Aobōzu

What it is

An aobōzu is a yōkai, one of the spirits and strange beings that crowd Japanese storytelling. It wears the form of a bōzu, a priest, and is generally pictured as a large, human-shaped figure. Nearly everything beyond that depends on the district telling the tale: what the spirit does, whom it frightens, and even whether it is a spirit at all rather than an animal wearing the shape. Tales of it cluster in named prefectures across Japan, from Wakayama to Fukushima, each with its own habits for the creature. It also has a life in Japanese art, appearing repeatedly in traditional picture books of yōkai.

Where it comes from

The tales scatter the spirit's home across the country, and their differences follow regional lines. A notable appearance in art comes in Toriyama Sekien's Gazu Hyakki Yagyō, a four-part e-hon, or picture book, which includes a plate often linked to the blue priest; since the book carried no captions, that link stays open to question. Sekien may instead have drawn the mehitotsu-bō, a monk with a single eye who was a familiar subject for Edo-period painters. A further reading treats the plate as wordplay: ao can signal immaturity, so the picture may mock a priest whose training has not ripened by turning him into a yōkai. Modern retellings, from a Fukushima school tale of the early 1930s to Shōwa-era city legends, carried the figure into new settings.

How it is done

The tales come with rules for meeting the spirit. In one Nagano version, a person who holds their breath and turns around seven times at the foot of a particular pine draws the priest out, and it answers with a scolding, telling them to leave the rocks untrampled and the tree unbroken. Kagawa's rule concerns speech: answer the priest aloud and refuse, and it goes away, but meet its question with silence and it strikes. The Yamaguchi tales teach a different lesson, against pride: take up the little priest's sumo challenge and its mountain-god strength will throw you without effort.

What it is for

The stories do practical work. In Shizuoka, the tale of a child lifted out of the wheat is told partly so that grown-ups can keep children away from the fields on spring evenings; a youngster walking home after dark is just the listener the story needs. At one mountain school in Fukushima, dread of the presence in the lavatory was enough to stop pupils using it. Elsewhere the warnings are broader: vacant houses in Okayama may hold a visitor with blue skin or blue robes, and Yamaguchi's small wrestler punishes overconfidence. The blue priest thus stands as a dusk warning for the young, a mark of respect owed to houses, rocks and trees, and a check on human swagger.

Peoples and places

Each prefecture keeps its own telling. Minabe, in Wakayama's Hidaka District, reports only that the spirit shows itself. At Kaneyama in Fukushima, the shape belongs to a weasel; in Gifu and Hiroshima, to a tanuki, the shape-changing raccoon dog of Japanese story. Okayama places a blue-bodied or blue-clothed figure in empty houses. Yamaguchi makes it a Yama-no-Kami, a mountain god, small in size yet able to fling any challenger. Kagawa's priest approaches women with a question about hanging, and Yamagata's haunts a school lavatory at the foot of a mountain. Shizuoka, including its Haibara District, attaches it to wheat fields, and Nagano to one particular pine.

What people believe

The world these tales assume is one where forms are negotiable. A weasel or a tanuki can step into a priest's shape, so a blue figure by the road may be a mask worn by an animal. In Yamaguchi, the mask belongs to a god: the Yama-no-Kami takes a small priest's body to test the people it meets. Words carry force, as the Kagawa rule shows, where a plain spoken refusal ends the meeting and quiet is taken as consent and punished. The colour blue itself, in body, clothes or face, is the one constant that lets listeners recognise the being.

When it is done

Spring is the one season the stories name. In Shizuoka, the danger hour is dusk, when children walking home late may cross a wheat field and meet what waits in the crop, which is why adults keep them out of the fields on spring evenings. Later settings are modern rather than seasonal: a Fukushima school haunting is placed in the early 1930s, and the run of city legends and school ghost stories that renewed the figure's fame belongs to the Shōwa years.

Compare and confuse

The closest neighbour is the mehitotsu-bō, whose name means one-eyed monk and who was a stock figure in Edo-period painting, as in Sawaki Sūshi's Hyakkai Zukan. Sekien's caption-less plate is the hinge between the two readings. Within the legends themselves, the priest's shape is often borrowed: a tanuki wears it in Gifu and Hiroshima, a weasel at Kaneyama in Fukushima.

Today

From the Shōwa period on, the blue priest took on modern duties, moving into city legends and the ghost stories schoolchildren tell each other, a line that runs back through the lavatory hauntings of schools in Yamagata and Fukushima. The regional tales remain part of Japan's folklore record, and the figure keeps its place among the yōkai recorded by artists in the line of Toriyama Sekien.

Questions people ask about Aobōzu

Good reading and sources

• Aobōzu on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data