Speaking of the word "monster", I don't know what everyone will think of?
What comes to my mind is that when I watched the 86 version of "Journey to the West" when I was a child, Wukong's classic line "Monster, **run", Bajie said "Senior brother, **was captured by monsters", and Senior Brother Sha said: "Senior brother, ** and second senior brother were captured by monsters". At that time, I thought that monsters were terrifying, but I always felt that with Wukong, these monsters would eventually be surrendered.
Later, when I watched the oldest version of "Liao Zhai" with my grandmother, the turquoise lighting effect, and the soundtrack at the beginning, I remember that I didn't dare to get up at night to go to the toilet for a long, long time after watching it. Therefore, even if I read Mr. Pu Songling's book "Strange Tales from Liaozhai" later, I still can't eliminate the shadow of ghosts when I was a child.
Later, when I was in kindergarten, what I always remember is the story about the "snail girl" told by the kindergarten teacher, so many times when I see that kind of old house, when the smoke is curling, I can't help but bring that story. Although the snail girl is also a spirit, she is a good person.
Actually, I'm a curious person, and I've wondered more than once why there is such a legend as a yokai. Is a legend really a legend? Even if you read more books later, and understand that these stories are actually a kind of literary expression of the creators of that era, you still can't help but wonder when our memories and cultures will be related to this aspect of memory.
Zhang Yun, the author of the book "Monster Talk", believes that the monster culture that we often heard about when we were children is a wonderful flower in our excellent traditional Chinese culture, and in our cultural changes, such a culture contains the exploration and imagination of our ancestors about the world. Therefore, if we want to understand the thoughts, spiritual homeland, and even the living conditions of our ancestors, it is necessary to study the culture of Zhiwei in our country.
The written records about Zhiwei that have been handed down from ancient times to the present, such as "The Classic of Mountains and Seas", "Sou Shen Ji", "Notes on Reading Wei Caotang", "Liao Zhai Zhi Wei", "Zi Bu Yu", etc., may have their meaning and reason for existence in their time. However, today, when we open these books, we are still fascinated by the stories inside, and even fascinated. looks like the story of Zhiwei, but in fact, it is about people's hearts.
01 Why study youkai.
Why do we study yokai today? Some say it's superstition. Actually, we are studying the inheritance of this kind of culture, not to promote those specious things. The most important thing is to get to the bottom of it.
Friends who have been in contact with Japanese culture know that in many Japanese anime works, there are actually records of yokai, and some yokai are even a bit similar to what we talk about in culture. This begs the question, which country has the first origin?
That's why we're looking into it. If possible, we pay attention to a reasoned and evidence-based approach. After tracing back to the roots, we found that 70% of the yokai prototypes in Japan are from China. Including the Tamamo front and Guhou birds that we saw in some games before, they are actually some ancient demon beasts. But when we read their stories, we found that although they are demons, they have human temperament.
How do you interpret the word "youkai"? According to the author's meaning, it is a strange and grotesque phenomenon or thing that is ** in real life but beyond people's normal cognition. Its main characteristics are: "weird, abnormal, with reality as the soil, not a personal fabrication out of thin air, beyond cognition, it is a thing, or it may be a certain phenomenon, through the human senses, psychological manifestation".
Therefore, we will find that from childhood to adulthood, the stories we hear about Zhiwei are actually related to human beings. Either it is feared by humans, or it coexists with humans, or it is exterminated by humans.
This also leads to another thought about yokai, as if in different periods, the impression of yokai in our hearts is different.
In ancient times, human beings faced many challenges in their survival, and almost everything in nature threatened us except for ourselves. Therefore, in some early cultures, we see that the image of the yokai is unknown, a force beyond humans, and an existence that cannot be resisted. Therefore, the attitude of human beings towards them is surrender and awe.
Later, humans slowly developed the ability to thrive on Earth. As we learn more about nature, we have become more and more popular in terms of images that we have expressed, but they have some abilities that we don't have.
