The word “Youkai” has many meanings, demon, spirit, goblin, monster, and in some circumstances deity. Youkai have many forms, some are humanlike similar to ghosts and spirits, others are more monstrous with teeth, fangs, snouts, and claws. Other definitions of Youkai forego humanoid or animal forms all together, instead being inanimate objects like teacups or walls (Foster). But one thing holds all of these definitions together—the word, Youkai is used to describe all of these things. The word itself is made up of the two Japanese characters for calamity and spectre (Denshi Jisho).
Youkai are prominently featured in the 2008 Japanese TV series, Natsume Yuujinchou. The series is about an adolescent orphan boy, Natsume Takashi, and his unique ability to see Youkai. Some of these Youkai torment him, others try to eat him, and a few try to befriend him. This causes trouble in Natsume’s life; running around and being chased by invisible monsters is not socially acceptable. Natsume routinely has to run away from the Youkai, as well as talk to them, telling them to go away, all while he is interacting with his friends and foster family. Often he is called out on his behavior, being called a liar and an attention seeker during his childhood when he tried to explain what he was seeing. Natsume frequently moves from relative to relative trying to find a home, his strange behavior prohibiting him from staying anywhere long.
The main focus of the series is Natsume’s mission of returning to the Yokai their names. If someone possesses the name of a Youkai, the Youkai is that person’s servant or underling. Natsume came into possession of a book called “Yuujinchou,” or in English, “Book of Friends.” The book holds the name of countless Youkai that had their names taken. Natsume, who does not care for having the names of Youkai, freely gives back every name that he is able to. This causes Youkai to flock to him, some to ask for their names back, and others to take the book from him, to be in possession of the large collection of names that the book contains From a psychological perspective it appears that Natsume Takashi has hallucinations. He sees beings that are not there and exhibits auditory, tactile, and visual hallucinations. Natsume reacts as if something is there, when from another character’s point of view, there is simply nothing. In the narrative of the series he is not diagnosed with any mental disorder, rather others see Natsume as attention seeking and creepy. The question of whether or not Natsume is suffering from an undiagnosed mental illness is present in much of Natsume’s interactions with other human beings.
This essay examines two themes of Natsume Yuujinchou: how the Japanese people’s belief in Youkai provides insight into post-World-War-II Shintoism, and how Youkai acts as an allegory for the ongoing mental health stigma in modern Japan. Background information used in this essay consists of the first season of Natsume Yuujinchou; Paradise and Parade, a book explaining Youkai; articles about mental health sourced from psychology journals focused on types of hallucinations; diagnostic criteria of schizophrenia; and stigmas associated with schizophrenia based in Japan. Also referenced are journals detailing the history of modern Japan and modern Shintoism. This essay uses these sources to answer the question: How are Japanese Youkai used to address themes of mental health stigma and observance of modern Shintoism in the 2008 Japanese television series Natsume Yuujinchou?
It is important to state the relationship between Youkai and Shintoism, the national religion of Japan. Youkai has been the word for strange things and beings in Japan for centuries, and has culminated in the massive amount of definitions of Youkai, some definitions are akin to definitions of monsters in Western culture, some definitions are less-easily translatable. In some instances, Youkai can be depicted as minor deities in the Shinto religion. One of the aims of this paper is to try to define Youkai for a Western English perspective and to try not to misrepresent Youkai or Shintoism in the process. Michael Dylan Foster’s three books about Youkai are written in English, something that most information about the Youkai is not. This essay uses information from Foster's work, as well as an article about Youkai in Japanese culture by Hamidah, et al. This is where the information about Youkai in this essay comes from.
Youkai as a whole are very interesting beings from various standpoints. Simultaneously being used in Japanese culture to describe unexplained phenomena as well as being seriously studied in the world of biology (Foster), Youkai are placed in various mythological and cultural roles. They are portrayed as monsters, benevolent and malicious spirits, and as very minor deities. The last designation of Youkai is interesting—the same name that might describe a monster in Japanese folklore could also be assigned to a minor god. This designation of divine Youkai is reflected in Natsume Yuujinchou.
