INTRO:

Hello and welcome to Myth Monsters, my name is Erin and I’ll be your host for these little snack bite size podcasts on folklore and mythical monsters from around the world. 

These podcasts focus on the actual cryptids, folklore and mythic monsters from global mythology, rather than focusing on full stories of heroes and their big adventures.

I’ll also be dropping in some references that they have to recent culture and where you can see these represented in modern day content so you can learn more, and get as obsessed as I am about these absolute legends of the mythological world.

This week we are looking at the weird and wonderful Kappa from Japanese mythology - who is actually one of the most well known Japanese myth monsters. 

DESCRIPTION:

Kappa are one of the Japanese yokai, which is a demon or spirit in their mythology. They are an amphibious creature, typically green, yellow or blue, around the size of a child and resemble a turtle - with a large shell on their backs. They also apparently have an ape-like face with a beak, and arms that connect the whole way through their shell, which is a weird thought.

However, the most noticeable part of this monster is the little puddle of water it keeps on its head called a sara. When it’s out of the water, this has to be full as this is the source of its power. So going off of this, I hope you’ve figured out that these are river and water creatures - living throughout Japan, but mostly being found in the Saga Prefecture, Kyūshū.

They also have webbed feet and hands, and generally that’s where you’ll find them, as they’re amazing swimmers and generally not great at walking about on land. Although they are said to be stronger than people - so they may be small, but they are mighty.

Fun fact is that they have three anuses, which means they produce a lot more gas than people - isn’t that so fun. I actually have more about this later, I’m sorry. They’re also very intelligent and are one of the few yokais who can speak human languages, and are also really skilled in medicine.

However, in contrast, they can also be pretty mischievous. Their pranks range from loudly farting or upskirting ladies in kimonos, to drowning people, raping women or kidnapping children. 

The worst part about this is when kappas attack people, they would pull the person's intestines out through their buttholes. Yep, you heard me correctly - this was to get to an organ called the shirikodama, which apparently contains the human soul, which obviously as proven by human biologists and philosophers worldwide, does not exist.

So how do you get away from an aggressive Kappa? 

Kappa can be polite, as I said earlier - and it can be disabled by bowing at it as a greeting or to invite it to a sumo-wrestle. How? Well the Kappa would bow back, and spill the water on the top of it’s head - completely disabling it. If you refill this, the Kappa will serve you for eternity - which is kind of coll, but also kind of slavery vibes. You can also steal its arms, which is pretty easy as they’re not connected to its body so you can just pop ‘em out. I also found that sometimes a Kappa would demand a farm girl to marry, and the farmer would challenge the Kappa to win her hand, by fully submerging gourds - which is impossible as they float.

They apparently love a cucumber - which is not a euphemism on my part, and you can escape an aggressive kappa by throwing a cucumber in its direction, and run away while it eats the cucumber. If you need to bathe in the water where a Kappa lives, it’s recommended to chuck a cucumber in before and it will let you use it as a thank you. 

In Edo (old Tokyo), there used to be a tradition where people would write the names of their family members on cucumbers and send them down the rivers to keep the kappa at bay, to prevent the family member from being attacked in water.

Or you could go the easy route, and throw some iron, sesame, or ginger at it as they hate that. Or even better, just fart at it, this apparently works - there are even drawings of this, legit. I told you we were going to get back to farting at some point.

If you beat a Kappa, which to be honest, sounds quite tricky - it will help with farming or share some of its medical know-how with you. Or you can make friends with one by continuing to bring it cucumbers, and it’ll help out on the farm as a pal! 

ORIGIN:

Now onto etymology time - the word Kappa in Japanese means river child, with kawa which means river and wappa meaning child. Note the first part of the word there, as they do have two other names being kawatarō meaning river boy, and kawako meaning river tiger (this is because they’ve rarely been described to also have stripes). There’s also a hair covered version called a Hyōsube.

Kappa might sound really similar to a few creatures we’ve covered in the past, as they are quite similar to the Scottish legendary water horse, the Kelpie, which was back in the third episode of the podcast and my favourite ever Myth Monster. They can also be linked to a Germanic and Scandi myth monster called Neck, Nokken or Nixie - which we’re actually covering next week! Surprise! However, these monsters have all been used to frighten children to stay away from water.

They’ve been noted since about the late 1700’s, which in Japan was known as the Meiwa period. The only really registered sighting was that in 1764, around modern day Tokyo, where one was captured and was about 60cm long and was compared to a catfish, but was identified formally as a Kappa. There have been other sightings, but they’re not very well documented, dating around the late 1700’s to the mid 1800’s.

And much like the Jurogumo which was the Japanese monster we covered a few months ago, it is still widely used as a symbol in Japan today as Kappa are widely recognised as an avatar of the Water Deity. There are shrines dedicated to Kappa as water deities all over Japan today, even with festivals designed to keep the Kappa happy, which now celebrate a good harvest.

