Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 2: is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick.
Speaker 2: And we're jumping right into our fourth and final episode
Speaker 2: in the dream Fall into the Dark series here about
Speaker 2: the mystique of dreaming, particular times and places where dream
Speaker 2: culture was especially pronounced. This, of course, won't be our
Speaker 2: final episode on dreaming, will inevitably come back to dreaming.
Speaker 2: Dreaming is always something that's going to come up one
Speaker 2: way or another in the topics we cover on Stuff
Speaker 2: to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 3: But now, Rob, didn't we begin this whole investigation because
Speaker 3: you got interested in a dream related monster from Japanese folklore.
Speaker 2: That's right, a particular monster that we will be covering
Speaker 2: in this episode, but it kind of served as the
Speaker 2: white Rabbit that we pursued and ended up doing three
Speaker 2: additional episodes, not directly related to it or even its
Speaker 2: direct dream culture. It is the creature we're going to
Speaker 2: be talking about, a largely a creature of Japanese dream culture,
Speaker 2: and so you know, I think it was necessary to
Speaker 2: talk about much of what we talked about in the
Speaker 2: previous three episodes to fully appreciate it. But we are
Speaker 2: going to have to also discuss Japanese dream culture itself
Speaker 2: before discussing this curious creature.
Speaker 3: Right. So, as background, I was looking for a paper
Speaker 3: on how dreams have been viewed in Japanese culture across history,
Speaker 3: and I came across one published in the Journal of
Speaker 3: Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences in nineteen ninety five by Shoozo
Speaker 3: Koyama called Japanese Dreams, Culture and Cosmology. So this is
Speaker 3: a short article by a researcher named Shooso Koyama, who
Speaker 3: at the time of the publication worked at the Japanese
Speaker 3: National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka. Now, of course, the
Speaker 3: way dreams are perceived in Japan across times seems in
Speaker 3: broad regard to mirror patterns we've seen in other cultures,
Speaker 3: where there are some people sometimes who regard them more
Speaker 3: as private internal phenomena with no informational relevance to the
Speaker 3: external world or no special power. It's not like a
Speaker 3: place you go, whereas others see them as having a
Speaker 3: kind of magic or predictive power, or involving genuine interactions
Speaker 3: with spiritual beings. Both good and bad. But what this
Speaker 3: paper does is look at a series of historical periods
Speaker 3: in Japan and try to make a few generalizations about
Speaker 3: trends in how dreams were perceived and written about in
Speaker 3: those periods relative to the other periods. So the author
Speaker 3: begins by looking at the Joman period, which is about
Speaker 3: ten thousand BCE until about five hundred BCE. This is
Speaker 3: a time when Japan was occupied by hunter gatherers who
Speaker 3: lived in small societies. We've talked about the German culture before,
Speaker 3: especially with regards to their fabrication of clay pots. I
Speaker 3: think we talked about this in our episode on the Cauldron,
Speaker 3: and some evidence in early German culture of transitioning from
Speaker 3: a hunter gatherer lifestyle to a more settled lifestyle, staying
Speaker 3: in one place. More so, in this period, there are
Speaker 3: no written records, so it is difficult to have much
Speaker 3: certainty about the beliefs and psychology of people at the time. However,
Speaker 3: we can make some guesses based on iconography preserved in
Speaker 3: artifacts of this culture. So the German people did make
Speaker 3: figurines out of clay and stone, representing both human and
Speaker 3: animal forms. The human forms are very often female, often
Speaker 3: depicted with exaggerated breasts, stomachs, and buttocks, with their faces
Speaker 3: hidden behind masks. These are sometimes interpreted as goddesses or
Speaker 3: figures of fertility, or as substitute human beings who are
Speaker 3: given up as offerings to the gods, and you'll find
Speaker 3: them in different kinds of archaeological settings, may be left
Speaker 3: alone in an abandoned dwelling or deposited in a hole
Speaker 3: in the ground. As for animal forms, one of the
Speaker 3: most common is apparently the snake. Snake designs are found
Speaker 3: on many German vessels, and early snake motifs seem to
Speaker 3: transition into more abstract forms like spirals or waves in
Speaker 3: later designs. Late German figurines also depict bears and wild boars,
Speaker 3: but humans and snakes are especially common. This, according to
Speaker 3: the author, connects to the role of snakes in Japanese mythology.
Speaker 3: There is a very prominent story where a prince kills
Speaker 3: or subdues a snake spirit and this act leads to
Speaker 3: the creation of Japan, and there are also folk tales
Speaker 3: of snakes that transform into or appear as people. For example,
Speaker 3: a snake that transforms into a man in order to
Speaker 3: father children with a human woman, or a man that
Speaker 3: visits a beautiful woman only to discover that she is
Speaker 3: actually a snake in disguise, or has a snake spirit
Speaker 3: revealed and he runs away in terror. Now, to be
Speaker 3: very clear, there is no proof that any of this
Speaker 3: imagery comes from dreams, but in this period, because there
Speaker 3: are no written records of dreams, all you can really
Speaker 3: do is look at the imagery to try to get
Speaker 3: a best guess about what kinds of non realistic subject
Speaker 3: matter preoccupied the early inhabitants of the Japanese archipelago now Koyaman.
Speaker 3: This article uses the stories of humans with underlying snake
Speaker 3: spirits to argue that early Japanese culture is infused with animism.
Speaker 3: Though here I think the author defines animism maybe a
Speaker 3: little bit differently than I'm used to or than I've
Speaker 3: seen in some other scholarships. So in this paper, animism
Speaker 3: is defined as the belief that living beings are composed
Speaker 3: of two substances, spirit and body, that spirit is intangible
Speaker 3: and eternal, and that body is visible and tangible but temporal.
Speaker 3: And of course I'm no expert on the study of religions,
Speaker 3: but I think think usually or at least more often
Speaker 3: animism is taken to me in a belief system that
Speaker 3: you find all around the world, which assumes that not
Speaker 3: only people, but potentially all things have a sort of
Speaker 3: soul or spirit or agency. And this can include animals,
Speaker 3: of course, but also plants, geological features like mountains and rivers,
Speaker 3: just generally places, weather patterns, even human artifacts or abstract concepts,
Speaker 3: and in a sense these all can have a spirit,
Speaker 3: a soul, or a life force with agency, desires, and
Speaker 3: other qualities of mind. One particular thing that's different here
Speaker 3: is that I understand animism to notably make little or
Speaker 3: no distinction between spiritual causes and material causes, whereas this
Speaker 3: definition of animism, I think, would emphasize exactly that difference.
