the cold, he said.
She protested, but there was no reasoning with the man. Finally she acquiesced. When he went in to check on her a few minutes later, all he found in the tub were half-melted icicles. They look like man-sized apes, with long, shaggy red hair.
Their faces are also reddish and blushed as if drunk. They revel in drunken silliness, singing, dancing, and enjoying life. Despite their silly appearance and demeanor, they are said to be wise. Extremely fond of sake and other types of alcohol, they are excellent brewers themselves and can distil a powerful brine wine from seawater.
The taste of the wine varies depending on the imbiber. If he is a good person, the wine will be delicious. However, if he is a wicked person it will taste like a foul poison. The wine may even kill him if he does not change his evil ways. They are curious and gentle towards friendly humans. The name literally means "ox demon," and it refers to a number of different monsters with bovine traits.
Most Ushi oni resemble an ox from the head up and a demonic horror below. Many variations are known to exist; the body of an ox with a head like an oni's; the head of an ox on a body like a spider's or a cat's; or even an ox's head on the body of a kimono-clad human a Japanese version of the minotaur.
B : Despite their unique and varying morphology, all ushi oni share a number of characteristics, pointing to a common origin. They are exceedingly cruel and savage. They breath toxic poison, and eat humans. Some ushi oni are lurkers, attacking people who draw too close to their lairs; others are hunters, roaming the coasts seeking prey. The cruelest ushi oni ravage the same towns over and over, inflicting terrible curses or bringing diseases. Although a few roam the mountains of the island of Shikoku, most ushi oni live along the rocky coasts and beaches of Western Japan.
When they approach, the ushi oni pounces and bites the victims to death. Aside from this difference, the two look and act in exactly the same manner.
Their faces are hideous and betray serpent-like features such as a forked tongue. They have long black hair which sticks to their dripping bodies. Their name comes from the fact that they always appear soaking wet. I : While physically much stronger than a human, nure onna prefer not to rely on brute force and use trickery and guile to catch their prey.
They most often appear near the water, on a coast or by a riverbank. Nure onna magically disguise themselves as a distressed woman carrying a bundled up baby. They cry out for help from fishers, sailors, or anybody passing by. When the prey approaches, a nure onna will plead with their victim to hold her baby for just a moment so that she can rest. If he agrees and takes the bundle, the "baby" becomes as heavy as a boulder.
The victim is unable to move. The nure onna is then free to attack her helpless victim, feeding by draining his blood with her long, serpentine tongue. Nure onna frequently appear together and cooperate with ushi oni, as they inhabit the same environments and share the same diet. They hunt for fisherman and travelers to feed upon. Despite having no serpentine features, Iso onna are closely related to nure onna. Iso onna wander rocky beaches, hunting for prey.
Individual accounts of iso onna vary when it comes to their appearance. In most cases, they appear as beautiful women who have just come out of the water, dripping wet. Their hair is long and matted, reaching almost all the way down to the sand. Their eyes are heavy with sultry, sexual energy, and their nearly transparent wet clothes stick to their skin.
From the waist up, they appear like ordinary human women. But from the waist down, they are blurry and slightly transparent, betraying their otherworldly nature. They also have the ability to disguise themselves perfectly as large beach rocks when they don't want to be seen. I : When iso onna appear on sandy beaches, they look like beautiful women, staring far out to sea.
When somebody approaches and tries speaking to them, they turn around and let out an ear-piercing shriek. This stuns their victim. Then they lash out with their long hair and drag their prey into the sea. Once in the water, they drain their victims' blood with their hair.
On rocky coasts without sandy beaches, iso onna appear sitting on the cliffs and calling out to passersby in an eerie voice. Their victims are mesmerized, and walk straight towards them, ignoring the dangers posed by the rocky cliffs. They walk off the cliffs and fall to their deaths, leaving the iso onna free to feed on their bodies. Iso onna are occasionally encountered far out at sea. They act much the same as they do on land, capturing their human prey with their long hair and draining their blood.
Iso onna are most commonly encountered during the holiday seasons of Obon and New Year's Eve, when the border between the realm of the living and the spirit world can be more easily crossed.
