Uncanny Japan

What happens if you say "monkey" before entering the mountains? Why shouldn't you sing or whistle in the forest? And what on earth is wrong with pointing at a snake?

As I prepare for a long road trip north through Japan, I'm digging into some wonderfully strange regional superstitions from Tōhoku and Hokkaidō. From mountain gods with strong opinions about music to forbidden bear names, sacred trees, and a mine deity whose guard dog apparently has a wandering ear, these old beliefs offer a funny, fascinating glimpse into a world where the mountains were alive, the animals were listening, and one wrong word might bring misfortune.
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Once, wolves roamed the mountains of Japan—not simply as predators, but as protectors, messengers of the gods, and sometimes gods themselves.

For this special archive episode, I’ve combined two earlier Uncanny Japan episodes into one extended journey through the history and folklore of the Japanese wolf, or ōkami. We’ll explore their extinction, old wolf shrines and wolf worship, Yamato Takeru’s mysterious white wolf, the eerie okuri-inu that follows travelers through the mountains, and stories of wolves that protected, warned, guided…and occasionally ate those who weren’t careful.

And then there’s the question some people are still asking today:

Are Japan’s wolves really gone?
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The cicadas are fading, the bell crickets are singing, and autumn is beginning to creep into Japan. There’s an old saying: aki no hi wa tsurube otoshi—“an autumn day falls like a well bucket”—describing how suddenly darkness arrives this time of year.

But Tsurube Otoshi is also the name of a very strange yōkai.

Depending on where you are, it might be a well bucket dropping from an old tree, a mysterious ball of fire, a severed head, or something waiting above the road to haul unlucky travelers into the branches and eat them.

This episode: bell crickets, autumn insect listening, old Japanese sayings, and one wonderfully bizarre yōkai that gives you another reason to look up.
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This episode is story time. We’re traveling to the remote Oki Islands in the Sea of Japan for an old Japanese tale collected by Richard Gordon Smith in his 1908 book Ancient Tales and Folk-Lore of Japan.

When young Tokoyo sets out to find her banished father, her journey leads her to an island haunted by a terrible tradition: every year, a young woman must be sacrificed to a mysterious creature beneath the sea. Tokoyo decides to do something about it.

A tale of courage, curses, sea monsters, and one very determined daughter.

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In Japan, ghosts don’t wait for October.

Summer—especially the hot, humid weeks around Obon—has long been the season for ghost stories, strange encounters, and deliberately scaring yourself silly.

In this episode of Uncanny Japan, we’ll sit down for hyakumonogatari, the old practice of telling one hundred frightening stories while extinguishing candles one by one. We’ll look at summer ghost plays on the kabuki stage, venture out for a kimodameshi test of courage, and step inside an obakeyashiki, Japan’s own style of haunted house.

Along the way: cicadas, cemeteries, mysterious extra ghosts, haunted tea houses, and some very questionable decisions made after midnight.

Then we’ll finish with a wonderfully gruesome story from the 1677 collection Shokoku Hyakumonogatari, featuring a nameless creature with eyes in the palms of its hands—and a young man who really should have stayed home.
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