Speaker 3: But I don't want to get two sidetracked here. Koyama
Speaker 3: basically is asserting that that ancient Japanese art and stories
Speaker 3: point toward a belief dividing the world into a material
Speaker 3: reality and a spiritual reality that are separate. Now here
Speaker 3: you go to phase two. This period begins five hundred
Speaker 3: BCE and goes until roughly the fifth century CE. The
Speaker 3: historical context is that Koyama says this is when Paddy
Speaker 3: Ricefield cultivation begins in Japan, probably introduced from practices in
Speaker 3: China through Korea. Some Chinese documents from this time imply
Speaker 3: that Japan was probably a large and complex enough society
Speaker 3: that there were different tribal territories. This is indicated by
Speaker 3: references to conflicts between them, and during this time there
Speaker 3: was an influx of new peoples moving in from outside Japan,
Speaker 3: introducing new cultural elements. There was still plenty of figurative
Speaker 3: art from this period. Some German conventions continued, and you
Speaker 3: had depictions of human figures and daily activities. You would
Speaker 3: find figures depicted hunting, harvesting crops, or seafaring. A lot
Speaker 3: of animal representations as well, including figurines of birds and dragons,
Speaker 3: which are not really present in Phase one. Koyama says,
Speaker 3: it's notable that both of these creatures that show up
Speaker 3: here can fly, and then writes quote. This coincides with
Speaker 3: the fact that newcomers believed they were the descendants of
Speaker 3: celestial gods, while indigenous groups were called offspring of gods
Speaker 3: of the land in mythology. As a symbol of the sun,
Speaker 3: mirrors were used by newcomers. A quantity of Chinese bronze
Speaker 3: mirrors have been excavated from large scale tombs, apparently very
Speaker 3: important artifacts. Decoration on the backs of some mirrors depict
Speaker 3: a Taoist cosmology, and it's in this period that we
Speaker 3: have the first references to dreaming in Japanese culture in
Speaker 3: written records. There's a collection of Chinese historical texts known
Speaker 3: as the Way Dynasty Chronicle, which these texts claim that
Speaker 3: the Queen of Japan, in Coyama's words quote, governed her
Speaker 3: nation by shamanism, though I'm not quite sure what that means.
Speaker 3: So there is a collection of Chinese historical texts known
Speaker 3: as the Way Dynasty chron and these texts make reference
Speaker 3: to the Queen of Japan, and Koyama says that they
Speaker 3: claimed that she governed her nation by shamanism. During this time,
Speaker 3: there was use of oracle bones to tell the future
Speaker 3: in Japan. Excavated artifacts demonstrate this, so there was a
Speaker 3: form of There were forms of divination in practice, and dreams,
Speaker 3: as we know, are very often in basically all cultures,
Speaker 3: at some points used for divination to try to get
Speaker 3: access to future information or secret information. There is an
Speaker 3: eighth century Japanese text tradition known as the Kojiki, which
Speaker 3: contains a bunch of myths, legends, and alleged historical accounts
Speaker 3: of Japan up to the seventh century, and it claims
Speaker 3: that during this period, dreaming was used to decide important
Speaker 3: matters of state. And so I'm going to read a
Speaker 3: quote from Koyami here, but it makes reference to an
Speaker 3: emperor Sujin. Sujin was a Japanese emperor, often known as
Speaker 3: one of these so called legends and dairy emperors. Though
Speaker 3: I've read that some think he maybe or probably did
Speaker 3: exist in history, maybe reigning during the first century BCE
Speaker 3: or sometime around then. But what we know about him
Speaker 3: is enmeshed in a lot of legends, so I think
Speaker 3: it's hard to say a lot for certain if he
Speaker 3: did exist. But anyway, the chronicle says Emperor Seugen quote
Speaker 3: had a sacred bed made so that he could dream
Speaker 3: in order to make a decision in a crisis, for example,
Speaker 3: to stamp out epidemics or to nominate the heir to
Speaker 3: the throne. He often listened to the dreams of his
Speaker 3: subjects in order to make national policy. It is clear
Speaker 3: that during this phase people still believed in the supernatural
Speaker 3: world and dreaming was considered a domain where qualified persons
Speaker 3: communicated with powerful spirits. So this mimics beliefs about dreams.
Speaker 3: We've seen from elsewhere that dreams could be used for divination,
Speaker 3: that they could help you predict the future, or they
Speaker 3: could give you advice. Maybe you would be getting advice
Speaker 3: directly from some kind of spiritual entities who had privileged knowledge,
Speaker 3: and that in some cases there were specially qualified people
Speaker 3: who could communicate with these entities in dreams.
Speaker 2: I love this detail that the emperor had a sacred
Speaker 2: dreaming bed. That's that's that's wonderful. This idea that a
Speaker 2: night's sleep needs to be special. Tonight's sleep is just
Speaker 2: about a vital dream that will help lead the way.
Speaker 3: I think you could consider this a form of intentional
Speaker 3: dream incubation. That you know that we see this in
Speaker 3: other cultures, like in ancient Greco Roman culture, there would
Speaker 3: be temples where you could go and sleep in the
Speaker 3: temple in like a special place in order to receive
Speaker 3: a dream from the god. I guess after you made
Speaker 3: an offering to the god because you slept in the temple,
Speaker 3: the dream would be from that God giving you advice
Speaker 3: about what to do in order to solve your problem.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: After this, Koyama goes to Phase three, which is beginning
Speaker 3: in the fifth century and going into the ninth. This
Speaker 3: was a time when Japan was established as a state
Speaker 3: and interacted politically with other states in East Asia koamas As.
Speaker 3: There were strong Chinese influences in Japan at this time,
Speaker 3: including Chinese law codes, as well as the spread of
Speaker 3: philosophies and religions that were either Chinese in origin or
Speaker 3: popular in China already, such as Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism. Now,
Speaker 3: as we've discussed before, I think this came up in
Speaker 3: talking about that book by Lynn Struve. Confucianism sometimes is
Speaker 3: taken to militate against supernatural or so called irrational interpretations
Speaker 3: of dreams. I've read elsewhere. I think that that Confucian
Speaker 3: thinkers were sort of often not on board with the
Speaker 3: idea of dream divination, while Taoism, on the other hand,
Speaker 3: does sort of allow for fortune telling and omens.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's my understanding that sort of three different schools
Speaker 2: here are in play, but those are sort of the
Speaker 2: the major like push and pull between Confusism and Dallism
Speaker 2: concerning dreams.
Speaker 3: From this period, Koyama mentions a Buddhist temple coming back
Speaker 3: to the special dream bed, mentions a Buddhist temple called
Speaker 3: the Horyuji, which was built in the early seventh century
Speaker 3: by a prince named Shotoku, and allegedly the prince would
Speaker 3: lock himself inside this temple for days at a time
Speaker 3: to receive inspiration, and one of the names of this
Speaker 3: building translates to dream hall. However, Koyama says that during
Speaker 3: this period, the primary thing about dreams is that they
Speaker 3: seem mostly kept private, maybe whether one believed in dreams
Speaker 3: as divination or not.
Speaker 2: Okay, so there wasn't as much in the way of
Speaker 2: dream literature at the time.
