WEBVTT - The Creature With No Face 0:00:02.990 --> 0:00:06.070 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:13.490 --> 0:00:15.890 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name 0:00:16.070 --> 0:00:16.710 is Robert Lamb. 0:00:17.180 --> 0:00:21.320 And I am Joe McCormick. And on today's Halloween-themed episode 0:00:21.430 --> 0:00:23.099 of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, we're going to be 0:00:23.140 --> 0:00:26.140 talking about creatures without faces. 0:00:26.880 --> 0:00:33.150 That's right. Uh... ghosts without faces, monsters without faces, whatever 0:00:33.170 --> 0:00:36.850 the case may be. This is, of course, a common 0:00:36.870 --> 0:00:40.800 enough trope in the world of monsters and ghosts and 0:00:40.909 --> 0:00:45.380 also nightmares and dreams. So we'll definitely touch on some 0:00:45.420 --> 0:00:50.640 of the pop cultural uses of this visual as we 0:00:50.720 --> 0:00:54.450 get further into the episode. But also, you know, after 0:00:54.530 --> 0:00:57.970 everything's said and done, Certainly, we want to allow listeners 0:00:58.010 --> 0:01:01.150 to write in with their favorite example of the faceless. 0:01:02.110 --> 0:01:06.200 But before we, I guess, dive into discussing specific faceless entities, 0:01:06.780 --> 0:01:08.920 probably a good time to remind ourselves exactly what a 0:01:08.980 --> 0:01:14.360 human face is. It is, of course, the largely forward-loaded 0:01:14.420 --> 0:01:17.890 array of perception organs for the human body, a thing 0:01:18.120 --> 0:01:21.880 our body points at other things. to look at them, 0:01:22.100 --> 0:01:26.940 smell them, even taste them at closer distance. Our ears, 0:01:27.000 --> 0:01:30.050 despite being on the sides of our heads, are essentially 0:01:30.290 --> 0:01:33.690 faced forward as well, both via their conical shape and 0:01:33.709 --> 0:01:36.430 the way hearing sensory data is processed in the brain. 0:01:36.450 --> 0:01:41.809 So the face is sort of the interaction engine. You 0:01:41.870 --> 0:01:45.480 turn the face toward things in order to interact with 0:01:45.520 --> 0:01:50.110 them in most senses. There are some exceptions, but that's like, Generally, 0:01:50.170 --> 0:01:53.420 if something is getting your attention for one reason or another, 0:01:53.450 --> 0:01:55.910 that's an orientation of the face toward it. 0:01:56.280 --> 0:01:58.860 Yeah, we think of like I looked at it or I, 0:01:58.880 --> 0:02:01.020 you know, we think of it very much as an 0:02:01.280 --> 0:02:03.260 eye action. But if we think of our body as 0:02:03.320 --> 0:02:06.760 this thing that's interacting with the world, then the head 0:02:06.820 --> 0:02:09.420 is the part of the thing that like is angled 0:02:09.620 --> 0:02:11.760 at whatever we're trying to perceive. 0:02:12.160 --> 0:02:12.380 Yeah. 0:02:12.980 --> 0:02:14.860 On top of this, of course, our face is also 0:02:14.960 --> 0:02:18.940 a communication array that allows us to communicate a great 0:02:19.020 --> 0:02:22.940 deal of things to other human beings and to limited extent, 0:02:23.000 --> 0:02:26.780 some non-human entities as well. Like via your facial expressions, 0:02:26.820 --> 0:02:30.230 you can convey things maybe not all that well or 0:02:30.410 --> 0:02:35.269 even correctly to say household pets, primates at the zoo 0:02:35.310 --> 0:02:39.240 and so forth. And the overall system entails a number 0:02:39.260 --> 0:02:42.960 of different things. You have overt universal emotions like smiles, 0:02:43.440 --> 0:02:47.919 lowered brows, and the overall system entails also includes micro 0:02:47.960 --> 0:02:50.980 expressions that may last for half a second, but can 0:02:51.020 --> 0:02:56.150 also convey various bits of information, conversational cues, you know, 0:02:56.190 --> 0:02:58.430 the way that what our face is doing interacts with 0:02:58.470 --> 0:03:03.370 what we're saying. And then also various communication can be 0:03:03.410 --> 0:03:07.650 found in eye contact and