They occasionally cooperate with ushi oni to catch their prey. These are the shades of drowned sailors which remain in this world, hunting for their former friends and comrades to take them down into the sea. They can be seen at night, either when the moon is new or full, on particularly stormy or foggy nights, or during the festival of Obon. Sometimes they charge headlong towards the other ship, causing it to steer away so sharply that it capsizes. Other times they pull alongside the other ship and the ghostly crew tries to drag it down under the water.
This ghost often demands a barrel from the crew, which it uses to flood the deck and sink the ship. Despite their efforts the ghosts will not be able to flood the human ship with such tools.
Instead of seductive sirens, they are otherworldly nightmares. Ningyo are more fish than human. They can have anything from ugly, deformed fish-like faces, to entire human torsos with long, bony fingers and sharp claws. Ningyo range in size from a human child to a large seal. These days, mermaids resembling the breeds known throughout the West—with an attractive human torso and a piscine lower body—are not unheard of in the Japanese islands.
Since the end of the Edo period and the opening of Japan to the West, ningyo that resemble Western-style Atlantic mermaids have become popular in Japan.
However, the traditional Japanese mermaid is more beast than beauty. I : Ningyo sightings go back to the earliest written histories of Japan. The first recorded mermaid sightings in Japan are found in the Nihon Shoki, which is one of the oldest books of classical Japanese history and dates back to CE.
The flesh of a ningyo is believed to grant eternal life and youth to those who eat it, and thus it is the subject of many folk tales.
However, this meal carries a danger that most people unwilling to risk; ningyo can place a powerful curse on humans who try to wound or capture them. Some legends tell of entire towns that were swallowed by earthquakes or tidal waves after a foolish fisherman brought home a ningyo in one of his catches.
While their grotesque appearance and supernatural powers make them an intriguing subject, ningyo are best avoided at all costs. Their bodies are enormous, and their fins are covered with countless, tiny metallic barbs like a grater. They use these barbs to hook their prey, dragging them deep into the water to be eaten.
Isonade are said to appear when the north winds blow and the sea currents change. B : Despite their size, isonade are incredibly elusive. They move through the water with unparalleled grace and can swim without creating so much as a splash.
This makes them difficult to spot. By the time most sailors have noticed that the winds have changed and a strange color is upon the sea, it is too late—a huge tail is already rising out of the water, above their heads.
When isonade strike, they do not thrash about violently like a hungry shark. Instead they hook their prey on their fins or tail with a gentle stroking motion, dragging them into the depths almost peacefully. They do this without a sound and without ever showing their bodies, making them all the more dangerous for their stealth. Koromodako appear similar to ordinary small octopuses. Males only reach a size of a few centimeters long, while females can grow up to five times that length.
Being so tiny, they are subject to the tides and waves, and float wherever the currents take them. Females live inside of a paper-thin shell, while males have no shell similar to the family of octopuses called argonauts. B : When koromodako are threatened, they become dangerous. They can instantly grow to many times their original size —large enough to engulf fish, fishermen, or any other creature that might try to eat them.
Stretching their arms and body out wide, they resemble an enormous piece of cloth, which is how koromodako get their name. While in this form a koromodako can engulf nearly anything in the water, even entire ships.
It wraps its arms and mantle around the ship, sailors and all, and drags it down into the deep, never to be seen again. After feeding, the koromodako shrinks down to its tiny size, impossible to trace. Their true form is unknown. Eye-witnesses report a great range in size, from slightly larger than a ship to a size so unimaginable that only the creature's bulbous face is visible above the water.
Its head is smooth and round like a venerable monk's, and its body is nude and as black as shadow. All of a sudden, with no warning, the waves and the weather whip up into a furious condition. Out from the tumult rises a titanic creature. It uses this to pour huge amounts of water onto the deck, quickly sinking the boat and drowning the crew.
Because sightings are rare and almost always fatal, it is likely that the true nature and origin of this spirit will remain a mystery for a long time. They are followed by a host of eerie birds and strange fish, and appear on rainy nights near coastal whaling villages. I : In olden days, when whales were still plentiful in the Sea of Japan, a whale sighting was a blessing for the residents of the poor fishing villages. A village could reap huge amounts of wealth from the meat and oil in a single whale.