Speaker 3: But then we reach phase four, and it's when we
Speaker 3: realize we are all just the dream of a giant
Speaker 3: ant mound no sorry movie reference. Beginning in the ninth
Speaker 3: century going on until the thirteenth there is this period
Speaker 3: Koyama characterizes as the maturation of the political and economic
Speaker 3: structure of Japan and the establishment of a court culture
Speaker 3: that includes literature and other elite products. During this period,
Speaker 3: there is a resurgence of interest in dreams as a
Speaker 3: tool for seeing into the future. During this period, there
Speaker 3: is a resurgence of interest in dreams as a tool
Speaker 3: for seeing into the future. This comes in concert with
Speaker 3: what seems to be a general resurgence of belief in,
Speaker 3: or at least interest in supernatural beings and mechanisms like ghosts, demons, wraiths, omens,
Speaker 3: and curses. And during this period Japanese Buddhism Koamas has
Speaker 3: incorporated some Shinto elements, Shinto being sort of the native
Speaker 3: belief system of Japan. Again to the special dream facilities
Speaker 3: and dream beds, Quoyama writes, quote, some temples and shrines
Speaker 3: had special compounds for dreaming. People rushed to such places
Speaker 3: en mass and stayed until they had a good dream.
Speaker 3: There were professional dream interpreters and dreamers by profession. Nightmares
Speaker 3: and sleep disorders were commonplace during this period. However, it's
Speaker 3: important to consider none of these generalizations totalizing, because there
Speaker 3: are some counterexamples, like Koyama mentions a tenth century poetic
Speaker 3: diary known as the Kageroniki, sometimes called The Gossamer Years
Speaker 3: in English, in which the author at one point gets
Speaker 3: a supernatural interpretation of a dream from a priest, and
Speaker 3: she calls the priest's interpretation of the dream a stupid lie,
Speaker 3: but the priest did try to give her the interpretation,
Speaker 3: so it seems maybe that's normal for this period, but
Speaker 3: the author's reaction suggests diversity of opinion on the power
Speaker 3: of dreams among the elite. But overall, if Koyama is correct,
Speaker 3: this is a period where belief in the power of
Speaker 3: dreams flowers. Then there's phase five beginning in the thirteenth century,
Speaker 3: the rise of the samurai class, and it's a sonociated
Speaker 3: power system. Koyama describes them as, for the most part,
Speaker 3: realistic and practical entrepreneurs coyamas as literature of this time
Speaker 3: period shows on average a sort of turning away from
Speaker 3: belief in the power of dreams as supernatural portents or realities,
Speaker 3: at least certainly not as much as there was in
Speaker 3: the phase before. And one example Koyama gives is a
Speaker 3: Japanese epic known as the tai Haiki, or the Chronicle
Speaker 3: of Great Peace. This is written sometime in the late
Speaker 3: fourteenth century, and in part of this text there is
Speaker 3: a warrior named Ayoto who quote refused to receive an
Speaker 3: award after being told that his lord wanted to give
Speaker 3: it because he dreamt of Aoto's distinguished service. He said,
Speaker 3: I can't receive such an irrational award. I did nothing.
Speaker 3: What will happen if he dreams another way? And then
Speaker 3: Coyamas as quote for such people, the difference between dream
Speaker 3: and reality was clearly distinct. And then finally Phase six
Speaker 3: coam this is the nineteenth century onward. One of the
Speaker 3: main changes is the influence of Euro American culture, and
Speaker 3: Coyama says that on one hand, modern Japanese culture has
Speaker 3: a predominantly rationalist and materialist view of nature, which relegates
Speaker 3: streams to natural psychological phenomena with no predictive power or
Speaker 3: reality of their own. On the other hand, he says,
Speaker 3: millions still visit Shinto shrines and keep good luck charms
Speaker 3: in their cars and so forth, and so in some ways,
Speaker 3: elements of what the author refers to as animistic thinking,
Speaker 3: which again seems to mean in this paper, the belief
Speaker 3: in a spiritual dimension of reality that operates outside of
Speaker 3: strict physical causality, can still be found peaking out through
Speaker 3: the top layer of rationalism. Maybe people kind of shift
Speaker 3: back and forth between these ways of seeing the world
Speaker 3: depending on how they feel, though I would say I
Speaker 3: don't think this would be at all unique to Japan.
Speaker 3: It just seems to me this is sort of what
Speaker 3: most people in all societies do.
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, I feel like this comes up time and
Speaker 2: time again, whether we're talking about say, you know, varying
Speaker 2: at times contradictory beliefs about the afterlife and how you know,
Speaker 2: you may think one way in the morning, one way
Speaker 2: in the afternoon, or kind of two ways at once
Speaker 2: without really putting a fine line on it. Likewise, I
Speaker 2: remember when we looked at some research concerning belief in
Speaker 2: modern China in the power of the zodiac concerning when
Speaker 2: a child is born, and you know, as I remember,
Speaker 2: part of that was it was not that you had
Speaker 2: a large number of contemporary people who were super invested
Speaker 2: in this, like the zodiac system and that belief system,
Speaker 2: but they were just a little bit aware of it.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like background superstitious belief that you may
Speaker 2: dip into at times when it seems useful.
Speaker 3: When it feels right, suddenly you'll play on that board.
Speaker 3: But right maybe most the time you're not looking at it,
Speaker 3: yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: Or you have a decision to make and you know,
Speaker 2: you don't have any other factors to go on but
Speaker 2: you do have this bit of you know, traditional lore
Speaker 2: that is a steeped in superstition. You might turn to
Speaker 2: that in those circumstances. And I think this also extends
Speaker 2: to the use of amulets and you know, good luck
Speaker 2: tokens and so forth, you know, because it's like, you
Speaker 2: may not believe it completely, but hey, it doesn't take
Speaker 2: a much room in the pocket or on the dash
Speaker 2: of the car or what have you.
Speaker 3: A person might say, I don't really believe it, but
Speaker 3: it's kind of fun. But then once you have it,
Speaker 3: you can kind of, I don't know, find yourself in
Speaker 3: moments clutching at it. Yes, But you know, an interesting
Speaker 3: thing that I think came up in part three of
Speaker 3: the series is that whether you have a totally rationalistic
Speaker 3: approach to dreams, you don't really, you know, give them
Speaker 3: any any special power. You don't think they were reflect
Speaker 3: a secret reality of spiritual entities interacting or giving you
Speaker 3: information about the future how to live your life. Even then,
Speaker 3: you still don't want to have nightmares. So people are
Speaker 3: looking for ways to have good dreams, whether they think
Speaker 3: dreams are supernatural experiences or not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of like, all right, I wasn't listening
Speaker 2: when you were talking about what this dream and what
Speaker 2: this dream meant. But but you said something about stopping nightmares.
Speaker 2: So let's get back to that, and that's ultimately where
Speaker 2: we come to in discussing the monster. At long last,
Speaker 2: we're going to be talking about the Baku. Now. I
Speaker 2: encourage everyone to look up some illustrations of the Baku,
Speaker 2: certainly the historical illustrations, but I also ran across a
Speaker 2: number of like contemporary, you know, fan illustrations and so forth,
Speaker 2: online illustrations, and many of those are also very impressive.
