TSUKUMOGAMI 付喪神 or 九十九神

Pronunciation: TSOO-koo-moh-GAH-mee

Translation: Very Old Gods or Ninety-Nine-Year-Old Spirits

Also known as: Tool Specters, Haunted Relics, Ninety-Nine Gods, Artifact Demons

Overview

The term tsukumogami doesn’t describe one yōkai but is an umbrella term for numerous bizarre beasties, all sharing one thing in common: they were once inanimate objects, but around their one hundredth birthday, or after a very long time, they acquired a soul, or kami, and came to life. Once these objects become sentient, they spend the rest of their time on Earth giving people a good scare or trying to teach them a lesson.

In ancient times, before these silly, creepy, and weird spirit-imbued relics were called tsukumogami, they went by names like:

You can find them depicted in poems, scrolls, paintings, otogizōshi (old short stories from the Muromachi era, 1336–1573), and children’s card games called karuta. Some of the more common old-fashioned household appliances, tools, or musical instruments that make the change into yōkai are: futons, straw sandals, saddles and stirrups, scrolls with sutras written on them, mirrors, stringed biwa instruments, prayer beads, kimonos, sake jars, radish graters, and (why not?) mosquito nets. Basically, any old—with the emphasis on old—thing can be the receptacle for a soul, given the right conditions.

One of those conditions could be the simple fact that an object reached its magical one hundredth birthday and gained sentience. A second condition occurs when a well-worn object wasn’t treated with respect or was callously thrown away. After becoming self-aware, this tsukumogami’s purpose is to educate its former owner about the importance of caring for their things.

Despite some past tales of tsukumogami banding together, marching raucously through the streets, and genuinely instilling fear into the people who lived nearby, these days it seems they aren’t out to do real harm.

Background and Popular Stories

Tsukumogami are actually connected to housecleaning practices. There is a relatively recent ritual called ōsōji (大掃除), or “big cleaning,” that families all across Japan take part in during the last days of December as a way to welcome in the New Year. It’s based on an older tradition called susuharai (煤払い), which involved sweeping away the soot from candles, lanterns, and the stove that had accumulated in their homes throughout the year. This practice was believed to banish not only filth but also the bad oni (demons). Ridding yourself of these pesky beasts left room for good kami (gods) to enter your home in the coming year. However, during this cleaning, worn out and broken items from all households were usually left on the roadside or along riverbanks. Imagining all this garbage piled up, you can feel the waste and understand how aggravated these once loved items might become at having been thrown away so heartlessly. The best revenge? Transform into a yōkai!

Here are a few haunted artifacts you might have bumped into before. The karakasa (kasa) obake is an old lacquered umbrella recognizable by its giant lidless eye, long tongue, and single hairy leg, and it hops around wildly. The chōchin obake is a washi paper or silk lantern with a gaping mouth from which you can see an old candle burning inside. Bakezōri are ghost sandals with tiny arms and legs and the often seen single eyeball, and then there’s that piece of flying cloth (see the Ittan Momen entry), which is also considered a tsukumogami.

There’s only one real way to deal with these meddlesome beasts, and that’s by holding a kūyo (供養). A kūyo is a Buddhist or Shinto memorial service where prayers are offered over old, most likely damaged items that a person has relied on and used lovingly for a long period of time. For example, these days, still, kūyo are performed for combs, glasses, dolls, and pins and needles. The ceremony for pins and needles is called hari kūyo. It takes place on a designated day at a designated shrine or temple. Here seamstresses gather and sink all their broken pins and needles into blocks of konnyaku jelly or tofu. Incense is burned, prayers are recited, and the seamstresses press their hands together, give thanks to their tools of the trade, and say goodbye. This is the proper way to guarantee your old things don’t come back to haunt you.

In Modern Stories

Various types of tsukumogami appear in manga and anime like xxxHOLiC, GeGeGe no Kitarō, and Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan. There’s also a novel and anime called Tsukumogami Kashimasu (meaning, “We Rent Tsukumogami”) and its sequel Tsukumogami, Asobō yo (meaning, “Let’s Play, Tsukumogami”), written by Megumi Hatakenaka. Here, two protagonists work in a secondhand shop where some of the items are actually tsukumogami that help them solve mysteries.