I wrote a parody short story. It was a parody of high fantasy, meant to play on tropes and cliches and the sheer over-the-top ridiculousness of itself. It probably wasn’t very good, but there it was. It had sword fights, chain mail bikinis, haunted swamps, chases on horseback, the works. I worked hard on my protagonist’s name — it needed to be feminine and sexy, yet exotic and barbaric, and utterly unsubtle….
Alura. Oh, perfect. Alura.
Arriving early to give a panel on Japanese folklore, I found Emilia (author of our guest post on kimono) teaching a workshop on tying mizuhiki. A perfect follow-up to the post on furoshiki; you can now decorate your traditionally-wrapped packages as well!
I’m not making this up. Check this out. Shakespeare’s Hamlet as a choose-your-own-path book. With lots and lots of illustrations.
I really love Hamlet, and I also really love parodies of Hamlet. This sounds kinda awesome.
When I asked on my Facebook page what people wanted to know about kitsune or the setting, a reader asked:
Are the kitsune faithful to any kind of code, other than obedience to those they serve? I mean, are they faithful to their friends, or more live-by-what-best-serves-the-moment?
Great question! And the answer is, yes. Sort of. Always. Sometimes.
They are, after all, kitsune.
I want to post something today which is pretty off-topic for this blog. If you choose not to read, that’s fine – if you do read, I ask that you read to the end, because it might not be going where you assume and I would hate for you to have the wrong idea of me.
As news started coming in on the Newtown school shooting, Twitter exploded. Within a few minutes I saw one statement on necessary background checks for gun purchases and a whole lot more calling for gun bans. Most disturbing, though, were the tweets characterizing gun owners as child murderers or enablers of the same.
Ready to try something new to wrap those gifts this year?
Furoshiki is a distinctive and environmentally-friendly way to disguise (and carry!) your packages.
This is a traditional Japanese method of wrapping items for both protection and easier carrying, as the tie can become a convenient handle instead of needing to cradle a bulky or oddly shaped package.
As we come to the Ninth Day of Kitsune, let’s treat one of the senses which has been left so far untouched despite our forays into images, taste, and touch; let’s listen to music, both period and related, from Heian era to today.
Nearly every year of my life, my immediate family has gathered on Christmas Eve, invited friends and pseudo-adopted family, eaten ourselves silly on shrimp and brownies and cheese balls and red and green M&Ms, and watched It’s a Wonderful Life.
“That old hack of a film? Really?” you ask.
If you asked it silently to yourself, read on, and I’ll explain. If you asked aloud, there’s the door over there. We don’t argue about It’s a Wonderful Life.
In recent years, kitsune and other folklore creatures have been making a striking comeback, it seems. Yes, they were always there, but now they’re everywhere, from fashion (French clothing line Maison Kitsune) to music (several music groups go by the name Kitsune).
Here’s a very brief collage of modern media in which you might spy a kitsune — and one of my favorite kitsune scenes in which there is no kitsune at all.
So for thousands of years, creatures of folklore and mythology have stalked the Japanese countryside, keeping wayward children in at night. But what about in the era of electric lights and digital cameras? What happened to the youkai, the bakemono, the monomo and ayakeshi — where are they now?
They’re glad you asked.