Such a bounty did not come without a price, however. Many fishermen claimed that the souls of these whales lived on as bakekujira, seeking revenge against the humans who took their lives.
Those who witnessed a bakekujira were infected with its horrible curse, which they brought back to their villages when they returned home.
The whale's curse brought famine, plague, fires, and other kinds of disasters. L : One rainy night long ago, some fishers living on the Shimane peninsula witnessed an enormous white shape off the coast in the Sea of Japan.
Squinting their eyes, it appeared to them to be a whale swimming offshore. Excited for the catch, they rallied the townspeople, who grabbed their spears and harpoons and took to their boats to hunt down and catch their quarry. They soon reached the whale, but no matter how many times they hurled their weapons not one of them struck true. It lacked even a single bit of flesh on its body. At that moment, the sea became alive with a host of strange fish that nobody had ever seen before.
The sky swarmed with eerie birds which nobody could recognize and the likes of which had never been seen before. The ghost whale then turned sharply out to sea, and swiftly vanished into the current, taking all the strange fish and birds with it, never to be seen again. The terrified villagers returned home, realizing that the skeletal whale must have been a bakekujira—a whale turned into a vengeful ghost. While the bakekujira was never seen again, other villages in Shimane felt the whale's curse.
They were consumed by conflagrations and plagued by the infectious diseases that followed whale beachings. It is said appearances can be deceiving, and nurarihyon is the perfect illustration of this.
Overall, he is rather benign-looking; his head is elongated and gourd-shaped; his face is wizened and wrinkled, resembling a cross between and old man and a catfish; he wears elegant clothing—often a splendid silk kimono or the rich robes of a Buddhist abbot—and carries himself in the quiet manner of a sophisticated gentleman.
Along with otoroshi and nozuchi, nurarihyon leads the procession known as the night parade of one hundred demons through the streets of Japan on dark, rainy nights. He fits the role of supreme commander every bit as much when he interacts with humans as well. I : Nurarihyon shows up on evenings when a household is extremely busy.
He arrives at homes unexpectedly in his splendid palanquin and slips into the house, unnoticed by anyone. He acts in all respects as if he were the master of the house, helping himself to the family's luxuries such as fine teas and tobacco.
His power is so great that even the real owners of the house can do nothing to stop him. Eventually he leaves just as he came, quietly and politely slipping out of the house and into his palanquin, as the owners of the house obsequiously bow and wave him farewell.
Only after he has left does anyone become suspicious of the mysterious old man who just visited. O : As to nurarihyon's origins there is only speculation. The oldest records of his existence are mere sketches and paintings. His name comes from nurari "to slip away" and hyon an onomatopoeia describing floating upwards written with the kanji for gourd due to the shape of his head. This connotes a slippery evasiveness— which he employs when posing as master of the house.
There, nurarihyon are globe-shaped sea creatures, about the size of a man's head, which float about in the Seto Inland Sea. When fisherman try to catch one, the sphere sinks down into the water just out of reach, and then bobs back up mockingly.
It has been theorized that some of these slippery globes migrate to land, where they gradually gain influence and power, becoming the nurarihyon known throughout the rest of Japan. Whether this theory is the true origin of the Supreme Commander of All Monsters or just one more of his many mysteries has yet to be solved.
She calls single young men over to her, and they are seldom able to resist her charms. Until of course, they get too close From behind, an ohaguro bettari looks like a beautiful woman wearing a kimono—often looking like a newlywed in her bridal gown.
She appears at twilight outside of a temple, or inside a man's own house, disguised as his wife. At first, she conceals her head, or turns away from any viewers. Any man who comes closer to get a better look is surprised when she turns to reveal her face: an ugly, white, featureless dome slathered in thick makeup, containing nothing but a huge, gaping mouth full of blackened teeth. She follows up this initial shock with a horrible cackle, sending the man running away and screaming in terror.