gaze. That, of course, on 0:03:07.750 --> 0:03:11.070 top of just human speech, which is a big way 0:03:11.130 --> 0:03:14.269 that we communicate. And then again, that speech is also 0:03:15.410 --> 0:03:17.410 tweaked in ways by what the rest of our face 0:03:17.490 --> 0:03:21.790 is doing. Our face also is totally wrapped up in 0:03:21.850 --> 0:03:24.590 our idea of identity. Again, like it's hard to think 0:03:24.650 --> 0:03:26.970 of like point your face at something, you know, like, no, 0:03:27.030 --> 0:03:31.160 it's like the face is me, right? Like the popular 0:03:31.180 --> 0:03:35.040 website is the book of faces. So this idea that, 0:03:35.440 --> 0:03:37.560 you know, that our face is separate from ourselves is 0:03:38.030 --> 0:03:41.750 very difficult to process in the human mind. 0:03:42.530 --> 0:03:45.180 Yeah, so it's interesting to think of the face as 0:03:45.220 --> 0:03:50.520 the primary information gateway of the body in both directions. 0:03:50.540 --> 0:03:54.840 So as you were saying earlier, it's where the majority 0:03:54.860 --> 0:03:58.160 of our sensory organs are located. So you orient your 0:03:58.200 --> 0:04:00.880 face toward things when you want to gather information about 0:04:00.940 --> 0:04:03.060 that thing with the eyes or with the ears or 0:04:03.100 --> 0:04:09.410 with the mouth. But also it is the primary... informational 0:04:09.510 --> 0:04:13.470 tag for information you send out to other humans about yourself, 0:04:13.990 --> 0:04:17.849 your main identifying feature. So people can know who you are, 0:04:17.990 --> 0:04:20.930 is your face. Uh, you know, we, we primarily use 0:04:20.990 --> 0:04:25.430 faces to identify who we're talking to, to recognize somebody 0:04:25.510 --> 0:04:28.590 at a distance or up close very quickly. Uh, you know, 0:04:28.910 --> 0:04:32.470 recognizing people is very difficult if you have impairments in 0:04:32.510 --> 0:04:36.339 the part of your brain that processes faces holistically. And 0:04:36.380 --> 0:04:42.580 then also emotional information, important contextual and reaction information when 0:04:42.660 --> 0:04:46.119 people are interacting comes through as displayed on the face. 0:04:46.430 --> 0:04:46.640 Yeah. 0:04:46.790 --> 0:04:48.770 And we should also point out, you know, this is 0:04:48.830 --> 0:04:53.169 not necessarily fair in all senses. Like, you know, we 0:04:53.250 --> 0:04:57.849 are not our faces. And yet this does play into 0:04:57.890 --> 0:05:02.180 the way we often read people. You know, it's rather complex. 0:05:02.260 --> 0:05:05.790 But when we encounter someone, there is that weird desire. 0:05:05.830 --> 0:05:08.810 Like we must see the face. Um, we see this 0:05:08.850 --> 0:05:12.330 in our media as well. You know, when the slasher is, is, 0:05:12.610 --> 0:05:15.760 is brought low, there is the need to unmask the 0:05:15.779 --> 0:05:18.979 slasher and reveal the face, uh, in Lucha, in, in, uh, 0:05:19.040 --> 0:05:21.260 Lucha Libre. There is the, uh, the need to see 0:05:21.279 --> 0:05:23.060 the face of the masked wrestler, be it a, uh, 0:05:23.520 --> 0:05:27.520 a Rudo or a Technico. And, um, I was just thinking, 0:05:27.540 --> 0:05:29.380 I was thinking about this just over the last like 0:05:29.380 --> 0:05:33.140 48 hours, uh, when I've been working on this topic. Um, 0:05:33.600 --> 0:05:36.320 like I run around a track sometimes in the morning, 0:05:36.640 --> 0:05:39.260 which means people are running with me and I don't 0:05:39.300 --> 0:05:42.990 necessarily see their face. And it's weird to, to sort of, um, 0:05:43.730 --> 0:05:45.500 encounter people that I, you know, I don't know what 0:05:45.520 --> 0:05:49.230 they look like and I keep running behind them, passing them. 0:05:49.589 --> 0:05:51.450 And unless I look back, you know, I'm not going 0:05:51.470 --> 0:05:52.810 to see their face and I kind of need to 0:05:52.850 --> 0:05:55.330 see their face. Or last night I was at, um, 0:05:55.650 --> 0:05:59.150 at Netherworld, uh, haunted