Speaker 2: I found two major trends in the way that this
Speaker 2: creature is depicted. One is kind of like the frightening
Speaker 2: Avenger of Nightmares version of the Baku, and the other
Speaker 2: is kind of like the I guess, the awe buddy
Speaker 2: version of the Baku, where he just looks looks snugly.
Speaker 3: The funny thing about the I totally agree, yeah you
Speaker 3: have the scary Baku or the snugly Baku, is that
Speaker 3: they both look very huggable, and somehow the scary Baku
Speaker 3: is even more huggable than.
Speaker 2: The two one. Yeah, yeah, I agree, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 2: and yeah, no matter what, there may be some some
Speaker 2: snuggling involved at the end of it. So the Baku,
Speaker 2: I guess just a good place to start is with
Speaker 2: sort of like general descriptions. I always go to Carol
Speaker 2: Roses encyclopedias of monsters and fairies and so forth is
Speaker 2: a good like sort of starting place. And in that
Speaker 2: Rose describes the Baku as a benevolent, semi supernatural monster
Speaker 2: with an appearance that is basically that of a giant taper,
Speaker 2: but a creature that is also described as having the
Speaker 2: body of a horse, the head of a lion, and
Speaker 2: the legs and of a tiger. Note if you haven't
Speaker 2: seen an actual taper, a taper is of course a
Speaker 2: natural world organism. It does not look quite like this,
Speaker 2: though it does look very unique. It is a notable creature.
Speaker 2: I find that when I see one in a movie
Speaker 2: or at a zoo or illustrations online, I can't help
Speaker 2: but feel elated from having seen it.
Speaker 3: To me, a taper or tapier, however, you say it
Speaker 3: is the three way cross between a pig, a panda, bear,
Speaker 3: and an elephant.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess it depends where your starting point is,
Speaker 2: but yeah, taper definitely feels more pig like, yeah, pig
Speaker 2: and rhino based than anything more in the taper here
Speaker 2: in a bit, but the baccu. The idea is that
Speaker 2: humans may call on it in the early morning hours
Speaker 2: to devour a bad dream or nightmare that has plagued
Speaker 2: their dream space, allowing them to forget and carry on
Speaker 2: their day in peace, which is a worthy duty. And
Speaker 2: I also find it interesting that, you know, this kind
Speaker 2: of lines up with the way that that dreams and
Speaker 2: especially bad dreams and nightmares kind of hit it. So
Speaker 2: there's kind of like that period where we can easily
Speaker 2: forget or easily remember. Like part of the principle of
Speaker 2: dream journaling is, oh, you've got to write it down
Speaker 2: before you forget it, And with nightmare sometimes that the
Speaker 2: challenge is reversed. You've got to you've got to not
Speaker 2: think about it before you remember it. You've got to
Speaker 2: forget it before it sticks with you too long.
Speaker 3: That's a good point. Yes, if it was really scary,
Speaker 3: you'll be thinking about it continuously after you wake up,
Speaker 3: which actually cements it in memory.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then there's something about writing it down or
Speaker 2: telling somebody about the dream that certainly brings out the details.
Speaker 2: Sometimes those details that aren't sticking with you, and then
Speaker 2: you start telling someone about the dream or nightmare and
Speaker 2: more that comes to you. Now as a side here
Speaker 2: I was. I found it more than a little shocking
Speaker 2: that the Baku is not listed in Borges The Book
Speaker 2: of Imaginary Beings, which is another book I like to
Speaker 2: refer to time and time again on the show, especially
Speaker 2: given the author's interest in dreams and his reference to
Speaker 2: various dream creatures in the book, like there are entries
Speaker 2: for like here's a creature that C. S. Lewis once
Speaker 2: dreamed about, that sort of thing. I suppose he just
Speaker 2: simply hadn't cross paths with mention of the Baku, otherwise
Speaker 2: he would have been all over it. Or perhaps he's
Speaker 2: just not included there, and he's there's some poem or
Speaker 2: short story I haven't read by by Borges that refers
Speaker 2: to the Baku.
Speaker 3: So I was reading about the Baku in an excellent
Speaker 3: book on my shelf on Japanese monsters called The Book
Speaker 3: of Yokai, which is by an Indiana University folklore scholar
Speaker 3: named Michael Dylan Foster. I've mentioned this book on the
Speaker 3: show before. So according to Foster, the baku is a
Speaker 3: is a friendly yokaia a benevolent yokai. Many yokaia are
Speaker 3: not so friendly, but this one is thought to have
Speaker 3: the power to eat nightmares, but it was not always
Speaker 3: understood this way. Stories of this creature originated in China,
Speaker 3: going at least as far back as a poetry collection
Speaker 3: from the year eight thirty four by the Tang dynasty
Speaker 3: poet by Juye, who lived seven seventy two to eight
Speaker 3: forty six. And according to this text, the baku has
Speaker 3: nose of an elephant, eyes of a rhinoceros, tail of
Speaker 3: an ox, and legs of a tiger.
Speaker 2: It would not be incorrect to say that this monster
Speaker 2: kind of looks like Snuffleopagus, the imaginary friend of Big
Speaker 2: Bird from Sesame Street.
Speaker 3: That's right. But Rob, if you were having nightmares, would
Speaker 3: you consider a possible remedy of this being to skin
Speaker 3: snuffle Upagus. This text says, if you lay out the
Speaker 3: skin when you sleep, you can avoid epidemics, and by
Speaker 3: drawing an image of the baku you can avoid misfortune.
Speaker 3: People with chronic headaches can protect their heads by using
Speaker 3: a screen with an image of the baku when they
Speaker 3: go to sleep. So in this ninth century Chinese text,
Speaker 3: the baku is not yet an eater of bad dreams,
Speaker 3: but I think you can kind of see how you
Speaker 3: would get there. So its skin or its image offers
Speaker 3: general protection from sickness, from bad fortune, and from headaches
Speaker 3: or chronic pain. However, the protection is enacted by placing
Speaker 3: either a piece of or an image of the baku
Speaker 3: around you while you sleep, So sleep is originally part
Speaker 3: of the protective mechanism, not the thing that is being protected,
Speaker 3: though again you can imagine how that transition would occur.
Speaker 3: By the Edo period in the beginning of the seventeenth century,
Speaker 3: the baku had come to be seen in Japan as
Speaker 3: an eater of nightmares, protecting the week when they were
Speaker 3: in the vulnerable position of sleep, and this usually worked
Speaker 3: by placing a picture of the baku near the pillow,
Speaker 3: or sometimes people just had a baku shaped pillow. Now
Speaker 3: you're talking, Do you have a baku pillow?
Speaker 2: No? But I love the idea of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, get one. This would allow you to literally hug
Speaker 3: the baku, Foster says. In a text called the Three Realms,
Speaker 3: there is reference to the baku which includes the details
Speaker 3: that the baku has really strong bones and teeth and
Speaker 3: it's quote it's urine can melt iron and turn it
Speaker 3: into water. What what is that used for? Enemy of magneto?
