Japanese folklore is populated by many a weird critter. I am constantly amazed by the bizarre menagerie of monsters that Japanese believed populated their home country. Possibly the strangest I’ve come across so far is the Nuppeppo. The Nuppeppo is actually kind of cute, in a morbid, Tim Burton-esque way. It is a blob of…
Author: Andrew Kincaid
Andrew Kincaid is a writer and a history buff. He has been enamored with history for as long as he can remember. As a kid, he would often go to the library, check out huge stacks of books, and spend hours delving into the dusty past.
Shinigami–Angels of Death
The Grim Reaper is probably the most widely known persona of death in Western cultures. Most typically depicted as a scythe wielding skeleton garbed in black robes, this fearsome figure harvests the souls of the dead, escorting them to the other side to await judgment and their eternal fate. While this symbol of death has…
My Love/Hate Relationship With Tite Kubo’s Bleach
I don’t typically write about anime on here, as I don’t know a whole lot about it and frankly most of it just leaves me cold, if it isn’t just outright annoying. There are some that I like, however. When I came across Bleach one night on Adult Swim, it had me hooked from the…
The Hibagon–Japanese Bigfoot
If locals are to be believed, something strange stalks the hills and mountains of Hiroshima Prefecture. Reports have come in sporadically since the 1970’s of a five foot tall, hairy, gorilla like creature out in the forest. Japanese Boy Scouts have taken casts of ten inch footprints, and multiple witnesses have reported a creature with…
Issei Sagawa–Japan’s Cannibal Killer
Now and then on my blog I will do a post about the worst of the worst–serial killers. When trying to come up with a premise for this week’s post, I stumbled across the strange and macabre story of Issei Sagawa, a cannibal and minor celebrity. Yes, you read that right: a cannibal and a…
Taijin Kyofusho–“The Disorder of Fear”
Recently, I came across an article about a culture bound syndrome called Grisis Siknis, the “crazy sickness” of the Miskito people of Nicaragua. This got me wondering if there were any culture bound syndromes specific to Japan. The interesting thing about these type of psychiatric disturbances is that in a very real sense they sum…