Author Archives: Emma Yuan

Tale of the Selkies

Text:

Selkies are mythical female figures who live as seals in the ocean but transform into gorgeous humans when shedding their seal skin.

One day, a Selkie falls in love with a human fisherman and has a baby with him. After the baby is born, the Selkie steals her seal skin back and swims back to the ocean.

While the above version is the Irish tale—the most commonly known version of the story, there are multiple variations of the story of Selkies.

In the Icelandic version, the Selkies are human women who have suicided and thus become seals in the sea. There is also a much darker version of the story: One day, the Selkie brings her kid (who is also somehow a Selkie) in the form of seals to swim back to the fisherman. However, the fisherman, not knowing they are returning, hunts for seals, who are in fact his wife and kid, and eats them all.

The tale of the Selkies also inspired modern media productions, like the 2014 animation film Song of the Sea.

Context: The interviewee learned this folktale after watching Song of the Sea in 2014 and became curious to find out the original story the film’s plot is based on. She then searched up the Irish version of the story online, while also learning its variations.

Analysis:

Domestic Roles: The Selkie’s story, at its core, reflects the tension between one’s true self and their performance of specific domestic roles, and the cost of choosing one over the other. For example, in the tale, the seal skin is a symbol of the Selkie’s true self, and the ocean symbolizes where she belongs. However, the “human world” is where she performs her domestic roles as the wife of the fisherman and the mother of her child. Selkie’s longing for the sea and stealing her seal skin back becomes a coded articulation of desires for autonomy. However, in this story, choosing one over another (true self vs. domestic roles) has certain costs: choosing to go back to the ocean—to her true self—means leaving her children and family.

Death and Liminality: In the Icelandic Version, where Selkies are suicided women, carries the idea that death is not the termination, but rather a metamorphosis—human women who have suicided continue to exist, just in a different form, apart of the human world.

Hanako-San

Text:

Interviewee: Hanako-San’s story is an urban legend in Japan, widely spread among children. While I believe it began spreading among people in the mid-20th century, it has been passed down to this day.

Hanako-San is a young girl who wears a red skirt or dress. According to this tale, when you go to a lavatory at night, Hanako-San will haunt you when you are using it.

If you knock a closed toilet stall door three times, Hanako-San will appear. In some versions, it has been told that after Hanako-San’s appearing, if you look up, there will be a ghost looking at you. In other versions of the story, a hand—Hanako-San’s hand, will appear, and Hanako-San will kill you.

There are some versions of the story that have a good ending. For instance, in one version of the tale, when Hanako-San appears, she will play game with you. And this is typically a good ending.

Interviewer: Why is Hanako-San there (in the lavatory)? Any suspicions?

Interviewee: There are sayings about how Hanako-San became a ghost. Some people say she was threatened, frightened, and bullied, and so she hid in a school’s lavatory and died there. Some others say that Hanako-San’s death was caused by air raids in World War II, which makes sense given when the story was first told.

Context:

My interviewee learned Hanako-San’s story when listening to a Chinese podcast. The host of that podcast specializes in Japanese horror stories. My interviewee thinks of this story as a “typical childhood ghost story.” She also uses this legend as a way to learn about Japanese culture and society—their history (such as WWII being alluded to in this legend) and ideologies, etc.

Analysis:

  • Psychoanalytic interpretation: This urban legend can be interpreted using psychoanalytic theory. At its core, this legend functions as an externalization of repressed anxieties in Japanese society: fears that the Japanese society couldn’t openly confront, such as child mortality, wartime trauma, and school bullying.
  • Spatial symbolism: Toilet rooms are typically very small and confined. Their confinement targets people’s fear and mirrors their repressed anxiety.
  • Social issues / Wartime origin: Though this is only one variation of the story, the wartime origin (Hanako-San dying of WWII air raids) connects to Japan’s generational, collective trauma and guilt (this legend was first spread around 1950, not long after WWII). This embodies people’s way of processing this war, as well as the historical violence.

Kuchisake-Onna

Kuchisake-Onna

Text:

When you are walking on a street in Japan, you will likely encounter a woman who wears a white mask that covers her face, white clothes, and a white cap or hat. She is Kunchisae-Onna.
If you ever encounter her on the road, she will ask you,
“Am I beautiful?”

If you answer “Yes,” she will take off her mask, and you will see that there is a huge scar on her face.

After having you see the scar, she will ask you again,

“Am I beautiful?”

If you answer “Yes”—she will use a pair of scissors to cut you to death.

If you answer “No”—she will use a pair of scissors to cut you to death, too!


This story was so widespread that it once evoked a national fear in Japan. Press were even writing to the public in order to clear the air.

People also say that there are some ways to “counter” the deadly consequences when encountering Kuchisake-Onna. For example, you can answer “it’s okay”, “meh” or just not answer or say something nonsensical (like “tires” or “candy”), and she’ll let you off the hook.


Context:

The interviewee learned this folktale when listening to a Chinese podcast (name of the podcast: VG 聊天室). She uses this piece of folklore as a way to understand Japanese society. The interviewee thinks this legend reveals Japanese women’s social anxiety and anxiety about their appearance. She also thinks Kunchisae-Onna’s behavior represents her vanity.