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess a lot of this comes down to,
Speaker 2: like the fact that we'll come back to it later on,
Speaker 2: is that you know, there is a tradition in multiple cultures.
Speaker 2: Really that's it's not only what the animal is, but
Speaker 2: what can the animal be used for? What are it's
Speaker 2: various medicinal properties, et cetera. And sometimes this can skew,
Speaker 2: This can skew into areas that are maybe a little
Speaker 2: less realistic and more based in magic or some sort
Speaker 2: of or maybe something that doesn't translate as well across
Speaker 2: the centuries.
Speaker 3: Yeah, now there are I know you're going to get
Speaker 3: into this in a minute, so I guess we mostly
Speaker 3: save it for there. But Foster raises the question about
Speaker 3: whether the Baku of folklore is based on the taper
Speaker 3: or not. Basically, there is some question about whether it
Speaker 3: is or not. Some scholars say yes, some say no. Yeah.
Speaker 2: The thing that that's notable about the taper is, of
Speaker 2: course that there are are four species of taper in
Speaker 2: the world today.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: Three of them are native to Central and South America,
Speaker 2: and then you have the Malayan taper, which is found
Speaker 2: in Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, and Thailand.
Speaker 3: Notably none of those places are Japan, right, so.
Speaker 2: There would there would have to be some degree of
Speaker 2: this game of telephone concerning the form, function, and likeness
Speaker 2: of of the particular animal in question, as you see
Speaker 2: with other animals where we've we've talked about in the
Speaker 2: show plenty of times before and we will continue to
Speaker 2: do so. I mean, it's one of the most fascinating
Speaker 2: things in the history of naturalistic art and imaginative art,
Speaker 2: you know, taking this form and then seeing what happens
Speaker 2: to it when you start talking about it and then
Speaker 2: depict it, you know, not even halfway around the world,
Speaker 2: but just you know, a good distance away from it.
Speaker 3: Yes, and this feeds into one of the final observations
Speaker 3: that Foster makes, which I think is very interesting. So
Speaker 3: Foster again makes reference to the fact that the baku
Speaker 3: is described as having like, you know, legs of a
Speaker 3: tiger tail of an ox, so it is a hybrid
Speaker 3: of many different animal parts, and Foster says this is
Speaker 3: typical of how lots of yokai are described, and in
Speaker 3: a way This allows them to exist in between the
Speaker 3: realms of real and imaginary, because all of the parts
Speaker 3: are real, but their combination is imaginary. But there's another
Speaker 3: interesting wrinkle here when it comes to pre modern Japan.
Speaker 3: Foster writes quote to people living in Japan during the
Speaker 3: Edo period or earlier, the very parts from which the
Speaker 3: creature was constructed were as strange and foreign as their
Speaker 3: unnatural combination. Elephants, rhinoceroses, and tigers were not native to Japan.
Speaker 3: Average Japanese person during this time would have seen one
Speaker 3: only in illustrations and books, if at all, the same
Speaker 3: places that might also have images of the baku. That is,
Speaker 3: a baku was presumably no more mysterious and also no
Speaker 3: less real than a rhinoceros. So it's an unreal combination
Speaker 3: of real animal parts. But most of those real animal
Speaker 3: parts are from animals that you never would have seen
Speaker 3: in person.
Speaker 2: Wow Wow, interesting. Now I found an interesting paper about
Speaker 2: the baku or concerns the Baku that I'm going to
Speaker 2: draw some info here from. A titled Cultural Note on
Speaker 2: Dreaming and dream Study in the future. Release from Nightmare
Speaker 2: and Development of Dream Control Technique by Today Ohri published
Speaker 2: in Sleep and biological rhythms in two thousand and five. Now,
Speaker 2: the author here points out something that they're pretty standar
Speaker 2: we've already touched on this already, that you know, nightmares
Speaker 2: can be quite unpleasant. Obviously, they can disrupt your sleep,
Speaker 2: and since they disrupted your sleep, they can disrupt your
Speaker 2: waking life as well, both as a result of lost
Speaker 2: sleep and the emotional and cognitive after effects of the
Speaker 2: nature of nightmares, without even getting into again the more
Speaker 2: extreme cases of parasomnia and night terrors and so forth. Additionally,
Speaker 2: as Horry points out here, stress and trauma in the
Speaker 2: waking world can only intensify bad dreams and nightmares. So
Speaker 2: you know, there are a lot of reasons for the
Speaker 2: content of your dreams, the contents of your nightmares, and
Speaker 2: just nightmares in general to be just this added thing
Speaker 2: that you would like very much to have removed. And
Speaker 2: if given the choice, obviously, if we were to choose
Speaker 2: between good dreams and bad dreams each night, we would
Speaker 2: choose the good dreams. But Horry writes that in the
Speaker 2: ethnic groups and cultures examined in their research anyway, there
Speaker 2: aren't really any person gribed methods to have a good dream.
Speaker 2: Rather there are various rights in formulas to eliminate nightmares
Speaker 2: or minimize their impact. I found that an interesting idea,
Speaker 2: like it did remind me of something from my own childhood,
Speaker 2: but I don't remember if it was something that I
Speaker 2: saw on a TV show. I think it might have been,
Speaker 2: or to what degree it was something that one of
Speaker 2: my parents introduced to me. But there was this idea
Speaker 2: of an imaginary dream machine that before you go to bed,
Speaker 2: you like, you know, you think about this dream helmet
Speaker 2: or whatever that you're putting on or some sort of
Speaker 2: machine you're augmenting, and you tell it what you want
Speaker 2: to dream that night, like you put in your order.
Speaker 2: Which is a great idea, and you know, to some
Speaker 2: degree if it actually worked to any degree, And I remember,
Speaker 2: even as a kid, I found that it did not.
Speaker 2: It had no impact on what I was going to dream,
Speaker 2: and therefore I didn't stick with it because it obviously
Speaker 2: didn't work. Like it you learn really quickly that dreams
Speaker 2: are just going to do their own thing. And for
Speaker 2: that reason, I don't think I ever really introduced it
Speaker 2: to my own son, because I'm like, I'm not going
Speaker 2: to tell you this. This doesn't work at.
Speaker 3: All, I wonder if the effectiveness of it would be
Speaker 3: kind of similar to what people do when they're trying
Speaker 3: to practice lucid dreaming, where, for example, one thing people
Speaker 3: do is like constantly making a habit of asking yourself
Speaker 3: if you're dreaming right now, so that the habit will
Speaker 3: resurface when you are dreaming. I wonder if that kind
Speaker 3: of thing, Like, so, if you do the dream machine
Speaker 3: often enough, it will maybe cause it to buy habit
Speaker 3: come to mind during a dream and then you can remember, hey,
Speaker 3: wait a minute, I was supposed to be programming this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I guess it could work if you were
Speaker 2: the sort of kid that really stuck with it, you know.
Speaker 2: But I guess I was the kind where there were
Speaker 2: no immediate results and therefore I abandon it.