house here in Atlanta. And at 0:05:59.210 --> 0:06:01.190 one point they were in line to get in and 0:06:01.210 --> 0:06:04.010 there was a, like a mannequin with face, with its 0:06:04.070 --> 0:06:07.260 face obscured by hair. And I just had to part 0:06:07.320 --> 0:06:09.260 that hair to see the face. You know, it's like, 0:06:09.279 --> 0:06:12.220 what's back there? Maybe nothing. And if there's nothing, I 0:06:12.240 --> 0:06:15.760 need to see that. So we're really wired to put 0:06:15.779 --> 0:06:17.560 a lot of emphasis on the human face. 0:06:17.960 --> 0:06:19.120 Wait, what was back there? 0:06:19.140 --> 0:06:22.490 It was just a mannequin face. But I mean, it 0:06:22.750 --> 0:06:24.470 was still creepy. Like I pulled it back and it 0:06:24.490 --> 0:06:28.270 was looking right at me. So yeah, again, we're just, 0:06:28.370 --> 0:06:31.419 we're wired to to see that. We want to interact 0:06:31.460 --> 0:06:32.039 with the face. 0:06:32.520 --> 0:06:34.430 Wouldn't it be funny if you pulled the hair apart 0:06:34.450 --> 0:06:35.290 and it's just a butt? 0:06:36.230 --> 0:06:39.330 That would have been good. In fact, if someone hasn't 0:06:39.370 --> 0:06:43.089 made that already and marketed it to haunted houses and 0:06:43.270 --> 0:06:45.510 haunted attractions, then someone should get on that. 0:06:46.050 --> 0:06:47.790 You know, we're going to be talking about some creatures 0:06:47.850 --> 0:06:50.410 today that are not far off from that reality. 0:06:50.800 --> 0:06:55.260 Yeah. So other things about the face. A face is 0:06:55.320 --> 0:06:58.830 also something we put on. You know, we talk about 0:06:58.890 --> 0:07:02.229 putting on the face and presenting a certain face. In 0:07:02.310 --> 0:07:06.770 June of this year, Cal Reveley Calder wrote, What Happened 0:07:06.830 --> 0:07:09.740 to Your Face? for The New Yorker, which you can 0:07:09.820 --> 0:07:13.060 read online, pointing out that the word face derives from 0:07:13.100 --> 0:07:17.400 the Latin facies, which implies something that has been created. 0:07:17.880 --> 0:07:19.880 And we see this in the French as well. I'm 0:07:19.900 --> 0:07:22.680 going to read just a quote from this article. Quote, 0:07:22.720 --> 0:07:26.820 the cultural historian Hans Belting suggested that faces and masks 0:07:26.860 --> 0:07:32.310 were conceptually inseparable. We shouldn't think of one as real 0:07:32.410 --> 0:07:34.850 and the other as fake. One is the thing we 0:07:34.910 --> 0:07:38.430 have and the other as the thing we temporarily don. Life, 0:07:38.510 --> 0:07:44.060 he wrote, was fully, quote, a perpetuum mobili, an expressive 0:07:44.100 --> 0:07:48.140 drama in which our faces resolve into one legible position, 0:07:48.560 --> 0:07:53.080 one legible role, then resemble themselves into the next. I'm sorry, 0:07:53.100 --> 0:07:56.320 then reassemble themselves into the next. We make them up 0:07:56.790 --> 0:07:57.760 in every sense. 0:07:59.330 --> 0:08:02.570 So that's emphasized. I mean, I guess it's true that 0:08:02.990 --> 0:08:08.190 the face is both revealing in ways that are outside 0:08:08.210 --> 0:08:11.610 of your control. So you might want to hide your identity, 0:08:11.750 --> 0:08:14.390 but it's hard to do because people can see your 0:08:14.450 --> 0:08:17.450 face and recognize you whether you want them to or not. 0:08:17.470 --> 0:08:20.460 That's like, outside of your control. There can also be 0:08:20.940 --> 0:08:24.320 ways that sometimes you might give things away with micro 0:08:24.360 --> 0:08:26.870 expressions on your face, like feelings or thoughts that you're 0:08:26.880 --> 0:08:30.810 trying to hide. That's kind of involuntarily revealed through the face. 0:08:31.110 --> 0:08:32.850 But the other side of that is we do have 0:08:32.890 --> 0:08:36.230 some conscious control over our faces, both in terms of 0:08:36.290 --> 0:08:39.070 things we do to our faces, like applying makeup or, 0:08:39.330 --> 0:08:41.690 you know, in the modern day getting, you know, body 0:08:41.730 --> 0:08:45.600 modification or plastic surgery or anything, and also conscious control 0:08:45.630 --> 0:08:49.150 over the faces we make, the expressions that we choose 0:08:49.210 --> 0:08:53.150 to intentionally display with our faces. So it's this strange 0:08:53.290 --> 0:08:57.510 mix throughout our lives of our faces giving information away, 0:08:57.570 --> 0:08:59.949 whether we want them to or not, and then using 0:09:00.030 --> 0:09:04.650 our faces to create perceptions intentionally in the world. 