“The Dew-God's Small Shrine” (Japanese: “Tsuyukami no Hokora”) is the second episode of the first season of Natsume Yuujinchou. This episode follows the protagonist Natsume Takashi as he meets and helps a small deity, Tsuyukami, meaning the Dew God (Omori). This episode explores the relationship between deity Youkai and humans as well as the passage of time and how it has affected the religious landscape of Japan.
The episode starts with Natsume meeting the titular dew god Tsuyukami. Tsuyukami appears as a human, and is only a few inches tall. He asks Natsume to return his name, as Natsume is in possession of it. Unfortunately, the page that Tsuyukami’s name is written on is stuck to the page behind it, rendering it impossible to be given back. Natsume instead follows Tsuyukami to his shrine in the neighboring town. There he meets the only follower of Tsuyukami, Mrs. Hana, an old woman who comes to the shrine to give offerings. The reason that Tsuyukami is so small is because his size is related to how many followers he has, and Mrs. Hana is his only follower.
Mrs. Hana relates to Natsume the reason that she still worships Tsuyukami. When she was a young woman everyone in the village prayed to Tsuyukami, as the building of his shrine came shortly before a bountiful harvest. Everyone believed that Tsuyukami caused the harvest and gave him thanks in the form of offerings. One day while she was praying, Hana saw Tsuyukami sitting beside the shrine. Which was unusual as everyone else was not able to see Youkai and deities. When Mrs. Hana blinked, Tsuyukami was gone from sight. Ever since then she had always prayed to the Dew God, even after everyone else had stopped.
The theme and mood of this episode is different from a majority of the rest. “The Dew-God's Small Shrine” talks about the relationship between Youkai and humans, where usually the only relationships we see in this series are between two humans, two Youkai, or a Youkai and Natsume. This is the only episode that specifically shows the relationship between a Youkai, Tsuyukami, and a human, Mrs. Hana. Also, “The Dew-God's Small Shrine” is the only episode in the season to have a human character besides Natsume acknowledge the existence of a Youkai. All other episodes have almost two worlds that the Youkai and humans live in. They are never seen interacting with each other.
The appearance of a local deity in Natsume Yuujinchou is not uncommon for the Shinto religion. Most nature Gods, which is the kind of God that Tsuyukami is, are worshipped in small shrines. These Gods protect the activities of humans, being denoted as gods of fortune, harvests, hunts, and war, etc. (Hamidah, et al). We see this with Tsuyukami, who coincidentally comes to the village just before a large harvest is reaped. Afterwards the people of the town worship him and leave offerings and pray to Tsuyukami, who grows stronger with the worship that he is receiving.
This is very important for the characterization of Youkai in the show, as not only being monsters but as being divine or at least friendly to humans. This is only the second episode in the series, so the viewer wouldn’t really have an all encompassing understanding of Youkai yet. To have a Youkai this early in the story that is kind to Natsume is a strong message to the viewer that Youkai are both a diverse group, and not all are evil beings. This is backed up by information given in Pandemonium and Parade (Foster), which details Youkai as not being simply malicious spirits. This designation of Youkai is used by Natsume Yuujinchou to examine Shintoism and specifically to look into how worship in Japanese Shintoism has changed.
It is important to note how Shintoism existed in the mid- to late-Twentieth Century. After World War II, Shintoism was almost banned in Japan by the occupying American forces. This is because the Empire of Japan, which had just lost World War II and was dissolved by the Americans, was very closely tied to Shintoism. The Americans banned Shintoism from Japanese educational programs, accused Shintoism for responsibility of the American-Japanese war, and stopped government funded shrines and practices of Shintoism (Ueda). After the occupation these bans were lifted, but it took time to bring back Shintoism to what it was before the war.