Speaker 3: Good job quitting, I want.
Speaker 2: Like I say, I feel that same way with lucid dreaming.
Speaker 2: Like at times like this, I'm like, why haven't I
Speaker 2: applied myself to lucid dreaming? Why am I dreams so
Speaker 2: so so non lucid? But I don't know. There's just
Speaker 2: there's enough to worry about without without really getting in
Speaker 2: on the dreams.
Speaker 3: You've got a waking life to live, so.
Speaker 2: Hoy divides this sort of nightmare inhibition into in technique
Speaker 2: into two categories. Amulets are charms to eliminate nightmares, and
Speaker 2: then development of techniques to take control of a dream
Speaker 2: and push it in a positive direction. So a lucid
Speaker 2: dreaming approach to nightmares. And maybe that's the thing too,
Speaker 2: Like maybe if I, if I on the whole suffered
Speaker 2: from more nightmares or stress dreams or what have you,
Speaker 2: I would be more inclined to pursue lucid dreaming as
Speaker 2: an escape m okay so. On the first note amulets,
Speaker 2: Hori discusses two main varieties that are popular in contemporary Japan,
Speaker 2: and that is the baku, but then also the dream catcher.
Speaker 2: This I was not expecting. The DreamCatcher is of course
Speaker 2: not a Japanese cultural creation, but rather one that originates
Speaker 2: with the indigenous First Nations people of North America, particularly
Speaker 2: parts of what is now Canada. The Ojibwa people are
Speaker 2: often cited, though I think usage in production spreads with
Speaker 2: sort of the Pan Indian movement of the sixties and seventies.
Speaker 2: The basic principle of the DreamCatcher is that the night
Speaker 2: air brings both good and bad dreams, and the DreamCatcher,
Speaker 2: like a spider's web, catches the bad and allows the
Speaker 2: good to prosper in the sleeper's mind. Now, I believe
Speaker 2: that the main usage was intended for infants. But now
Speaker 2: in America dreamcatchers, you know, they're quite popular as a
Speaker 2: native craft item. This happened, I think, originally in the
Speaker 2: nineteen eighties and spread from there, but Hore writes that
Speaker 2: they became exceedingly popular in Japan following a popular year
Speaker 2: two thousand TV mini series. I believe it's kind of
Speaker 2: like a melodrama or romance sort of thing, Beautiful Life. Now,
Speaker 2: I was not familiar with this of This is not
Speaker 2: like a genre of Japanese pop culture that I generally
Speaker 2: have any exposure to. You know, this is not a
Speaker 2: monster movie or horror movie, sci fi, et cetera. This
Speaker 2: is a broad appeal like big you know, TV production.
Speaker 2: I looked it up though, and I saw that it
Speaker 2: starred Takua Kimura. He's the actor who voiced Howel in
Speaker 2: the original Japanese language version of Howe's Moving Castle. I
Speaker 2: looked at like some write ups of what the plot
Speaker 2: is about, I saw nobody mentioned exactly where these dream
Speaker 2: Catchers are used if they factor into the plot at all,
Speaker 2: or if they're just you know, in the background. But whatever,
Speaker 2: it was really popular show and people saw it and
Speaker 2: they're like, we want in on that, and dream catchers
Speaker 2: became popular, though according to Hordri, it ended up focusing
Speaker 2: more on young people rather than babies. Now, the baku,
Speaker 2: on the other hand, as we've been discussing, is largely
Speaker 2: rooted in Japanese traditions, and I guess to a certain extent,
Speaker 2: kind of paves the way for this fascination with dream catchers.
Speaker 2: Like there's already a you know, an appeal for some
Speaker 2: sort of an amulet too to discourage nightmares and therefore
Speaker 2: encourage positive dreams, and so when one is introduced from
Speaker 2: another culture, you can see why people might gravitate towards it. Now,
Speaker 2: as we've been discussing, primarily it's impossible to escape the
Speaker 2: taper when it comes to understanding what the baku is like.
Speaker 2: By most accounts, like this sounds like a taper. We
Speaker 2: see depictions of it. It looks mostly like some you know,
Speaker 2: exaggeration or telephone game of the taper. But you also
Speaker 2: find discussions on the possibility that it might have originally,
Speaker 2: and it's Chinese origins, which you already alluded to here,
Speaker 2: it might have originally been something like a giant panda.
Speaker 2: Now Hori does not himself, does not really go into this,
Speaker 2: but but notes that the baku was of course a
Speaker 2: charm animal in China, going back to you know, seventeenth
Speaker 2: century writings, and perhaps it is already sometimes depicted as
Speaker 2: a paper here, though it may not have actually been
Speaker 2: associated with dream eating. Like we said, you get back
Speaker 2: into the origins of the baku and you get further
Speaker 2: away from the idea of consuming nightmares.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that seems to be a later development.
Speaker 2: Now, an interesting note though about the panda here. At
Speaker 2: this point I looked at a book by Burned Brunner
Speaker 2: titled Bears a Brief History, and the author here points
Speaker 2: out that despite the fact that the panda now stands
Speaker 2: as kind of a quintessential Shinese animal, you know, we
Speaker 2: think about it as such in modern times, there are
Speaker 2: few ancient writings about them, and the writings that may
Speaker 2: be about them are difficult to nail down because of
Speaker 2: just how vague they are. An early possible account from
Speaker 2: the Chin Dynasty third century BCE might be about a
Speaker 2: white fox, or some people think, well, maybe it's a panda.
Speaker 2: There's an even older mention that could allude to a panda,
Speaker 2: but also could be a leopard or a so it
Speaker 2: gets again exceptionally vague and therefore difficult to say whether
Speaker 2: we're actually talking about a panda or not. For instance,
Speaker 2: there are discussions later on in Chinese writings about white bears,
Speaker 2: but it seems as likely, if not more likely, that
Speaker 2: they're actually talking about polar bears encountered by northern travelers
Speaker 2: and word having spread about them. And then there are
Speaker 2: additional possibilities that there are other bears, like from India
Speaker 2: that are being written about. So it's interesting to consider
Speaker 2: that the panda is also underrepresented in traditional Chinese medicine
Speaker 2: compared to other animals, again getting back to like, okay,
Speaker 2: what is the animal and then what can be broken
Speaker 2: down about it to benefit humans. Some have interpreted this
Speaker 2: fact as being due to the animal having a sacred status,
Speaker 2: but the author in this case questions that, pointing out
Speaker 2: that well, you know, it really did not have a
Speaker 2: role in Chinese lore to suggest sacred production, like it's
Speaker 2: you know, it seems to be barely mentioned and if
Speaker 2: it is mentioned, it's mentioned only vaguely, So that's interesting.