0:09:04.670 --> 0:09:10.050 Yeah, yeah. Our face is constantly betraying us and also 0:09:10.110 --> 0:09:15.620 to a certain extent, perhaps deceiving others. Like the deception 0:09:15.640 --> 0:09:18.980 of the face can be overt and even harmful, but 0:09:19.020 --> 0:09:21.640 it can also just be part of our daily interactions, 0:09:21.679 --> 0:09:24.640 you know, like smile and nod when a stranger is 0:09:24.660 --> 0:09:26.579 telling you about something. Even if you're not that interested, 0:09:26.620 --> 0:09:28.500 you know, you put on a good face to receive 0:09:28.559 --> 0:09:32.110 this well-intended, you know, bit of trivia or gossip that 0:09:32.140 --> 0:09:36.390 they're sharing with you. But yeah, I want to point 0:09:36.410 --> 0:09:39.410 out one other thing from this article. The author, Reveille Calder, 0:09:40.150 --> 0:09:43.650 also quotes T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, 0:09:43.950 --> 0:09:45.729 a poem I think most of you are familiar with. 0:09:46.130 --> 0:09:47.910 But there's, of course, that line in the poem, there 0:09:47.929 --> 0:09:50.150 will be time, there will be time to prepare a 0:09:50.230 --> 0:09:53.130 face to meet the faces that you meet. I was 0:09:53.150 --> 0:09:54.830 looking for other sources on this, and I ran across 0:09:54.890 --> 0:09:58.600 a 2026 book titled Faces, A Cultural History by the 0:09:58.630 --> 0:10:03.700 French author David Le Breton. And this is a rather 0:10:03.720 --> 0:10:06.179 interesting book. I didn't have time to really just read 0:10:06.220 --> 0:10:08.959 it cover to cover, but I was flipping around and 0:10:09.059 --> 0:10:13.040 finding things that applied to our discussion here today. And 0:10:13.800 --> 0:10:16.630 during parts of it, the author discusses the face as 0:10:16.690 --> 0:10:20.170 the anchor of human morality. and points out that to 0:10:20.230 --> 0:10:22.829 obscure the face, say with a mask, is to cut 0:10:22.890 --> 0:10:26.450 ourselves off from human morality. So I wanna read one 0:10:26.510 --> 0:10:31.079 quote from him as well here. The face embodies a morality, 0:10:31.340 --> 0:10:34.940 holds us accountable for our actions. Not having to look 0:10:35.040 --> 0:10:38.620 one another in the face creates many opportunities for transgression. 0:10:39.120 --> 0:10:42.200 The mask is not simply a tool that ensures anonymity. 0:10:42.700 --> 0:10:46.950 It reveals hidden resources, surprises, it sometimes takes over, takes 0:10:47.010 --> 0:10:50.150 possession of those who thought they were just playing a game. 0:10:50.710 --> 0:10:55.010 Changing one's face amounts to changing one's life. Freeing or 0:10:55.050 --> 0:10:58.859 temporarily distancing oneself, not without risk, from the sense of 0:10:58.960 --> 0:11:03.440 identity that once governed one's individual relationship to the world. 0:11:04.120 --> 0:11:06.320 I think that's really insightful. So it's not just the 0:11:06.400 --> 0:11:10.480 idea that putting on a mask is a, uh, morally 0:11:10.559 --> 0:11:14.000 significant activity because it can say hide your identity, you know, 0:11:14.020 --> 0:11:16.209 the way a bandit might put on a mask so 0:11:16.290 --> 0:11:20.770 they're not recognized before doing a crime. It actually like 0:11:20.850 --> 0:11:24.070 changes the sort of the whole way that you think 0:11:24.130 --> 0:11:27.750 about your again, the information input output gate with the 0:11:27.820 --> 0:11:31.520 world covering that up can in some ways just change 0:11:31.620 --> 0:11:35.800 the way you feel about everything you're doing and can 0:11:36.460 --> 0:11:38.760 sort of make you a different kind of being. 