- For other uses, see Baku (disambiguation)
Baku may refer to:* Baku, Azerbaijan, the capital of Azerbaijan* Baku , an administrative division of the Russian Empire** Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline* Baku, Ghana, a town in Ghana*Baku, Nepal* Baku , a Soviet destroyer leader...
.
are
Japanis an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese supernatural beings that devour dreams and nightmares. They have a long history in Japanese
folkloreFolklore is the body of expressive culture, including stories, music, dance, legends, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, customs, and so forth within a particular population comprising the traditions of that culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which...
and art, and more recently have appeared in Japanese
animeis animation originating in Japan. The world outside Japan regards anime as "Japanese animation". Anime originated about 1917.Anime, like manga , has a large audience in Japan and high recognition throughout the world...
and
mangaManga consist of comics and print cartoons , in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 20th century...
(see examples cited below).
The Japanese term
baku has two current meanings, referring to both the traditional dream-devouring creature and to the zoological
tapirA tapir is a large browsing mammal, roughly pig-like in shape, with a short, prehensile snout. Tapirs inhabit jungle and forest regions of South America, Central America, and Southeast Asia. There are four species of Tapirs, being the Brazilian tapir, the Malayan tapir, Baird's tapir and the...
(e.g., the
MalaysiaMalaysia is a country in Southeast Asia that consists of thirteen states and three Federal Territories, with a total landmass of . The capital city is Kuala Lumpur, while Putrajaya is the seat of the federal government. The population stands at over 28 million inhabitants...
n tapir).
- For other uses, see Baku (disambiguation)
Baku may refer to:* Baku, Azerbaijan, the capital of Azerbaijan* Baku , an administrative division of the Russian Empire** Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline* Baku, Ghana, a town in Ghana*Baku, Nepal* Baku , a Soviet destroyer leader...
.
are
Japanis an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese supernatural beings that devour dreams and nightmares. They have a long history in Japanese
folkloreFolklore is the body of expressive culture, including stories, music, dance, legends, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, customs, and so forth within a particular population comprising the traditions of that culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which...
and art, and more recently have appeared in Japanese
animeis animation originating in Japan. The world outside Japan regards anime as "Japanese animation". Anime originated about 1917.Anime, like manga , has a large audience in Japan and high recognition throughout the world...
and
mangaManga consist of comics and print cartoons , in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 20th century...
(see examples cited below).
The Japanese term
baku has two current meanings, referring to both the traditional dream-devouring creature and to the zoological
tapirA tapir is a large browsing mammal, roughly pig-like in shape, with a short, prehensile snout. Tapirs inhabit jungle and forest regions of South America, Central America, and Southeast Asia. There are four species of Tapirs, being the Brazilian tapir, the Malayan tapir, Baird's tapir and the...
(e.g., the
MalaysiaMalaysia is a country in Southeast Asia that consists of thirteen states and three Federal Territories, with a total landmass of . The capital city is Kuala Lumpur, while Putrajaya is the seat of the federal government. The population stands at over 28 million inhabitants...
n tapir). In recent years, there have been changes in how the baku is depicted.
History and Description
The traditional Japanese nightmare-devouring baku originates in
Chinese folkloreChinese folklore includes songs, dances, puppetry, and tales. It often tells stories of human nature, historical or legendary events, love, and the supernatural, or stories explaining natural phenomena and distinctive landmarks.-Folktales:...
and was familiar in Japan as early as the Muromachi period (14th-15th century). Hori Tadao (2005) has described the dream-eating abilities attributed to the traditional baku and relates them to other preventatives against nightmare like the use of
amuletAn amulet , a close cousin of the talisman consists of any object...
s.
Kaii-Yōkai Denshō DatabaseThe is a database of stories of yōkai and mysteries which are collected from Japanese folklore, published by International Research Center for Japanese Studies. The database contains datas of yōkai, as well as other mysterious stories which are told without relations to yōkai. The prototype was...
, citing a 1957 paper, and Mizuki (2004) also describe the dream-devouring capacities of the traditional baku.
An early 17th century Japanese manuscript, the
Sankai Ibutsu (山海異物), describes the baku as a Chinese mythical
chimeraIn Greek mythology, the Chimera was a monstrous fire-breathing creature of Lycia in Asia Minor, composed of the parts of multiple animals: upon the body of a lioness with a tail that terminated in a snake's head, the head of a goat arose on her back at the center of her spine...
with an
elephantElephants are large land mammals in two genera of the family Elephantidae: Elephas and Loxodonta. Three species of elephant are living today: the African Bush Elephant, the African Forest Elephant and the Asian Elephant...