Analysis:

  • The Scar and Cultural Anxiety: from a psychoanalytic perspective, the scar of Kunchisae-Onna represents a repressed cultural anxiety about beauty and fitting in Japanese societal beauty standards.
  • Female Rage: The fact that Kuchisake-Onna kills regardless of how you answer—whether you say “yes” or “no”—is a manifestation of female rage. Specifically, it is Kunchisae-Onna’s rage for the societal beauty standards and her impossibility of fitting in. The public’s fear of Kunchisae-Onna, and finding ways to “escape” the deadly consequences, is representative of the social fear of female rage. Kunchisae-Onna is not a monster, but she is portrayed as a monstrous, mad person and somebody to be cautious of—this speaks to the social fear of female rage.
  • National Anxiety: The fact that this legend spread nationally, widely enough, that it required press intervention itself speaks to how effectively the legend tapped into pre-existing, widely shared anxieties among Japanese individuals.

Ghost Pressing on the Bed

Text:

Interviewee: When I was young, my mom and dad would say it’s “Ghost pressing on the bed” that made me unable to move my body, despite being mentally awake.

I was 7 years old. One day, I woke up early in the morning —I think it’s around 4 or 5 o’clock—I was mentally awake, but I just couldn’t move my body. I thought I was stuck by something, but it was invisible, so I could not really see what happened on my body. This kind of like situation stayed with me for around 10 minutes. And then I fell asleep again, and then the next time I woke up, I could move properly.

When I told my parents about this, they said, “Oh, it’s a ghost. He or she was pressing down on your body so you could not move.”

It’s kind of like a common belief or way to explain this in China. Scientifically speaking, it’s about your mind—maybe you are being too mentally stressed or, like, too tired, and that will happen to you.

But the tricky thing is that after that happened, I kept dreaming about weird things. I would dream of being in a playground, like a theme park, and riding a rollercoaster without any security belts on. And then, I saw someone sitting next to me, but I couldn’t really see her face, though I somehow knew it was a woman. It was just so scary that I almost peed (and I was young, only seven years old.)

I never told my parents that I had this dream after the “Ghost pressing down on my bed” experience because I didn’t know how to tell them, or maybe I was too ashamed to tell them. Now, when I think back on this experience, I think it’s funny—it’s something that not everyone will experience, and it’s something that is both very tricky and very unique.

Context:

My interviewee was told of this ghost by her parents when she was 7 years old, when she experienced sleep paralysis. She was then told of this monster that pressed against her on her bed, which made her uneasy even after that experience.

Analysis:

  • Folklore filling an explanatory gap: before scientific understanding of sleep paralysis was widely understood and accessible, the supernatural was used by folks to provide culturally acceptable explanations of this symptom.
  • Psychological pressure: The ghost that presses down can be read as a projection of psychological weight: stress, anxiety, repressed fear, made into an external, physical force in the form of a supernatural ghost. This is an example of using an “external being” to explain what’s inside people’s minds—their unconscious, inexplicable feelings and anxieties.
  • Memorate: this story is also an example of a memorate: a personal encounter with a legendary figure or spirit.

To Keep a Child Healthy: Chinese Proverb on Restoring Balance in Yin and Yang

Age: 57

Interviewee:
My father, who used to be a vet when he was younger, always said this Chinese proverb to us:
“If you want a kid to be healthy, you need to let them be a little hungry and a little cold.”

“想要小儿安，三分饥和寒”

This proverb basically tells us about the importance of restoring balance in order to have a healthy body from the perspective of Chinese Traditional Medicine [zhong yi]. The main idea is that for a child to stay healthy and safe, they should not eat until hungry (a slight sense of hunger is ideal), and they should not be dressed too warmly (a slight sense of cold is actually best for their body).

From the perspective of Chinese Traditional Medicine, the reasoning goes like this: children are believed to have an abundance of “Yang” energy, the one in “Yin” and “Yang”, which runs their body hot and active. Because of this, giving a child too much food can cause internal heat buildup. In Chinese, this is called getting too much fire, which metaphorically says about how it’s like your internal organs are on fire, which can lead to irritation or illness. Similarly, giving a child too many layers of clothes to wear traps heat and makes them prone to fever. This saying, to me, reflects a core philosophy in Chinese Traditional Medicine about health. It’s about how balance is restored by restraining oneself from taking in anything that is “too much” for your body. And this balance is what Chinese traditional medicine really revolves around.


Context:

The interviewee learned this belief in folk medicine from his father, who used to be a vet. My informant’s interpretation of this folk belief is that it is reflective of the Yin and Yang elements crucial to Chinese Traditional Medicine.

Analysis:

This belief about the restoration of balance in Yin and Yang is a folk medical belief transmitted through familial oral tradition.

Cosmological Framework: This belief echoes the Chinese cosmological framework of Yin and Yang—Yin and Yang are evenly divided in half, and imbalance, or having too much of Yang, can make one unhealthy.

Genre Analysis: This proverb in Chinese has an even number of characters in its clauses, which makes it easy to remember and pass down orally. In addition, the last character of each of the clauses is rhyming with each other, adding to this trait from a phonetic perspective. This proverb is also notable for how it encodes complex Chinese Traditional Medicine theory into a compact, easily transmissible form, where people who do not know Chinese Traditional Medicine well can capture the essence of it by hearing this proverb, which is in plain language and is easy to understand.