It has also been suggested that they are the ghosts of ugly women who were unable to marry. Accurate eye-witness reports are hard to come by due to the embarrassment of the victims at having fallen for such an obvious gag.
T B For more than a thousand years, ohaguro—the custom of dyeing one's teeth black—was an aristocratic fashion. This was accomplished via a special "tea" made from vinegar and oxidized iron filings. This brew was swished around in the mouth to stain the teeth dark black.
Ohaguro was begun at an early age, taking many years for the teeth to develop a deep, permanent black color. It was popular among upper-class married women and is frequently depicted in old woodblock prints. By night, however, their bodies sleep while their necks stretch to incredible lengths and roam around freely.
Sometimes their heads attack small animals; sometime they lick up lamp oil with their long tongues; and sometimes they just cause mischief by scaring nearby people. Perhaps they sinned against the gods or nature, or perhaps they were unfaithful to their husbands. In many cases, their husbands or fathers actually committed the sin.
By some cruel twist of fate the men escape punishment and the women receive the curse instead. In any case, the rokurokubi curse only affects women. L : A lord noticed that the oil in his lamps was vanishing at an alarming rate, and suspected one of his servant girls might be a rokurokubi. He decided to spy upon the girl. After she had fallen asleep, he crept into her room and watched over her.
Soon he noticed vapors and ectoplasm forming around her chest and neck. A little while later, the servant girl rolled over in her sleep, however only her body moved! The head stayed in its place, and the neck lay stretched out between the two. The next day he fired her. She was fired from every place at which she subsequently worked. The poor girl never understood why she had such back luck with her employment. She never found out that she was a rokurokubi.
Treating her would have used up all of their travel money, so the monk murdered Oyotsu and stole the remaining money. On his travels, he stayed at an inn owned by a man with a beautiful daughter. The wicked monk shared a bed with the innkeeper's daughter, and during the night her neck stretched and her face changed into that of Oyotsu.
She angrily accused him of murdering her. The next morning the monk, regretting his evil deeds, confessed the murder of Oyotsu to the innkeeper.
The monk also told the innkeeper what he had seen the night before. The innkeeper confessed that he, too, had murdered his wife for her money. He used the money to build his inn, and as a punishment his own daughter was transformed into a rokurokubi. Afterwards, the monk rejoined his temple, built a grave for Oyotsu, and prayed for her soul every day. What happened to the innkeeper's daughter is never mentioned.
They are similar in most respects, except that a nukekubi's head detaches itself completely from its body rather than elongating like a rokurokubi's neck. Because their heads detach, they can travel further distances than the rokurokubi. B : Nukekubi possess a thirst for blood, and are more violent than rokurokubi.
Their flying head sucks the blood of victims like a vampire. Nukekubi also brutally bite humans and animals to death. O : Like the rokurokubi, being a nukekubi is considered a curse. Edo period scientists believed that nukekubi suffered from an infliction similar to somnambulism; only instead of walking about at night the patient's entire soul and head depart from the body. Uncured, this curse has the potential to tear a family apart, particularly due to its violent nature.
Treatments for the curse of the rokurokubi and nukekubi have been long sought after—particularly because these women can often pass their curse on to their daughters who shows signs as they mature.
Afflicted girls were sold off to live in brothels or human circuses, or forced to commit suicide in order to preserve their families' honor. L : A famous account from Echizen Province Fukui Prefecture tells of a young woman afflicted with the curse of the nukekubi. Her head flew about the capital city at night, chasing young men through the streets all the way back to their houses.
Locked out, the head would scratch and bite their doors and gates during the night and leave deep gashes in the wood. She ritually cut off all of her hair in repentance and committed suicide. She believed it was better to die than to live the rest of her life as a monster.
According to lore from Hitachi, a man married to a nukekubi heard from a peddler that the liver of a white-haired dog could remove the curse. He had such a dog, and killed it and fed its liver to his wife.