0:11:38.780 --> 0:11:41.920 Yeah. Yeah. And I'd love, you know, if we, you know, 0:11:41.950 --> 0:11:43.910 expand this to think of the other ways of putting 0:11:43.990 --> 0:11:46.300 on the mask or putting on a face. Uh, I mean, I'm, 0:11:46.370 --> 0:11:48.210 I'm sure there are a number of different comparisons to 0:11:48.230 --> 0:11:50.270 be drawn here to, uh, to make up, you know, 0:11:50.740 --> 0:11:55.140 making oneself up, uh, for certain types of social events. Uh, 0:11:55.160 --> 0:11:58.400 would love to hear from makeup users about this particular, um, 0:11:58.500 --> 0:12:02.730 side of things. And, um, Yeah, yeah. Again, when you 0:12:02.750 --> 0:12:05.520 think about this idea that the face and the mask 0:12:05.580 --> 0:12:08.960 are interchangeable and we can't, any good way we can 0:12:08.980 --> 0:12:11.620 think about an actual physical mask, we can also think 0:12:11.760 --> 0:12:15.109 that way about the face and maybe vice versa. I 0:12:15.150 --> 0:12:18.590 think that'll be very insightful as we continue our discussion here. 0:12:20.590 --> 0:12:23.270 The author here also says, quote, it is impossible to 0:12:23.330 --> 0:12:26.520 imagine a faceless world without viewing it as a universe 0:12:26.559 --> 0:12:30.530 of chaos. And we're going to be diving into that 0:12:30.610 --> 0:12:34.929 universe of chaos a little bit as we discuss fantastic creatures, ghosts, 0:12:35.070 --> 0:12:38.410 or even masked individuals who are at least presenting the 0:12:38.530 --> 0:12:42.630 idea of a faceless entity. And I think we might 0:12:42.690 --> 0:12:47.210 continually ask ourselves, like, how do we process that? Like, 0:12:47.330 --> 0:12:51.069 what is the sense of it? How does it affect 0:12:51.110 --> 0:12:54.250 the way that we view identity in this individual universe? 0:12:54.570 --> 0:12:57.830 How does it affect the way we think about how 0:12:57.870 --> 0:13:01.280 they are viewing us? You know, is it perceiving us 0:13:01.340 --> 0:13:03.660 at all? What does it mean to not be perceived 0:13:03.720 --> 0:13:06.500 in some way? And then how does this also apply 0:13:06.520 --> 0:13:10.800 to communication? Like, it has no mouth, the faceless entity. 0:13:11.179 --> 0:13:13.830 It has no eyes. It has no nose. Maybe, maybe 0:13:13.890 --> 0:13:18.530 not concerning ears. But, you know, it's kind of cut 0:13:18.770 --> 0:13:23.429 off from human senses and maybe even human morality in 0:13:23.470 --> 0:13:24.350 a very telling way. 0:13:35.980 --> 0:13:38.750 So I know the main examples that we wanted to 0:13:38.809 --> 0:13:41.270 talk about in today's episode are a couple of creatures 0:13:41.370 --> 0:13:44.449 from Japanese literature and folklore. Do you want to turn 0:13:44.530 --> 0:13:45.110 to those now? 0:13:45.610 --> 0:13:50.010 Yeah, yeah. Two entities that I think are both loosely 0:13:50.050 --> 0:13:55.350 classified as yokai. It's the sort of spirit entities that 0:13:55.410 --> 0:13:58.750 are not quite like a haunting ghost and also not 0:13:58.870 --> 0:14:02.530 quite a physical monster, but somewhere in between. We've talked 0:14:02.570 --> 0:14:05.410 about yokai many times on the show before. It's an 0:14:05.450 --> 0:14:10.430 amazing world of creatures that can be, you know, endlessly amusing, 0:14:10.490 --> 0:14:14.429 but also very frightening. And also there's often a lot 0:14:14.470 --> 0:14:18.100 of historical and cultural insight to gain from particular yokai. 0:14:18.500 --> 0:14:18.720 Mm-hmm. 0:14:19.710 --> 0:14:23.650 So we have two related yokai concepts to discuss here. 0:14:24.230 --> 0:14:29.270 So there is the newpeppo. This is apparently a corruption 0:14:29.530 --> 0:14:32.740 of the slang for someone wearing too much makeup. The idea, like, 0:14:32.920 --> 0:14:35.160 someone's so made up that it doesn't look like they 0:14:35.180 --> 0:14:40.140 have a face anymore. And this emerges during the Edo period. 