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Session 5a: Asian Monstrosities
Chair: Peter Dendle

Why Do Japanese Ghosts Have No Legs? Sexualized Female Ghosts and Fear of Sexuality
Natsumi Ikoma
Division of Humanities, International Christian University (ICU), Mitaka, Tokyo, Japan

The biggest difference between Western and Japanese ghosts is that the former possess legs whereas the latter don’t.  Through the analysis of various literary works in English and Japanese, I will argue that this fact may originate from distinct conceptualization of a dead body in each culture.  In Christian culture, a deceased body instantly becomes a site of hope for resurrection, while it also inevitably becomes a site of horror, since the decomposition of a body takes long, and so is the process to establish the dead-ness of the body.  The length of this middle state of a dead body might explain why Western ghosts have such corporeality.
To contrast, in Japanese Buddhist-Shintoist culture, a dead body has no significance.  A body is regarded as a mere temporary housing of a soul, and a dead one won’t be the site for hope nor horror, being a mere thing to be quickly cremated.  In such a culture, death is not closely related to the body, because the body retains its form only briefly after the death.  This may explain the less corporeal nature of Japanese ghosts, and the reason why they lack legs.  Then, what do Japanese ghosts signify?  Interestingly, they become ghosts when a soul is too attached to its body when it shouldn’t.  For instance, in many cases, the ghosts (the female ghosts outnumber the male ones) are sexually frustrated or have sexually-related grudge.  It shows how women have been regarded as more sexual, therefore less sacred, in Japanese culture, and how it imposes on women’s body its fear of sexuality by creating sexualized female ghosts.  The female ghost featured in The Tale of Genji is an example of such a sexualized ghosts, though the author seems to utilize the system to her own advantage.

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Good Monsters, Bad Monsters: Paranoid Projections Meet Oral Traditions
Rupalee Verma
Department of Southeast Asian History, Delhi University, India

Dragons and monsters form part of temple structures in many South Asian and Southeast Asian countries.  These dragons were usually placed in the space outside temple complexes. Stories and legend explained that these monsters were placed there to discourage evil spirits from entering sacred spaces.  Living traditions thus placed monsters somewhere between the good and the evil.  This ambiguous positioning perhaps had its origin in a belief system, which believed that good and evil belong together.  In modern times, psychologists have tried to understand some of these monsters as paranoid projections of a troubled human mind.  The monsters created by the mind in a state of fear and reaction to things unknown. Michel Foucalt took up from there to explain why societies need to define and categorize people as normal and abnormal and the role of discourse in reinforcing these categories.
My paper is a product of collecting monster stories from different parts of the world.  My collection led me to discover a number of ‘good monster ‘stories. Perhaps their creation was as much part of the dominant discourse on evil as the more popular ‘bad monster stories’.  The question I would like to analyze and answer is what made some societies create these good monsters and what role they play in understanding the mind set of the people who created them.
Whether it is the Japanese ‘Tengu” or the Balinese ‘Wanaru’. These monsters are monstrous in appearance and their behavior is terrifying to begin with. But as the story develops the reader and listener comes to understand that behind their ‘ abnormality’ hides a wise being. Was this then a ‘discourse of exclusion’? An effort to depict that which is outside the norms of the civil society and yet acceptable. Some of these stories let the monster speak and present their side of the story. In most of these stories the fundamental division between good and bad disappear and grey areas appear- offering opportunities for both deeper analysis and greater understanding.
I would like to conclude by examining the role oral traditions play in creating these ‘good monsters’. I believe that though there was a discourse of exclusion, of creating monsters to explain away the inexplicable, storytellers succeeded in making the monster ‘less monstrous’ and more ‘humane’.

Mara: The Depiction of the Monstrous in Buddhist Literature
C.D. Sebastian
Dept. of Humanities & Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, Mumbai, India

The vast corpus of Buddhist literature depicts the monstrous plentifully, and it is called as Mara or Namuci. Mara has been identified with the ancient symbols of Death, Yama, Mrtyu, etc., as the name evidently means “the slayer”. Mara is an important figure in the mythology of the Buddhists. In all the Pali texts, Mara appears as a living, active and mischievous imp or celestial being. This is his personal aspect, as he is a mythological being with a distinct individuality. But there is also an impersonal aspect of Mara. In many passages, he is merely regarded as a symbol of Evil, Sin, Desire and Temptation. He then belongs more to the realm of Allegory than of Myth. In Buddhist Sanskrit literature too Mara has personal and impersonal aspects. However, the personal aspect of Mara is not so important in the later Buddhist literature, as his figure gets resolved into the abstract idea of Evil.
The proposed paper seeks to investigate and explore the enduring influence and imagery of Mara in Buddhism. The metaphorical interpretations make it clear that the real battle is not with outward mythological monsters but with the emotions and passions one finds within oneself; for, Buddhism is a religion of here and now. Mara is often interpreted to symbolize the mental afflictions that cause suffering, especially the principle afflictions of greed, anger, and stupidity. Forces of Evil will be compelled to retire discomfited, and the bodhisattvas will be victorious due to their Great Commiseration and Wisdom. The menacingly troublesome Mara’s realm that stands in front, that is, Evil and Sin one confronts everyday, cannot hinder him who has done meritorious deeds (The Mahavastu 2: 286; 417). Thus, Buddhism, as a discipline, permeates into philosophy, religion and even psychology.

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