Speaker 2: I feel like I need to look into that more
Speaker 2: in the future. So it seems like, based on what
Speaker 2: I've been reading that the idea that the baku might
Speaker 2: have originally been a panda possible, But it doesn't seem
Speaker 2: extremely like. It doesn't seem like there's a lot of
Speaker 2: like firm evidence for that. Okay, but according I believe
Speaker 2: according to horri here though, there you know, as it
Speaker 2: undergoes exaggeration and transfer into Japanese usage, the proper baku,
Speaker 2: you know that the nose of the what is probably
Speaker 2: a taper becomes an elephant, the eyes become those of
Speaker 2: a rhino, the tail of a cow, legs of a tiger,
Speaker 2: hair of a lion. It gets spots whereas it didn't
Speaker 2: have spots before. And the creature's diet is said to
Speaker 2: consist of strange things like iron and copper and sometimes bamboo,
Speaker 2: which certainly, you know, made me think again about the panda.
Speaker 2: But I don't know, it does seem like strong enough
Speaker 2: evidence to really start forcing the panda into the conversation
Speaker 2: more than's necessary.
Speaker 3: This doesn't really have any relation to the baku. But
Speaker 3: I just have to say, on a recent trip to
Speaker 3: the zoo where we were watching the Atlanta Zoo, where
Speaker 3: we were watching the panda enclosure, we saw the feeding
Speaker 3: happen where they were throwing new branches of bamboo down
Speaker 3: to the pandas so they could eat them, and one
Speaker 3: of the pandas literally just collapsed into a pile of
Speaker 3: bamboo branches or unleashing a mighty crashing sound. If it's
Speaker 3: literally just like rolling in its food, very fun. They
Speaker 3: love it.
Speaker 2: I guess one of the reasons I keep wanting to
Speaker 2: think about the panda in this role is that you
Speaker 2: can imagine the image, especially our modern understanding of the panda,
Speaker 2: lines up with the way we may think about the taper,
Speaker 2: and you can imagine a panda having this kind of
Speaker 2: status and roll in one superstitious understanding of dreams. But
Speaker 2: I don't know how that really would rack up and
Speaker 2: compare with historic understandings of pandas in China, especially considering
Speaker 2: wild pandas, But hard to say for sure. So Horri
Speaker 2: writes that we don't know when the baku ultimately crosses
Speaker 2: the sea into Japanese traditions, but that screen illustrations from
Speaker 2: the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries depict the creature. It becomes
Speaker 2: very popular with the common people during the Edope era,
Speaker 2: I believe, as you alluded to earlier. Horry points out
Speaker 2: that during the seventh through eighth centuries, a sacred animal
Speaker 2: called the hockey was associated with nightmare consumption, and that
Speaker 2: you still see some of this reflected. This was originally
Speaker 2: an imperial court practice, but you see some of it
Speaker 2: reflected in the setsubun ceremony that still practice today. We
Speaker 2: discussed this in our bean episode about like pelting one
Speaker 2: or demons with beans in order to drive them out
Speaker 2: of say a school or what have you. The baku, however,
Speaker 2: seems to sort of take on this sacred role and
Speaker 2: replaces the hockey when it enters Japanese traditions. So this
Speaker 2: seems like a possible way of looking at the evolution
Speaker 2: of this monster. Like you already have perhaps a role
Speaker 2: for some sort of dream eating creature, even if it's
Speaker 2: not fully developed, and then here comes this new sort
Speaker 2: of sacred creature that is associated with protective qualities, and
Speaker 2: maybe these two kind of get wrapped into one. You know,
Speaker 2: this is a common thing you see with traditions of
Speaker 2: magical creatures, you know, they don't they're morphous. Over time,
Speaker 2: they change shapes, they converge with other creatures, and sometimes
Speaker 2: they separate as well.
Speaker 3: At the danger of steamrolling over nuance and how folklore evolves,
Speaker 3: I really do wonder if the fact that the baku
Speaker 3: is cute played a role in it's uh in a
Speaker 3: role and it's evolving to fill this niche of protecting
Speaker 3: children's dreams.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, there's a there's certainly a larger discussion
Speaker 2: to be had there concerning not only the universal appeal
Speaker 2: of cute, but also obviously cute has a tremendous history
Speaker 2: in Japanese culture as well. So already shares that old
Speaker 2: baku amulets show things like a ship filled with rice
Speaker 2: or just characters representing baku. And this was from when
Speaker 2: it was a higher class affair for the emperor in
Speaker 2: his circle, and a ritual of sleeping with it on
Speaker 2: or under your pillow, and this was something that would
Speaker 2: be carried out once a year to clear out the
Speaker 2: past year's bad dreams, which I thought was interesting. It
Speaker 2: wasn't necessarily a situation of like I had a bad dream,
Speaker 2: I need to fix this, or I might have a
Speaker 2: bad dream tonight I need to fix it. It's more
Speaker 2: like market on the calendar. It's time to clear out
Speaker 2: all those bad dreams. All the past year's bad dreams
Speaker 2: are gone.
Speaker 3: It's like a nightmare leaves a stench that's sort of
Speaker 3: hanging in the air, and you bring in the Baku
Speaker 3: to like waft it all out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the boat that is depicted on these ambulance apparently
Speaker 2: the ideas the boat becomes loaded with these bad dreams
Speaker 2: again that have been accumulated over the course of a
Speaker 2: year whole you know, boatload of them literally or symbolically.
Speaker 2: It tends how you look at it. I guess anyway,
Speaker 2: they're loaded up on this boat, and then the boat
Speaker 2: goes out, sails out into the waters of purification. That's
Speaker 2: essentially dumping them.
Speaker 3: I guess.
Speaker 2: You know. As time goes by, these depictions show more
Speaker 2: treasure aboard the Baku ship, and in time, you know,
Speaker 2: the common people adopted ritual as well. Hoy writes that
Speaker 2: it eventually loses the association with nightmare purification to a
Speaker 2: large degree and becomes kind of more of a mascot
Speaker 2: of happiness and kind of a good luck token as well.
Speaker 2: So it's interesting how you know, we see the just
Speaker 2: as we see the rise and fall of dream emphasis
Speaker 2: within a given culture, you could also see that associated
Speaker 2: with particular practices, amulets and mythical creatures. By the way,
Speaker 2: in this paper there there's at least one really interesting
Speaker 2: thing that Horry brings up that's not Baku related at all,
Speaker 2: concerning dreaming manipulation superstitions in Japan. But they do mention
Speaker 2: that there is this pre modern practice where it is
Speaker 2: said that if you want to see your loved ones
Speaker 2: in your dreams, and I think this may relate more
Speaker 2: to loved ones who are deceased, you could wear your
Speaker 2: clothing inside out when you go to sleep, and that
Speaker 2: would help manipulate the nature of your dreams.
Speaker 3: Any insight into the magical logic there.
Speaker 2: It reminds me of things in general that we've touched on.
Speaker 2: It reminds me of things in Russian folklore that we've
Speaker 2: talked about before, you know, the idea of wearing clothes
Speaker 2: backwards or doing something interesting with the buttons, Like there's
Speaker 2: something about manipulating the order of things in the waking
Speaker 2: world that can then have some sort of a relationship
Speaker 2: on the supernatural world or in this case dreams.