0:14:40.160 --> 0:14:44.760 A pale, bloated, wandering pile of hairless flesh with lumpy 0:14:44.870 --> 0:14:49.020 legs and the folds of its fat. seem to form 0:14:49.060 --> 0:14:53.620 a saggy face, but it has no head otherwise. There 0:14:53.700 --> 0:14:56.170 are lots of illustrations of this guy with the, of course, 0:14:56.230 --> 0:14:59.830 historic illustrations looking the best. I don't know, put in 0:14:59.870 --> 0:15:03.200 like pre-1960 or whatever you need to do to avoid 0:15:03.220 --> 0:15:06.120 the AI garbage these days and see some of these 0:15:06.280 --> 0:15:07.380 fabulous illustrations. 0:15:07.760 --> 0:15:10.920 So both of the yokai we're going to talk about here, 0:15:10.960 --> 0:15:13.990 I was reading about in a book called The Book 0:15:14.010 --> 0:15:17.810 of Yokai by the folklorist Michael Dylan Foster, who's a 0:15:17.890 --> 0:15:20.670 professor at UC Davis, writes a lot about Japanese culture. 0:15:20.690 --> 0:15:25.530 And one thing I wanted to note is that these 0:15:25.610 --> 0:15:29.090 yokai appear grouped in the section of the book called 0:15:29.230 --> 0:15:31.890 Village and City Yokai. So you get some that are 0:15:31.930 --> 0:15:37.530 very wilderness-focused or might be associated with water or with 0:15:37.550 --> 0:15:40.160 the mountains and things like that. These appear in the 0:15:40.200 --> 0:15:42.640 village and city section. I think that's kind of interesting. 0:15:42.680 --> 0:15:44.980 These are a little bit more cultured as far as 0:15:45.360 --> 0:15:49.180 yokai go. But this first creature, the nupepo, is sort 0:15:49.220 --> 0:15:51.420 of a flesh wad. I think the way you described 0:15:51.460 --> 0:15:57.060 it is good, but Foster's description is an, quote, amorphous 0:15:57.180 --> 0:16:03.740 fleshy blob with fatty folds vaguely taking the shape of eyes, nose, 0:16:03.960 --> 0:16:08.150 and mouth. So it kind of has the suggestion of 0:16:08.210 --> 0:16:11.310 a face without really having a face. 0:16:12.130 --> 0:16:12.490 Yeah. 0:16:12.790 --> 0:16:13.250 Yeah. 0:16:13.270 --> 0:16:15.830 I think that's an important point that we see this 0:16:15.850 --> 0:16:18.930 time and time again with different certainly pop cultural and 0:16:18.970 --> 0:16:22.010 horror movie ideas of the faceless. Like, is it 100 0:16:22.010 --> 0:16:26.130 percent like a smooth surface or is there a hint 0:16:26.170 --> 0:16:28.729 of eyes or like, does it look like flesh stretched 0:16:28.870 --> 0:16:32.480 over a skeleton that has the eye holes in it, 0:16:32.530 --> 0:16:33.130 that sort of thing? 0:16:33.850 --> 0:16:36.910 So yeah, to picture this thing again, imagine just one 0:16:37.150 --> 0:16:39.750 big lump. You're not going to have like a separate 0:16:39.830 --> 0:16:42.870 head and body. It's one sort of egg shaped lump, 0:16:43.510 --> 0:16:48.630 a big lump of flesh with loose saggy skin suggesting 0:16:48.690 --> 0:16:50.790 the contours of a face. So the folds of the 0:16:50.830 --> 0:16:52.790 skin are going to be like eyes and a mouth. 0:16:53.430 --> 0:16:56.310 And then it's got these short stubby arms and legs, 0:16:56.370 --> 0:17:00.070 which are also covered in heaps of saggy flesh waddling 0:17:00.130 --> 0:17:04.490 or staggering around. Foster says that this creature is illustrate, 0:17:04.530 --> 0:17:07.950 despite like the disgusting description there, it is illustrated often 0:17:07.970 --> 0:17:09.570 to be kind of funny and cute. 0:17:10.040 --> 0:17:11.800 Yeah. I mean, he's a, he's a weird little guy, 0:17:11.880 --> 0:17:16.520 you know? Yeah. And it's my understanding. One of my 0:17:16.760 --> 0:17:19.440 sources I always turn to is a yokai attack by 0:17:19.680 --> 0:17:22.340 Hiroko Yoda and Matt Alt. Like they point out that 0:17:22.359 --> 0:17:24.670 this is not a yokai that is, some yokai are, 0:17:25.230 --> 0:17:28.950 are positioned as dangerous, but a lot, maybe even most 0:17:28.990 --> 0:17:31.250 of them are not. And this is one that's, Not 0:17:31.290 --> 0:17:33.630 really dangerous. The only dangerous thing it's going to do 0:17:33.810 --> 0:17:38.110 is scare you and maybe frighten you and then also 0:17:38.130 --> 0:17:40.820 maybe creep you out. But that's it. Yeah. 0:17:41.100 --> 0:17:44.940 So Foster mentions, like you said, Rob, that illustrations of 0:17:44.980 --> 0:17:47.859 this creature can be found in texts from the Edo period. 