by Cristy Burne
More about Japanese Demons
Better known as yokai supernatural demons have featured in Japanese fairy tales and folklore for centuries. Many hundreds of yokai exist: some came originally from China while others sprang up to explain spooky stories or strange happenings. Scholars have been cataloguing yokai species in encyclopedias and databases since the 1770s.
Yokai are still popular in modern Japan: they have restaurant dishes named after them, statues sold of them, books written about them. They star in manga comics and movies, are used to advertise banks and beer, and might still be blamed when something strange goes bump in the night.
The Japanese characters used to write yokai mean "bewitching" and "suspicious", and the word can refer to all kinds of supernatural spirits: goblins, ghosts, monsters and more. Yokai can be bringers of luck or harbingers of doom, clippers of hair or shakers of beans. They can be good, evil, or just plain strange.
Only one thing is certain about yokai: one is probably watching you right now!
Yokai featured in Takeshita Demons
This yokai takes the shape of an old woman with a gentle voice, but don't be fooled. If you answer the door when she knocks, chances are you'll fall ill with chicken pox.
Ittan momen are long bits of cloth that can come to life in the night. They love to tangle around your body and might even try to suffocate you, so keep an eye on your curtains.
Is the person sitting next to you really who you think they are? Noppera-bo are experts at pretending to be other people, and they love to cause trouble. Just when you least expect it their features can disappear, melting away to leave their face as empty as a blank page.
During the day you might mistake this yokai for a normal person, but be warned. At night, while its body is sleeping, its head can detach and fly around hunting for delicious things to eat (like children and puppy dogs).
With the torso of a woman and the body of a snake, this fearsome yokai has wicked claws and a long forked tongue. She's strong enough to crush a tree in the coils of her massive tail.
If you're ever staring up at the sky and spot an enormous head in the clouds, watch out! Spotting an o-kubi usually means something awful is just around the corner...
Did it happen by mistake? Or did someone do it on purpose? Whatever the reason, if some part of your house was built upside-down, your entire house is doomed to be haunted.
Tall, pale and icily beautiful, this yokai is a spirit of the snow. She leaves no footprints, preferring to float above the ground, and she can disappear in a puff of cold mist.
This mischievous yokai haunts houses and usually appears in the shape of a child. If your house is haunted by a zashikiwarashi, count yourself lucky, but don't forget to take good care of it. If your house ghost ever chooses to leave you, your luck will quickly end.
Turn the page for an exclusive preview of the first chapter of
TAKESHTTA DEMONS II
another demon adventure for Miku and Cait.
CHAPTER ONE
"Cait, are you still there?" I could hear breathing on the other end of the phone, but Cait's voice had disappeared, cut off halfway through a sentence. "Hello?"
It was dark outside, late on the night before School Camp, and I had a bad feeling in my gut that was cutting like knives. I was supposed to be packing shirts and shoes and lucky charms to take to camp, but I hadn't even opened my case.
The phone crackled. "Sorry," Cait whispered. "I had to go quiet. I'm s'posed to be in bed. Dad'll freak if he finds me up this late."
So she was still there. Still OK. Relief prickled down my arms.
"What's up?" she asked. "Why are you calling so late?"
I swallowed. "It's about camp," I began. "I've got this feeling..."
Cait didn't hesitate. "I know," she said. "Me too."
I grinned despite the churning in my belly. Of course Cait would understand. She'd been with me through everything, helping me break into our school and rescue my brother, making friends with a halfdragon water-woman, even standing up to Mrs Okuda after she'd become a child-eating nukekubi demon. Since the night we'd met the demons, Cait and I had been virtually inseparable. Unlike Mrs Okuda and her head.
"I've been doing a lot of thinking," Cait continued. "About camp. I think we're going to need a few extra things...."
I listened, on the edge of my bed.
"But it's hard to know," she said. "I think I'll take two, then I can wear one at dinner or whatever, and have the other if Mr Lloyd makes us go hiking. Are you taking two? Or maybe we should go for three?"
"What? What are you talking about?"
The phone went silent. "Jeans," Cait said. "What are you talking about?"
"Demons." I hissed the word into the phone, as if a demon might be listening outside my door right that very second. "At camp."
The phone stayed silent.
"Cait?" What was going on over there? Maybe she wasn't safe after all...
CRTSTY BURNE
has joint New Zealand and Australian citizenship, has travelled widely and lived for several years in Japan as a teacher and editor. It was during this time that she became fascinated with Japanese folklore and the supernatural yokai - demons - which are very much a part of Japanese culture, but little known outside Japan. Cristy has spent most of her career as a science writer, and currently works for a computing network designed to solve global problems. She won a Young and Emerging Writer fellowship with Varuna House, in the Blue Mountains, Australia, and Takeshita Demons is her first published book. Cristy and her family live in Perth, Western Australia.