’s trunk,
rhinocerosRhinoceros , often colloquially abbreviated rhino, is a name used to group five extant species of odd-toed ungulates in the family Rhinocerotidae. Two of these species are native to Africa and three to southern Asia. Three of the five species—the Javan, Sumatran and Black Rhinoceros—are...
eyes, an
oxAn ox is a bovine animal trained as a draft animal. Oxen are commonly adult, castrated male cattle, but cows or bulls may also be used in some areas...
tail, and
tigerThe tiger is a member of the Felidae family; the largest of the four "big cats" in the genus Panthera. Native to much of eastern and southern Asia, the tiger is an apex predator and an obligate carnivore...
paws, which in belief protected against pestilence and evil, although eating nightmares was not included among its abilities. However, in a 1791 Japanese wood-block illustration, a specifically dream-destroying baku is depicted with an elephant’s head, tusks, and trunk, with horns and tiger’s claws. The elephant’s head, trunk, and tusks are characteristic of baku portrayed in classical era (pre-
MeijiThe , or Meiji era denotes the period in Japanese history during the 45-year reign of the Meiji Emperor . During this time, Japan began its modernization and rose to world power status...
) Japanese wood-block prints (see illustration) and in shrine, temple, and
netsukeNetsuke are miniature sculptures that were invented in 17th century Japan to serve a practical function...
carvings. Writing in the Meiji era,
Lafcadio HearnPatrick Lafcadio Hearn , also known as after gaining Japanese citizenship, was an author, best known for his books about Japan...
(1902) described a baku with very similar attributes that was also able to devour nightmares.
Since the 1980s in manga, anime, and other forms of popular culture, the baku appears not as a chimera of an elephant and tiger but as a zoologically recognizable tapir. Examples include Takahashi Rumiko's manga
Urusei Yatsurais a manga series by Rumiko Takahashi that was published in the Weekly Shōnen Sunday from 1978 to 1987. It was adapted into a TV anime series which aired on Fuji Television affiliates from 1981 to 1986, lasting 195 episodes. The show is also known as Lum/Lamu, the Invader Girl, and, Those...
(1995) and Mikimoto Haruhiko's manga
Marionette Generationis a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Haruhiko Mikimoto. The manga was serialised in Kadokawa Shoten's Newtype beginning in 1989, and was later collected into five tankōbon volumes which were published between July 1989 and March 1998. The series was licensed in North America by Viz...
(2001, original 1990), and in anime, Oshii Mamoru’s 1984 film about Lum,
Beautiful Dreamer"Beautiful Dreamer" is a popular American song, the last known song written by Stephen Foster. It was published posthumously in 1864, the year Foster died.-Lyrics:Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me,
Starlight and dewdrops are waiting for thee;
...
. Such baku also appear in
Pokémonis a media franchise published by the video game company Nintendo and created by Satoshi Tajiri in 1996. Originally released as a pair of interlinkable Game Boy role-playing video games, Pokémon has since become the second most successful and lucrative video game-based media franchise in the world,...
and
Digimon, short for , is a popular Japanese series of media and merchandise, including anime, manga, toys, video games, trading card games and other media. Digimon are monsters of various forms living in a "Digital World", a parallel universe that originated from Earth's various communication...
(Drowzee is a baku-like Pokémon, and Digimon features a character called Bakumon) . "Baku" is a main character in the
Playstation 2The PlayStation 2 is a sixth-generation video game console manufactured by Sony. The PS2 console is the sequel to the original PlayStation console. The successor to the PlayStation, and the predecessor to the PlayStation 3, the PlayStation 2 forms part of the PlayStation series of video game...
game
Dual HeartsDual Hearts is an action-adventure game for the PlayStation 2, released in 2002. In the United States it was released by Atlus.- Story :The plot begins with a treasure hunter named Rumble learning about a treasure, the Dream Stone on Sonno Island and setting out for it...
, characterized as a "pig" that eats small bugs called esamons that live in the dreamworld. However, not all modern baku/yumekui are tapirs ("yumekui" means "dreamcatcher"). In Satoshi Kon’s 2007 animated film “Paprika,” Paprika, a young woman who is kami of the Dreamtime, is a baku/yumekui who devours a dream-villain at the film’s climax. Hakase Mizuki's 2007 manga
Ba_ku (
sic) and Shin Mashiba's 2008 manga
Nightmare Inspector: Yumekui Kenbunis a Japanese shōnen manga series created by Shin Mashiba. It first premiered in Monthly Stencile, a shojo magazine, in December 2001 and was then serialized in Monthly GFantasy from 2003 to 2007. Nine volumes have been released in Japan by Square-Enix since 2007, ending the series...
are also about baku/yumekui who are not tapirs. Merry Nightmare from the manga-series Yumekui Merry also appears as a human. The Playstation game FFIX features a character named Baku who resembles a pig.
Dream-eating, tapir-shaped baku have also entered non-Japanese popular culture. The picture book "The Dream Eater" by Christian Garrison tells the story of a young boy, Yukio, who meets a baku and brings it to his village .
Neil GaimanNeil Richard Gaiman is an English author of science fiction and fantasy short stories and novels, graphic novels, comics, audio theatre, and films. His notable works include The Sandman comic series, Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book...
’s "The Dream Hunters,” which is based on Japanese mythology, features baku. A video game featuring a dream-eating tapir also exists (see external link).