0:17:48.300 --> 0:17:52.000 But according to Foster, this yokai really experienced a renaissance 0:17:52.060 --> 0:17:55.820 in the later 20th century, probably due to the work 0:17:55.980 --> 0:18:00.400 of the folklore scholar and manga artist Mizuki Shigeru. who 0:18:00.480 --> 0:18:04.340 was responsible for consolidating a lot of disparate yokai folklore 0:18:04.460 --> 0:18:10.830 and like taking kind of different but similar stories that 0:18:10.850 --> 0:18:14.510 were going around in the oral traditions of Japan or in, 0:18:14.650 --> 0:18:16.830 you know, little isolated texts here and there, kind of 0:18:16.890 --> 0:18:21.830 consolidating them into these big creature types and making these 0:18:21.869 --> 0:18:26.419 creatures much more popular and well-known. And according to Mizuki, 0:18:26.700 --> 0:18:30.210 this yokai is a, quote, spirit of folklore. Which is 0:18:30.250 --> 0:18:34.210 funny because that almost seems like an oxymoron spirit of flesh. 0:18:34.290 --> 0:18:38.350 It's like that. But anyway, and what Mizuki says is 0:18:38.390 --> 0:18:42.820 it haunts deserted temples. So you imagine a monk traveling 0:18:42.859 --> 0:18:45.459 the roads at night needs to find a place to 0:18:45.500 --> 0:18:48.040 lay down. A lot of stories start like this. Monk 0:18:48.160 --> 0:18:51.220 finds a deserted temple, goes into the temple. It is 0:18:51.300 --> 0:18:54.880 haunted by a new pepo. So the monk takes shelter 0:18:54.920 --> 0:18:57.710 and sleeps there. If he does, he will wake up 0:18:57.770 --> 0:19:01.030 in the night and find this flesh wad stumbling around 0:19:01.090 --> 0:19:03.490 in the dark. And we don't know what it wants, 0:19:03.690 --> 0:19:07.790 but it may be, in Foster's words, quote, the flesh 0:19:07.950 --> 0:19:11.739 of a dead body walking by itself. I thought that 0:19:11.760 --> 0:19:16.080 was an interesting framing because it's not a dead body walking, 0:19:16.180 --> 0:19:18.920 but the flesh of a dead body. 0:19:19.760 --> 0:19:23.200 Yeah. Yeah. Like it's just the grave flesh that has 0:19:23.680 --> 0:19:29.649 somehow accumulated into this non-human entity, this flesh spirit that 0:19:29.670 --> 0:19:35.290 just kind of wanders around. It's like something you might 0:19:35.330 --> 0:19:37.570 find wandering around in the back rooms, for those of 0:19:37.590 --> 0:19:41.810 you who are familiar with that film. It feels like 0:19:41.850 --> 0:19:45.129 some sort of a weird byproduct of the spirit and 0:19:45.150 --> 0:19:45.629 the flesh. 0:19:46.690 --> 0:19:51.040 So Foster also notes some linguistic overlap with the yokai 0:19:51.060 --> 0:19:54.629 that we're about to talk about, the nopera bow. He 0:19:54.690 --> 0:19:59.230 says that the word nupere and nopere both mean flat faced. 0:19:59.790 --> 0:20:01.679 And I think the way you should understand that is. 0:20:02.180 --> 0:20:05.139 Not flat as in like a perfectly flat plane in 0:20:05.180 --> 0:20:08.460 a geometric sense, but flat as in featureless or smooth. 0:20:08.680 --> 0:20:10.609 So that's what it means to not have a face 0:20:11.170 --> 0:20:13.590 in this sense. Like your face is flat because it 0:20:13.630 --> 0:20:16.130 doesn't have eyes and a nose and a mouth. Though 0:20:16.190 --> 0:20:18.530 in this case, it does have some wrinkly flesh. 