Zashiki Warashi: The Playful Japanese Ghost That Brings Fortune and Fear

The Zashiki-warashi is a fascinating Japanese mythical being, a ghost child with a reputation both for tricks and for having phenomenal good fortune for the family in which it resides. Its roots lie deep within Japanese myth of the northernmost Tohoku region, building a complex figure that is as much about tricks as it is about tragedy.

What is a Zashiki-warashi?

The name Zashiki-warashi is literally zashiki (the tatami-matted guest room in a Japanese house) and warashi (an ancient term for child). They are characterized as a type of yōkai, or supernatural being or strange apparition.

They are primarily described as appearing in the guise of children aged between three and fifteen, with a red face and bobbed hair. They can be boys or girls; boys can appear in samurai disguise, but the girls always appear dressed up in beautiful kimonos. They are typically not visible to adults, though, or only visible to the family whom they live with.

A History Formed in Legend and Misery

The legend of Zashiki-warashi is closely associated with the town of Tōno in Iwate Prefecture in Japan's Tohoku region. This mountainous, rural area has endured a history beset with bad winters, disasters, and famine. It was there that local legend of the Zashiki-warashi and other yōkai was given literary form by the folklorist Kunio Yanagita in the classic book Tōno Monogatari (The Legends of Tōno) published in 1910 and introduced the stories to the whole country.

One of the popular myths surrounding these spirits is that a house where a Zashiki-warashi resides will prosper, but when it departs, the family becomes poor. This aspect leads them to become gods of fortune that protect enterprises. The Tōno Monogatari contains tales of houses that suffered from disease or lost fortune when their Zashiki-warashi left them or were driven away.

Their pasts are said to be tragic and lamentable. Scholars such as Kizen Sasaki (whose compositions served as the foundation of the Tōno Monogatari) assumed that Zashiki-warashi are maybe the apparitions of children who experienced untimely deaths. In poor Tohoku, usugoro (infanticide), sometimes performed for the sake of reducing the number of mouths to feed, was practiced with remorse. There are also legends that children resulting from a union between a family daughter and the illusive Yamabito (mountain people) are hidden in the house, their spirits remaining after death. Some practices, like leaving a golden ball under the floorposts of a newly built house to lure one in, are quite possibly hangovers from these past traditions.

The Signs and Evidence of a Presence

Although actual encounters are deemed exceptional, folklore abounds with descriptions of the signs in which a Zashiki-warashi is present in a dwelling. They are said to be mischievous and troublesome ghosts. The sounds they produce are normally physical or acoustical:

Playful Sounds: There are children heard giggling or singing, the whirring of a top during the course of a night, or the rustling of paper in an uninhabited room.

Physical Pranks: They are also said to leave tiny prints in fireplace ashes, sit upon the futons of visitors, or flip over pillows to prevent them from sleeping.

Interaction with Children: They are said to sometimes befriend the children of the household, educating them in nursery rhymes and toy play.

And yet, some ryokan (Japanese traditional inns) still do exist today, particularly in the Tohoku region, renowned for their Zashiki-warashi legends. Among them is Warashi no Yado Shojuen in Gunma Prefecture which is a hot spring ryokan where guests have heard a child hopping in the corridor or noises in a vacant room, hoping to glimpse their own specter.

From its origins in rural Japan's troubled history to its continued presence in modern culture, the Zashiki-warashi is a compelling and complex creature, an interesting combination of trickery and enigma and prophecy of good fortune.