Speaker 3: Wasn't it that by wearing clothes backward in the Russian
Speaker 3: folklore you would like defend yourself against ghosts or monsters
Speaker 3: or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or it concerned what was their name, the wild one,
Speaker 2: the man in the woods?
Speaker 3: Oh, the leshie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I believe it came up in the leshie.
Speaker 3: That would lower people off the path.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think it's come up elsewhere as well,
Speaker 2: maybe in I want to say, Irish folklore and superstition.
Speaker 2: You know, I think it's a motif you see pop
Speaker 2: up here and there, you know, this idea that there
Speaker 2: if something's out of line with your clothing, there's some
Speaker 2: potential slip into the other world.
Speaker 3: I guess.
Speaker 2: One of the interesting things about this to me is
Speaker 2: that it's not just necessarily about good versus bad dreams.
Speaker 2: But in this we're getting in the depiction into the
Speaker 2: distinction between dreams that are just you know, clutter, you
Speaker 2: know that that you don't want, and having a dream
Speaker 2: that has some connection to a realm beyond the waking
Speaker 2: world in this case, like the realm of the dead,
Speaker 2: the realm of past lives, and so forth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's interesting. So I could see like wearing your
Speaker 3: clothes inside out might somehow grant you access, but that
Speaker 3: does seems somehow different because again, if well maybe I'm
Speaker 3: not even remembering this right, but if I am remembering
Speaker 3: it right, with the Russian thing, it was like that
Speaker 3: wearing the closed backwards would somehow protect you. That's almost
Speaker 3: like that would keep you more grounded to reality or
Speaker 3: maybe prevent these creatures from recognizing you or something. I
Speaker 3: don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, like somehow messes with how this world interacts
Speaker 2: or touches with the other world or creatures of that
Speaker 2: other world. So we've covered some key dream cultures here
Speaker 2: from particular periods in these episodes, but there's so much
Speaker 2: we didn't get into. Like you just in passing horror
Speaker 2: mentions that there's a strong Malaysian tradition of dream control,
Speaker 2: and I didn't have time to follow up on that
Speaker 2: and see what that might consist of. But it would
Speaker 2: be interesting to hear from listeners out there if you
Speaker 2: know of any other great examples of some sort of
Speaker 2: robust or even just very slight seeming method of changing
Speaker 2: or altering or controlling the flow of dream, be it
Speaker 2: related to an amulet or a childhood you know, nursery,
Speaker 2: rhyme or story. We'd be very interested to hear about
Speaker 2: that totally.
Speaker 3: Does your culture have something like a baku you want
Speaker 3: to tell us about.
Speaker 2: Or do you have just additional tales of the baku?
Speaker 3: Did you have a baku pillow?
Speaker 2: I did a quick search for baku pillows and I
Speaker 2: could not find one that is shaped like a baku.
Speaker 2: But I did see one on a popular online retailer
Speaker 2: that it does have a depiction of a baku on it,
Speaker 2: and it looks very nice. But of course we know that.
Speaker 2: You know, I feel like you would also have to
Speaker 2: be really comfortable for my purposes, like I need a
Speaker 2: very specific pillow if I'm going to have if I'm
Speaker 2: hoping to have decent dreams.
Speaker 3: I don't think I ever had a pillow with representative
Speaker 3: art on it. I think I've had boring pillows my
Speaker 3: whole life. Never had like a spider Man pillow or anything.
Speaker 2: I never did. But my son has gone to I
Speaker 2: don't know, at school or camps, they sometimes make pillow cases.
Speaker 2: So he had one that was decorated with with pokemon
Speaker 2: not too long ago that he'd made himself, so you know,
Speaker 2: you can always make your own baku pillow for sure.
Speaker 3: Do the Pokemon protect him from bad dreams?
Speaker 2: I don't know. Maybe, I mean one does wonder at
Speaker 2: times if you're if you're obsessing about something and you
Speaker 2: have that kind of like childhood obsession level for it,
Speaker 2: if you can control the nature of your dreams in
Speaker 2: that way. Because my son is always talking about how
Speaker 2: like he's obsessed with them with Zelda right now, and
Speaker 2: so he'll he'll have dreams about playing Zelda and about
Speaker 2: or about the world of Zelda, which is great. And
Speaker 2: at times I'm like, I was, like, I wonder, like
Speaker 2: what some of the differences are between the adult mind
Speaker 2: and the childhood mind, because there are plenty of things
Speaker 2: that I get obsessed about that are, you know, a
Speaker 2: wonderful distraction from the real world, but I end up
Speaker 2: not dreaming about them, or at least I don't remember
Speaker 2: those dreams. I have dreams about other things that don't
Speaker 2: make any sense, or things that aren't like key to
Speaker 2: to you know, central to my interests or even my
Speaker 2: my anxieties, at least not on a you know, on
Speaker 2: a really obvious level.
Speaker 3: Ye know, I'm gonna say, my gut instinct about this.
Speaker 3: So I'm not speaking for any science I've read or anything,
Speaker 3: but my suspicion is that you are much more likely
Speaker 3: to dream about an obsession if that obsession has a
Speaker 3: spatial component. So video games are very much something you
Speaker 3: could dream about because they, I mean typically they have
Speaker 3: a simulated environment with spatial dimensions that you explore. Similarly,
Speaker 3: I think people have a lot of dreams when they're
Speaker 3: obsessed with, like houses or something like that. That kind
Speaker 3: of content seems especially prone to turning up in the
Speaker 3: dream world.
Speaker 2: But then like movies we watch for the podcast, subjects
Speaker 2: we research for the podcast nothing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know if those have as much of
Speaker 3: a spatial component. I mean, like a movie is shot
Speaker 3: within spaces, but you don't really imagine inhabiting those spaces
Speaker 3: moving through them.
Speaker 2: Interesting. Well, you know, I'd love to hear what everyone
Speaker 2: else has to say about this. You know, we all
Speaker 2: have different sorts of dreams. Are they're different? It's kind
Speaker 2: of a question, b is you know, are there particular
Speaker 2: things you do in the real world or obsess about
Speaker 2: in the real world that seem to have more of
Speaker 2: a guaranteed connection to the subject matter of your dreams?
Speaker 3: Yeah, how's my spatial hypothesis? Hold up? Blasted out of
Speaker 3: the water.
Speaker 2: Come on, all right, we're going to go and close
Speaker 2: it out there, but we'd love to hear from everyone
Speaker 2: out there. Our core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your
Speaker 2: Mind publish in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast
Speaker 2: feed on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but we also do a
Speaker 2: listener mail episode on Mondays, so write in. That's where
Speaker 2: we'll discuss those messages. On Wednesdays we do a short
Speaker 2: form monster fact or artifact episode, and on Fridays we
Speaker 2: set aside most serious concerns just talk about a weird
Speaker 2: film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. If
Speaker 3: you would like to get in touch with us with
Speaker 3: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a
Speaker 3: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
Speaker 3: can email us at contact Stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 3: dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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