are Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, 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 folklore

Folklore

Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...

 and art, and more recently have appeared in Japanese anime

Anime

is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....

 and manga

Manga

Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...

 (see examples cited below).

The Japanese term baku has two current meanings, referring to both the traditional dream-devouring creature and to the zoological tapir

Tapir

A Tapir is a large browsing mammal, similar in shape to a pig, 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: the Brazilian Tapir, the Malayan Tapir, Baird's Tapir and the Mountain...

 (e.g., the Malaysian tapir

Malayan Tapir

The Malayan Tapir , also called the Asian Tapir, is the largest of the four species of tapir and the only one native to Asia. The scientific name refers to the East Indies, the species' natural habitat...

). 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 folklore

Chinese folklore

Chinese 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 amulet

Amulet

An amulet, similar to a talisman , is any object intended to bring good luck or protection to its owner.Potential amulets include gems, especially engraved gems, statues, coins, drawings, pendants, rings, plants and animals; even words said in certain occasions—for example: vade retro satana—, to...

s. Kaii-Yōkai Denshō Database

Kaii-Yokai Densho Database

The is a database of yōkai and mystery stories which have been collected from Japanese folklore. The database is published by International Research Center for Japanese Studies. The prototype was created on March 19, 2002, and the first live version was released on June 20, 2002...

, 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 chimera

Chimera (mythology)

The Chimera or Chimaera was, according to Greek mythology, a monstrous fire-breathing female creature of Lycia in Asia Minor, composed of the parts of multiple animals: upon the body of a lioness with a tail that ended in a snake's head, the head of a goat arose on her back at the center of her...

 with an elephant

Elephant

Elephants are large land mammals in two extant genera of the family Elephantidae: Elephas and Loxodonta, with the third genus Mammuthus extinct...

’s trunk, rhinoceros

Rhinoceros

Rhinoceros , also known as rhino, is a group of five extant species of odd-toed ungulates in the family Rhinocerotidae. Two of these species are native to Africa and three to southern Asia....

 eyes, an ox

Ox

An ox , also known as a bullock in Australia, New Zealand and India, is a bovine trained as a draft animal. Oxen are commonly castrated adult male cattle; castration makes the animals more tractable...

 tail, and tiger

Tiger

The tiger is the largest cat species, reaching a total body length of up to and weighing up to . Their most recognizable feature is a pattern of dark vertical stripes on reddish-orange fur with lighter underparts...

 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-Meiji

Meiji period

The , also known as the Meiji era, is a Japanese era which extended from September 1868 through July 1912. This period represents the first half of the Empire of Japan.- Meiji Restoration and the emperor :...

) Japanese wood-block prints (see illustration) and in shrine, temple, and netsuke

Netsuke

Netsuke are miniature sculptures that were invented in 17th-century Japan to serve a practical function...

 carvings.Writing in the Meiji era, Lafcadio Hearn

Lafcadio Hearn

Patrick Lafcadio Hearn , known also by the Japanese name , was an international writer, known best for his books about Japan, especially his collections of Japanese legends and ghost stories, such as Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things...

 (1902) described a baku with very similar attributes that was also able to devour nightmares.

Modern Representations

Since the 1980s, the baku appears not as a chimera of an elephant and tiger but as a zoologically recognizable tapir. Examples include Oshii Mamoru’s 1984 animated film Beautiful Dreamer, which is based on an episode of Rumiko Takahashi

Rumiko Takahashi

is a Japanese manga artist.Takahashi is one of the wealthiest individuals, and the most affluent manga artists in Japan. The manga she creates are popular worldwide, where they have been translated into a variety of languages...

's manga Urusei Yatsura

Urusei Yatsura

is a comedic manga series written and illustrated by Rumiko Takahashi that premiered in Weekly Shōnen Sunday in 1978 and ran until its conclusion in 1987. Its 374 individual chapters were collected and published in 34 tankōbon volumes. The series tells the story of Ataru Moroboshi, and the alien...

(1978-1987) that depicts the baku as a tapir. Tapir baku appear in Digimon

Digimon

, short for , is a Japanese media franchise encompassing digital toys, anime, manga and video games. The franchise's eponymous creatures are monsters of various forms living in a "Digital World", a parallel universe that originated from Earth's various communication networks.-Conception and...

, which features a character called Bakumon or Tapirmon, and in Haruhiko Mikimoto

Haruhiko Mikimoto

is a Japanese anime character designer, illustrator and manga artist. Mostly active during the 1980s, during that decade he rose to promience and is considered one of the top character designers of his time....

's manga Marionette Generation

Marionette Generation

is 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). However, not all modern baku/yumekui are tapirs ("yumekui" means "dream-eater"). 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 Kenbun

Yumekui Kenbun

is a Japanese shōnen manga series created by Shin Mashiba. It first premiered in Monthly Stencile, a shōjo 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. 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. A non-Japanese video game featuring a dream-eating tapir also exists (see external link).

External links

• http://www.kirstenmunson.com/portfolio/tapirgame.html (Accessed February 17, 2011)