And today, you see that our cognition of Zhiwei comes more from a kind of literature, or is drawn into an animated image, and then follows a lot of peripherals related to this, adults and children for these Zhiwei images, more like the kind of doll that can be held in the hand of the kind of intimacy.
Therefore, the most practical thing about the study of monster culture is to let us preserve a spirit of curiosity about those curious things, know what they are, and know why they are.
02 Those questions that grandparents can't answer.
When we were children, many of the stories we learned about these strange things were a way for old people to coax children. However, in that era of curiosity, we must have a lot of questions to ask besides listening to our grandparents' stories?
For example, when we hear the story of "the carp jumps over the dragon gate", we must ask, why can we become a dragon by jumping over that gate?
We also ask, are youkai good people? Or the bad guys? Because we will hear some cute stories of spirits, and we will also see some monsters who are demagogic and captured by Taoist priests.
When watching "The Legend of the New White Lady", I believe this question is the most asked. After all, at that time, what I never understood was why Fahai had to arrest the White Lady.
In fact, grandparents may not be able to answer similar questions, because they also heard from their grandparents, as if no one asks so many whys, but stories that have been passed down from generation to generation.
So in this book, the author also gives an answer to these questions based on his own research. For example, youkai often haunt the **? In fact, from the currently recorded stories in China, we find that there are mountains, rivers and lakes, rivers and lakes, cities and villages, almost all of our human activities.
For example, when do youkai usually appear? When I was a child, I watched "Liao Zhai", and the deepest impression was the dark and windy night, so to this day, I usually don't like to go out at night.
Also, those youkai who will fall in love with humans, are there more male or female youkai? It looks like a very interesting question, but in fact, there are the imprints of the people of that era behind it.
It can be said that in this book, I did see the answers to some questions that I had been thinking about myself before.
03 The cultural connotation conveyed by the yokai.
After reading this book, I feel that what I have gained the most is actually the understanding of the connotation behind this culture.
From the origin of the yokai, we found a point that has always been said in our culture, "everything has a spirit", so even in the toilet, there are corresponding spirits. Even if it is the pen we use to write, the ink we use to write can become a spirit. Even if it is a stone lion at the entrance of the stone temple, after a long time, it will give birth to a spirituality.
Therefore, in the good and evil of the ancients, everything has a spirit, and everyone is the same, but the species is different, so there is awe. From the initial spirit is from everything around us, to the later spirit and human world, in fact, what gradually distinguishes us is our cognition and understanding of nature.
In addition, when we look at these strange books today, we find a problem, that is, these stories have our ancient concept of good and evil. Whether it's a monster or a human, if you do something wrong, you will be punished, and if you do something good, you will be rewarded. We often say that "there are gods in the head", but in fact, what we pay attention to is a kind of reverence for cause and effect.
This kind of awe is precisely what many people lack at the moment.
In many of the stories we read, there is actually an eternal theme, that is, what is the picture of the monster coming to the crowd? Many of the stories we hear are about people who are in love with humans. So there are a lot of concrete characters derived from this.
In these images, we took a closer look, and in fact, there are human shadows. Therefore, it can be said that the ancients also expressed their thoughts and cognition through these stories.
Today, we still listen to these weird stories, which are interesting and shocking, but the hidden cultural connotations and inheritances behind them may be more important for us to delve into.
As our understanding of the world continues to deepen, it is actually more necessary for us to find out how to popularize those philosophies that were once covered with mythology. Although the people of that era were ignorant, they themselves revered heaven and earth, ghosts and gods, and everything around them. And we, we may be enlightened, but we lack the reverence for many things, and between believing in personal power and acting in vain, what is the right choice for us.
Whether it is those monsters that circulate in everyone's hearts, or mythological TV series, it seems to remind you that if you are not a monster, you are destined to be a bad party. When we start to study yokai, in fact, we start to study the good and evil, right and wrong of the human heart.
2024 Book of Answers