0:20:20.800 --> 0:20:25.240 In Yokai Attack, Yoda and Alt share another story about 0:20:25.260 --> 0:20:29.119 the new Pepo. They say there's an 18th century tale 0:20:29.640 --> 0:20:33.340 that discusses one haunting... the castle or was wandering around 0:20:33.380 --> 0:20:38.389 the castle of the Shogun, uh, Tokugawa Yaosu, the founder 0:20:38.410 --> 0:20:42.609 of the Tokugawa Shogunate who lived 1543 through 1616. And 0:20:42.650 --> 0:20:45.810 according to this tale, the Shogun himself demanded the creature 0:20:45.850 --> 0:20:48.450 be removed from the premises. And, uh, so his men 0:20:48.490 --> 0:20:50.750 did that and they took it away. They released it 0:20:50.830 --> 0:20:53.530 deep into the wilderness where it couldn't trouble human settlements. 0:20:53.970 --> 0:20:58.399 And then afterwards, uh, the Shogun learns that New Pepo's 0:20:58.440 --> 0:21:01.129 flesh was said to restore youth and health to anyone 0:21:01.170 --> 0:21:05.310 who consumed it. So I think in this, it's like 0:21:05.369 --> 0:21:09.690 it's also taking this yokai and connecting it to various 0:21:09.850 --> 0:21:14.710 other traditions in Japanese and maybe even more ancient traditions 0:21:14.790 --> 0:21:19.270 in Chinese belief about various spirit fleshes like this that 0:21:19.490 --> 0:21:22.310 are maybe ghastly to behold, but have some sort of 0:21:22.430 --> 0:21:23.450 special properties. 0:21:24.240 --> 0:21:27.800 Yeah, so that's the new pepo. But remember, again, if 0:21:27.820 --> 0:21:30.580 you can't look it up, there you should be picturing 0:21:30.680 --> 0:21:34.060 something that does not have a separate head and body. 0:21:34.180 --> 0:21:36.859 It's just a big wad of flesh, sort of a 0:21:37.040 --> 0:21:41.020 giant face instead of a body, except it's not really 0:21:41.080 --> 0:21:44.419 a face. It's just kind of a blank flesh ball 0:21:44.460 --> 0:21:47.460 that has some feature oids that are creases in the 0:21:47.530 --> 0:21:48.439 folds of the flesh. 0:21:48.660 --> 0:21:50.290 Yeah, it doesn't have a face, but it doesn't have 0:21:50.330 --> 0:21:51.370 a lot of things. Yeah. 0:21:52.350 --> 0:21:54.830 But if you want to imagine a creature that is 0:21:55.070 --> 0:21:58.990 otherwise shaped more like a human, but simply without a face, 0:21:59.210 --> 0:22:02.930 a featureless front of the head, it's just flat skin. 0:22:03.480 --> 0:22:05.600 Then we need to move on to the next yokai, 0:22:05.640 --> 0:22:06.899 which is the no para bow. 0:22:07.500 --> 0:22:09.000 Now, Joe, do you want to just go ahead and 0:22:09.220 --> 0:22:13.680 read one of the more popular tellings of this story? Oh, well, 0:22:13.700 --> 0:22:17.160 we could do that. And then we can discuss what 0:22:17.220 --> 0:22:20.310 it is afterwards, because there's a. There's certain twists and 0:22:20.350 --> 0:22:23.350 turns in the story that I think are important, and 0:22:23.390 --> 0:22:26.520 maybe the best way to absorb those are just through 0:22:26.540 --> 0:22:27.260 the story itself. 0:22:27.560 --> 0:22:29.340 Okay, yeah, maybe we should do it that way. So 0:22:30.020 --> 0:22:36.580 one historically important Noperibo tale appeared in the Japanese ghost 0:22:36.680 --> 0:22:41.720 story collection Kaidan by the author Lafcadio Hearn. Lafcadio Hearn 0:22:41.820 --> 0:22:45.960 was a Greek-born author of Irish and Greek parentage. He 0:22:46.000 --> 0:22:50.220 was a journalist and translator who lived 1850 to 1904, 0:22:50.220 --> 0:22:53.770 and he spent many years of his life living in Japan, 0:22:54.410 --> 0:22:57.070 doing different jobs, often working as a teacher, for example, 0:22:57.109 --> 0:23:01.670 teaching English literature to Japanese university students and doing other teaching. 0:23:01.930 --> 0:23:06.620 And he published a lot of works meant for international 0:23:06.710 --> 0:23:10.479 audiences in English to introduce them to the culture of Japan. 0:23:11.700 --> 0:23:17.280 So Kaidan was a collection of Japanese ghost stories rendered 0:23:17.400 --> 0:23:21.860 and retold by Hearn. So some of them were translations 0:23:21.920 --> 0:23:26.320 of older Japanese literature. Some were his renderings of stories 0:23:26.340 --> 0:23:30.220 he had been told by Japanese people. I think one 0:23:30.300 --> 0:23:32.370