The most famous place to look for Kappa is a place called Tōno in the Iwate Prefecture, specifically called Kappabuchi waters. Nearby to this in Jōkenji, there is a Buddist temple which has dog statues with little dishes on their heads that keep in the rain water as apparently, there was a Kappa who helped extinguish a fire there, sacrificing itself for the temple. There’s actually a similar story in Tokyo, where an apparent mummified arm of a Kappa has been enshrined since 1818 - which is creepy and very cool. I’ve also seen a horrific picture of a so-called Kappa skeleton in a literal pub in Japan - it’s horrible, I wouldn't advise looking it up.

Another cool fact, there was a Japanese folklore writer called  Kunio Yanagita, who said that many people from Tōno believed that some women were kidnapped and even had children with Kappa. Apparently the children were so hideous, that they were buried alive - leaving no trace of these hybrids today.

There’s a cool expression kappa-no-kawa-nagare which means, "a kappa drowning in a river". This is meant to convey the idea that even experts make mistakes and I think that’s bloody brilliant. And to add to this, when you go swimming in parts of Japan, there are signs that have the Kappa drowning people as a warning of the dangers of the water.

Also you know I said that they were great healers? Well it’s said that the technique of bone setting was thought to have been originally taught to humans by a friendly kappa from when they sumo-wrestled.

My favourite fact actually, mainly because I love sushi, is that there’s a type of sushi that has cucumbers, and it’s named after Kappa, called the Kappamaki. Delicious!

Now Kappa legends are probably based on the Japanese giant salamander, which are massive, if you’ve not seen a picture of them - google it now! They’re called Hanzaki in Japanese, and as cute and useless as they look, they are really really ugly and massive. Another suggestion is that it could be a prehistoric kind of amphibian, such as a Temnospondyl - which to be honest, looks like a Giant Salamander, but with very large and scary looking teeth.

CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE: 

Now culture this week is a good one - for art, the wonderful part of doing Japanese monsters is that there is always amazing art that was drawn in the period. So for this I would recommend looking at Koga Tōan's Suiko Kōryaku from 1820 and Toriyama Sekien’s Kappa from 1776, there are loads of other art works of them, but annoyingly with the vast amount, means that sometimes artists are hard to track down! 

For movies, we’ve only got the two and that’s Summer days with Coo from 2007 and amazingly, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Movie from 1993 and this is funny because they end up in Japan and everyone screams that they are Kappa. For TV, they are in the anime One Piece - his name is Kawamatsu, and he’s a samurai Kappa! They were also mentioned in River Monsters, and if you’ve not seen it, it’s basically a fishing show but he goes on the hunt for mythical fish and finds, not so mythical fish - and in this episode he found the giant salamander!

There are actually quite a few video games this week, they’re in Final Fantasy 7, Smite, Monster Hunter: Rise, Touhou Project, Yokai Watch and also and my favourite one, Animal Crossing, where there is a character called Kapp’n, who is the cab driver in the games and asks you all the questions about your character in the beginning of the older games!

My book recommendation for this week is the wonderful Yokai series by Hiroka Yoda including, Yokai Attack!: The Japanese Monster Survival Guide and Yurei Attack!: The Japanese Ghost Survival Guide. I bought these books a few months ago and they’re so informative and they have great illustrations, super recommendations for this week!

DO I THINK THEY EXISTED? 

Now it’s time for, do I think they existed? This one is actually kind of tricky because I like to think that there are little frog/salamander dudes out there trying to get into the buttholes of Japanese blokes who went swimming in the wrong lake. But at the same time, how likely is it that 3 foot little green dudes are wandering around? Pretty slim.

I imagine that like I mentioned earlier, they were probably giant salamanders, which are quite common in lakes - or they were sea turtles of some kind - I have heard that turtles like cucumbers too. I mean who doesn’t, it’s such an inoffensive vegetable - or fruit. I’m not going to continue that debate. 

I’ve personally seen the Kappa in a lot of Japanese cartoons that I watched growing up, and actually didn’t realise they had a name/species. I always just thought they were frogs with little lily pads on their heads, but now I look at a picture of Lotad from Pokemon and I’m like ahhh, you were definitely inspired by a Kappa. 

OUTRO: 

I loved this one, it was really fun to research and there was sooo much content for me to look over. What a fun creature, and I just can’t get over that you can just fart them away - that’s so bizarre. Just remember to eat loads of beans and carry some cucumbers if you ever go to swim in a lake in Japan next time.

I kind of spoiled next week earlier in the episode, but we are heading back over to mainland Europe for the Nixie! It is another little river monster, but they are a fun monster in so many different cultures! Come paddling in next Thursday for that lovely installment!

For now thank you so much for listening, it’s been an absolute pleasure. If you enjoyed this podcast, please give it a rating on the service you’re listening on - I’ve got the twitter for any questions, or suggestions on what monsters to cover next and I’d love to hear from you. The social media handles for Tiktok and Instagram are mythmonsterspodcast, and twitter is mythmonsterspod. But all of our content can be found at mythmonsters.co.uk - the shiny new website!

So come join the fun and share this with your pals, they might love me as much as you do.

But for now, stay spooky and I’ll see you later babes.