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