Haunted housewares

I don't own many things that are all that old.

I'm referring to human-made objects, of course.  I have a couple of Devonian-age brachiopod fossils that I collected in a nearby creek bed that are around four hundred million years old.  In general, rocks are more unusual if they're really new; I have a piece of basaltic lava rock I brought back from my trip to Iceland a couple of years ago that was part of an active flow only a few years ago.

Human-made things, though, don't usually last very long.  I don't have anything "passed down in my family" that goes back more than two generations.  I have a couple of beautiful old bookcases that belonged to my paternal grandmother, and that's about it.  As far as other antiques, the two oldest things I own are both musical instruments -- my Ivers & Pond piano, which was made in Boston in 1876, and a wooden keyed flute I got (no lie) in a used-goods store in Tallinn, Estonia, which was made in France in around 1880.  Interestingly, I got both of them super cheap.  The flute was unplayable because the middle joint had a crack, which I had repaired when I got back to the States, and the piano I got for free -- it'd been sitting in someone's garage, unplayed, for years -- so the only cost to me was hiring some piano movers, and then getting it tuned once I got it into my house.

Otherwise?  Most everything else we have is pretty recent.  We've been told our home decorating style is an apparently real thing called "Shabby Chic."  I don't know about "chic," but we've definitely got the "shabby" part locked down.  The fact that my wife and I are both Housework Impaired, combined with owning three dogs, makes it unlikely we'll ever be featured in Home Beautiful.

The reason this all comes up is that I just stumbled across a curious Japanese legend called Tsukumogami (つくも神) that says if you own an object that is over a hundred years old, it becomes a Yōkai (妖怪, literally, "strange apparition"), a sentient being imbued with its own spirit.  These spirits can be benevolent or malevolent, or sometimes maybe they just need a hug:

The Lantern Ghost, by Katsushika Hokusai, ca. 1830 [Image is in the Public Domain]

Some of the objects that allegedly became Yōkai include a pair of sandals, a lute, a folding screen, a sake bottle, a gong, a vegetable grater, an umbrella, a mirror, a teakettle, and a clock.  There are lots more, though -- an eighteenth century book called Hyakki Tsurezure Bukuro (百器徒然袋 -- literally, "One Hundred Haunted Housewares") describes all kinds of haunted objects, including the terrifying Menreiki (面霊気), a horrible monster composed entirely of masks:

The Menreiki, from Hyakki Tsurezure Bukuro [Image is in the Public Domain]

I love masks, and actually collect them, but if they start coming to life and chasing me around, I'm done.

What I find fascinating about stories like this is how specific they are.  It's not just a vague "things going bump in the night" kind of legend; this is a koto (a Japanese zither) suddenly growing a horrible face and lots of extra strings:

Koto-furunushi, from Hyakki Tsurezure Bukuro [Image is in the Public Domain]

My reaction to all this is not simply my usual rationalism kicking in, wondering, "Why would people believe this when it so clearly doesn't ever happen?"  It's also considering how scary it must be for people who think the world actually works this way.  Of course, I've had the same thought about fundamentalist Christians, who think that an all-loving and compassionate God would make you burn in agony for all eternity because you occasionally look at naughty pictures on the internet.

So Tsukumogami is an interesting legend, but I'm just as happy it's not real.  If my piano suddenly became self-aware and started playing eerie melodies at one in the morning, I think I'd opt right out.  Or, worse, if it started critiquing my playing.  "Merciful heavens, Debussy would be appalled.  Maybe you should go back to playing 'Chopsticks,' or something."

I'm hard enough on my own self, thanks.  I don't need some possessed musical instrument weighing in.

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