This weekend was my first visit to the Edo Tokyo museum. I had been aware of this museum since we got here but I was had a sense that it was overdone and tacky. I had time this weekend so I thought this was a museum I just needed to get to.
A huge, huge overbearing, ultramodern architectural version of a spaceship greets the visitors. The escalator shown above sucks the visitors up into the bowels of the museum. Much to my amazement and pleasure I was fascinated by the exhibitions. More on the main Edo Period Exhibition later.
Once again I stumbled onto an amazing exhibition that gave me a whole new world of understanding about ancient and modern Japan. Here's the link to the special exhibition:
https://www.edo-tokyo-museum.or.jp/en/s-exhibition/special/10309/特別展「大妖怪展%E3%80%80土偶から妖怪ウォッチまで」
The exhibition consisted of ancient illustrations and scrolls from the last 1000 years in Japan of the "Yokai":
Coming from many different regions of Japan and from many different eras Yokai represent a wide range of monsters that bring to life many of the fears, anxieties and worries about life.
During the Meiji era a sociology professor went into the countryside and collected stories about as many of these legendary monsters and ghosts as he could find.
This website is an exhaustive list of the huge variety of these creatures that have lived in the dark places of Japanese minds over the generations:
http://yokai.com
As I looked at these pictures I began thinking se monsters and what they represented. These monsters inhabited the woods, the mountains, the abandoned houses and the streets where people lived.
These monsters were both horribly frightening but also humorous and laughable. People would share stories about them, share woodblock prints, scare each other with ghost stories and enjoy The chills coming from the stories. There is a long tradition here in Japan of haunted houses being made for the public during the hot summer month of August.
As I walked around the exhibit looking at the unique, special, horrible and fascinating monsters I suddenly had this vision.
What if, in our societies, we kept up this tradition of monsters. We would project our deep-seated fears, our hatreds, our loneliness and our dark corners onto these monsters like they did in ancient Japan.
As I scan the happenings around the world of hatred; as I see acts of random murder; as I hear divisive words being spoken; as I know the people are blaming other people/races/gender/religions for their own deep-seated fears, I wonder whether perhaps we could all agree on some of these fascinating Yokai as a target for this bile.
How about fearing the spirit that might take over our unused old crockery? How about being careful of the monster hanging in the paper lantern used to light up our patios? How about paying special attention to the monsters lurking in the boulders of the river? How about trying to decipher whether that noise actually comes from the yokai with the three arseholes?
By targeting our fears towards the supernatural, would this permit us to be kind to our fellow humans? Would that help us see our neighbors without fear since our fears would be targeted elsewhere?
Just a thought...
If you are interested more about Japanese Yokai there is a great and humourous book written by an American living in Tokyo. Here's the link:
http://www.tuttlepublishing.com/books-by-country/yokai-attack
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