Sure enough she was cured of the affliction. However, her curse was still passed on to her daughter, whose flying head took to biting white dogs to death. Other accounts claim that by removing the sleeping body to a safe place during the night, the head will not be able return, and will eventually die—however this is not a cure that most families are willing to try. Futakuchi onna appear as regular women until their terrible secret is revealed: in the back of their skulls—buried beneath long, thick hair—is a second mouth, full of teeth and with large, fat lips.
This second mouth is ravenous, and uses long strands of its hair-like tentacles to gorge itself on any food it can find. O : In the folk tales of Japan's eastern regions, futakuchi onna are most often thought to be shape-changed yama uba posing as young women.
In the western regions they are frequently shape- changed kumo, or magical spiders. In the other tales they are the result of curses brought about by wicked deeds, similar to rokuro kubi. L : One story tells of how in a small rural village in Fukushima there lived a stingy miser.
Because he could not bear the thought of paying for food to support a family, the miser lived entirely by himself. One day he met a woman who did not eat anything at all, and he immediately took her for his wife. The miser was thrilled with her because she never ate a thing and was still a hard worker. However, his stores of rice steadily decreased, and he could not figure why, for he never saw his wife eat. One day, the miser pretended to leave for work.
In truth he stayed behind to spy on his new wife. Her hair reached out with tentacle-like stalks and began to scoop rice balls into the second mouth, which cooed out with pleasure in a vulgar, raspy voice.
The miser was horrified and resolved to divorce his wife as soon as possible. What are yokai? Put simply, they are supernatural creatures of Japanese folklore. The word in Japanese is a combination of "yo," meaning "bewitching," and "kai," meaning "strange. Nothing exists in the English language that quite does the trick of capturing the essence of yokai.
Each yokai is described in detail-including its habitat, diet, origin, and legends-based on translations from centuries-old Japanese texts. This book was first funded on Kickstarter in and then revised in During the full moon, horrifying creatures rampage through the village, unleashing havoc and death.
When the Dragon samurai Agasha no Isao Ryotora is sent to investigate, he faces even greater danger than expected. To save the village, he must confront his buried past — not to mention an unexpected Phoenix Clan visitor, Asako Sekken, who has his own secrets to hide.
The quest to save Sebo Mura will take the two samurai into the depths of forgotten history and the shifting terrain of the Spirit Realms… and bring them face to face with an ancient, terrifying evil. He can be considered the founder of the modern Japanese Rinzai tradition, for which he famously emphasized the importance of koan practice in awakening, and he revitalized the monastic life of his day.
But his teaching was by no means limited to monastery or temple. Hakuin was the quintessential Zen master of the people, renowned for taking his teaching to all parts of society, to people in every walk of life, and his painting and calligraphy were particularly powerful vehicles for that teaching. Using traditional Buddhist images and sayings—but also themes from folklore and daily life—Hakuin created a new visual language for Zen: profound, whimsical, and unlike anything that came before.
In his long life, Hakuin created many thousands of paintings and calligraphies. This art, combined with his voluminous writings, stands as a monument to his teaching, revealing why he is the most important Zen master of the past five hundred years. They seek to vanquish us. And we bite back. Still, every Zombie needs support. Now an ancient military manual reveals the secrets that will keep Undead Comrades from losing their heads as they learn to assess the Enemy and develop offensive strategy an easy task for those of the decaying flesh.
It all starts by declaring one word: WAR! And take note: The Apocalypse will not be televised. Endsheet cartography by David Lindroth. Additional historical art image reproductions. Boys are often stereotyped as physically unattractive nerds and girls as petite and beautiful. Many Americans remain unaware of the diversity of ethnicities and races the term Asian American comprises, with Asian American adolescents proving to be more invisible than adults. As a result, Asian American adolescents are continually searching for their identity and own place in American society.
For these kids, being or considered to be American becomes a challenge in itself as they assert their Asian and American identities; claim their own ethnic identity, be they immigrant or American-born; and negotiate their ethnic communities. The contributors to Growing Up Asian American in Young Adult Fiction focus on moving beyond stereotypes to examine how Asian American children and adolescents define their unique identities.
Individual chapters, crossing cultural, linguistic, and racial boundaries, negotiate the complex terrain of Asian American children's and teenagers" identities.
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