This idea of a revitalization of Shintoism in Japan is mirrored in a lot of ways in Natsume Yuujinchou. Firstly, Natsume himself sees Youkai, which represents his awakening to Shintoism. The Youkai themselves are both actually from the Shinto religion and in the series are used to represent the whole of Shintoism. Some Youkai represent the followers of Shintoism that hung onto their older beliefs, who dislike humans for their modern lifestyles (Omori). Other Youkai, like Tsuyukami, represent forgotten deities who are worshipped by the few humans that still remember them. Characters like Natsume, and Natsume’s grandmother represent modern Japan, specifically the modern Japanese who practice Shintoism. And finally, Mrs. Hana represents everyone who held onto Shintoism during the post-war occupation while the others stopped.
Shintoism was never in any danger of obscurity. It always had a substantial following. However, Shintoism has changed in the last seventy years, in the same way that Japan has changed. Just as Japan urbanized, Shintoism did, too. Shrines became a way to distinguish different neighborhoods in the large cities of Twentieth Century Japan. They became gardens and parks where residents would sit or stroll through, and although these shrines were still used as places of prayers, praying was not the only thing that happened in these urban shrines any more (Nelson). This was a divergence from the rural and remote shrines like Tsuyukami’s.
Natsume Yuujinchou shows the passage of time in Shintoism through the elderly Mrs Hana’s sole devotion to Tsuyukami, how the older way of practice slowly was left behind, as well as how the revitalization of Shintoism became incorporated with urban parks and fairgrounds through the young Natsume. Youkai like Tsuyukami, situated in remote shrines that have been left to the ages, living on in the few individuals that remember them, shows the shift of Shintoism in modern Japan.
The idea that the Youkai in Natsume Yuujinchou are products of an undiagnosed mental illness comes up whenever Natsume interacts with other human characters. Whether it’s Natume’s adoptive parents from whom he desperately wants to hide his hallucinations, or his friends who understand that he tends to act strangely at times, most of the human-to-human interactions tend to have an underlying pretence of Natsume concealing his illness. There is a persistent theme of Natsume having to hide his experiences with Youkai from others due to the social repercussions of having hallucinations.
There are multiple types of hallucinations, including five main hallucinations that are based on the senses that are affected. Visual, auditory, and tactile are the most common forms of hallucinations, with auditory hallucinations being the most common of these (Chaudhury). Natsume exhibits three hallucinations: auditory hallucinations, tactile hallucinations, and formed visual hallucinations. Formed visual hallucinations are hallucinations that are experienced by the individual as “ ...denatured people, parts of bodies”. Unformed visual hallucinations are described as, “...unidentifiable things and superimposed things.” (Chaudhury). Essentially Natsume sees formed hallucinations of people and things rather than unformed visual hallucinations like flashes of light or stripes of color, resulting in vivid hallucinations of Youkai.
Hallucinations are common in psychotic disorders, which include schizophrenia and its spectrum, as well as other disorders that display hallucinations, delusions, disorganized thoughts and speech, and other symptoms (DSM). With any mental illness there are prejudices, and Japanese society is no exception. There is a large amount of information of mental health stigma in Japan, with studies done on every kind of diagnosis and the stigma surrounding them, including schizophrenia.
In Japan polls were carried out to determine what the prejudices in Japanese society looked like: “Significant stigmatizing attitudes towards people with mental illness were observed among the general public. In an Internet‐based survey, 56% of participants agreed that schizophrenic patients could harm children.16 In another general public survey, 48–61% would not employ someone with schizophrenia, 58–74% would not vote for a politician with schizophrenia...” (Ando, et al). The stigma of mental health in Japan is a real concern to anyone who has to live their lives with schizophrenia. Natsume is facing those prejudices even in his early life.
The first episode of the series depicts a flashback of Natsume’s childhood. He’s sitting down at the dinner table, having gotten one too many plates for the table. When the adults at the table ask him why he got the extra plate he says it’s for their guest, ”But what about that man over there?” (Omori). Then a shot of a strange looking person at the end of the table is shown. The person had long black hair partially obscuring his face and an inhuman smile going ear to ear. He stands behind the adults at the table, waving to the fourth wall. The viewer is to assume it’s a hallucination from Natsusme, as none of the adults can see it. The flashback goes on to show the adults remarking on Natsume’s behavior. Saying that he’s speaking nonsense, and is creeping them out, with Natsume on the other side of a door listening to them.
