Wednesday 4 January 2012

Japanese Monsters! THE UMIBOZU

Hey everyone, how's stuff going. Thought I'd do a written post again so that there's some sort of variety to this blog. Soooo...quite a while back I wrote about the Japanese cat monster 'Bakeneko' and now would like to add onto the Japanese monster series again this time.

The monster I'll be writing about is the Umibozu. Umibozu literally translates as 'Sea Monk'. Reasons for this naming are credited to either it's supposed bald smooth head akin to that of Buddhist monk, or that they may be spirits of monks who drowned.

They are very big in general, and range from several metres to several tens of metres. They have cloud/shadow like bodies and long snake like limbs. When they appear, calm waters suddenly get very violent and they come and capsize ships. Some other local folk tales however, just tell of them appearing to fishermen asking questions like "Do I scare you?" and then disappearing. (lol).




Another story claims that if the Umibozu is angered, he will demand the ships crew to hand over a barrel so that it can fill it up with water and drown them in it (even though they're surrounded by sea....). The way to avoid being drowned in a barrel by this stupid creature is to give it one with a bottomless one, so that when he fills it up with water, it will just fall straight through. lol.....




Well hope this was somewhat interesting to read about.
Good day to you!





Don't worry, this is just photoshopped...

5 comments:

  1. Woooow,cool :D
    I never heard of that monster,sounds a little funny but interesting ^^

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  2. When I saw the photoshopped one, I thought it was an actual painting....Yeah, it's a bit freaky though. The actual paintings are better.

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  3. ScarecrowChild: Yeah~ Japan has a lot of weird monsters lol. I'll try to introduce more in the future!

    rjoker13: Yeah, there was another photoshopped one I found. I've put it up now. I also prefer the old artworks though. I really like that style.

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  4. Can't wait,I love supernatural beings,legends and myths...and yeah,I love Japan :3

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  5. @GodzillaRadio: The wonders of photoshop are plain frightening at times. I thought I missed the other picture last time, but still freaky. I'll be looking forward to other informative blogs!

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