The thirty-second flashback only conveys information that gives background to how others react to Natsume’s hallucinations. The main point is that the other humans think it’s weird and nonsensical. Although they don’t specifically say that they think it’s a disorder they aren’t seeing Natsume’s behavior as him having miraculous powers to see Youkai. The important detail is that this is Natsume’s flashback. It’s through his childhood memories that we see these reactions from the adults in his life.
The flashback is framed as having the adults be wrong. They don’t see the Youkai, and wrongly judge Natsume as a liar and an attention seeker. Natsume could genuinely be experiencing hallucinations, and the adults in his life are grossly underestimating how bad his situation is. None of the people he stays with are his parents, they are all distant relatives and foster parents who abandon him when he starts to display his strange behavior. With this kind of environment that Natsume lives in, the chance of one of his guardians realizing he has a mental disorder is less likely.
Into his adolescence his situation hardly changes. Natsume goes from school to school and home to home, leaving once his guardians and friends notice his behavior regarding his hallucinations, hallucinations that are one of the main symptoms of a mental disorder that has, “...prejudice regarding inabilities, dangerousness, and unpredictability of patients appeared to be strongly linked to negative attitudes toward schizophrenia in the general public.” (Ando, et al). There is a large prejudice in Japan that is directly related to schizophrenia, and Natsume Yuujinchou shows the repercussions of having such negative attitudes toward mental disorders in Japan.
The series very clearly depicts Natsume trying to act as if he does not see what he actually sees. Most episodes have sections where Natsume has to balance seeing Youkai with talking to his family, interacting with his friends, and even being able to function in school. Through various short flashbacks we see snippets of Natsume’s early life, much like the one shown in the first episode. All of these have silhouetted figures of his old friends and guardians that are shunning him. Words like liar, creep, sick, and unwell are spoken by these silhouettes, showing Natsume’s fear of being ostracized by others.
This fear is caused by the stigmas surrounding the behavior that Natsume exhibits. Though he was never diagnosed with a mental illness, his behavior is seen by others in the same light as someone who was diagnosed. In the flashbacks themselves purple fog appears, almost like miasma permeating the air around Natsume. These visual aspects of the flashbacks show how Natsume remembers his past experiences. They are silhouetted people without faces, showing how it isn’t one instance, but many repeated over his childhood. And the miasma, like a sickness that drives everyone away, is how he pictures others seeing him.
These stigmas toward mental disorders are greatly impacting Natsume, affecting him long after any particular incident happened. Natsume Yuujinchou is directly showing the effects of these negative stigmas and prejudices through Natsume’s interactions with others. He is slow to make friends because he fears that they will ostracize him because of his mental disorder. At first he doesn’t want to associate too much with his foster parents because he knows that they will find out about his hallucinations and want him out of their house. Natsume Yuujinchou uses Youkai to portray the social stigmas against mental health disorders. Youkai are integral to the message: that mental health stigma greatly impacts the people that are associated with them.
Natsume Yuujinchou uses Youkai in its themes to show two realities of modern Japan. One is the changing religious landscape of Japanese Shinto. Through the story of Tsuyukami and Mrs. Hana the urbanization of Shinto shrines as an effect of modernization is explored. The other reality is of mental health stigma in Japan, where prejudices of schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders are prevalent. Natsume is ostracized due to his underlying mental health issues, and exhibits trauma because of his ability to see Youkai. Both of these themes are addressed through Youkai and the people who see them. Youkai are used in Natsume Yuujinchou to discuss the topics of mental health stigma and modern Shintoism, through the use of Youkai characters to show a shift in the divine landscape of Japan, and plots that use Youkai as a way to highlight a problem with the way that Japan sees mental health. Naturally there are many other themes that can be explored, as well as different ways to interpret the themes examined in this essay, but the discussions of mental health and changing religious climates that come up from the two themes discussed are well worth acknowledging.
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