Loremen Podcast - S5 Ep29: Loremen S5Ep29 - The Japanese Tree With A Human Face with Uncanny Japan

Episode Date: April 25, 2024

Thersa Matsuura of Uncanny Japan joins the Loreboys for a tale with more human faces than you've had hot dinners with human faces*. We look at a bunch of Yōkai that can take a look right back at us. From fish with a face to a blister with a kisser, these jinmen will give you the jitters. Especially the fish, because they're real. (No seriously... there are videos.) * Unless you dine exclusively on McCain's Smiles. Join us for another Loremen Live in Oxford on 25th May: https://oldfirestation.org.uk/whats-on/loremen-podccast/ This episode was edited by Joseph Burrows - Audio Editor. LoreBoys nether say die! Support the Loremen here (and get stuff): patreon.com/loremenpod ko-fi.com/loremen Check the sweet, sweet merch here... https://www.teepublic.com/stores/loremen-podcast?ref_id=24631 @loremenpod youtube.com/loremenpodcast www.instagram.com/loremenpod www.facebook.com/loremenpod

Welcome to Lawmen, a podcast about local legends and obscure curiosities from days of yore. I'm James Shakeshaft. And I'm Alistair Beckett-King. And Alistair, we've got a deputy with us today who is joining us live all the way from Japan. Yes, it's the host of Uncanny Japan, Teresa Matsuura. Yes, and we have got some pretty spooky yokais and some pretty disgusting yokais.

Really nasty yokais. Yeah. Yeah. I can't wait. Let's try and put a human face on things. What's the story, James? It's the Jinmenju, the Japanese tree with a human face. Alistair.

Yes, James? I'm doing the, we've got a guest deputy law person. I noticed and I immediately matched your tone. Thanks for doing that. I mean, shall we just get her on? Let's just get on with it. Just bring her on. Yes, it's bad for the throat to maintain this level of stage whisper.

Definitely. Well, it's Teresa Matsuura, author and podcast host of Uncanny Japan, which is a podcast about uncanny things in Japan. In Japan of all places. Of all places. Welcome, Theresa Matsuura, to Lawman. You have been deputised. Hello, Terry. Thank you. Thank you. I'm calling you, Terry, to suggest a familiarity, which we don't have, but the listener won't know.

Everything's okay. So nice to be here. Thank you for having me. Oh, you're very welcome. Thank you for coming on. And you are actually right now live from Japan. Live from Japan. Yes, yes. Well, not at the time the listener is listening to this. It's live for us, but it's pre-recorded for the listener, just to be clear. But it's pre-recorded for the listener, just to be clear. Let's not get into any more temporal confusion than the time difference allows for when we're recording this. Yeah, so it's early in the morning for you, Teresa,

and it's late at night for us because that's just how things are on this crazy old planet of ours. And it's hard to figure out. And then you get different days too. Oh, yeah, you've already begun your tomorrow. Yes, it's tomorrow. What, it's tomorrow? It's tomorrow there, right now.

It's going to be a little cloudy, just looking out there. Is everyone speaking Japanese tomorrow? They are. Okay. I thought so, I thought so. Turn on the TV, it's going to be wild. So whereabouts in Japan do you live? I live in Shizuoka. It's kind of right under Mount Fuji, about an hour, hour and a half drive. And if you look at the big island,

it's right in the middle. It's like the nicest place because it doesn't snow. We've got mountains, we've got ocean. Yeah. Shogun, the movie or the TV show that's going on. We're very close to where that took place. Wow. Yeah, yeah. I'm expecting a lot of tourists to come very soon. More than now. Because there's a lot now too. But see all those places.

Oh, yeah. So I think we've used the banana analogy. Because we actually did. We've done the story of William Adams on the podcast before. Who is the sort of inspiration for the Shogun. We noticed that the TV adaptation doesn't mention all the penguins that he killed and ate on his way around the world. This is what's the shame about losing DVDs is that we lose deleted scenes

and we don't get to watch him. Yeah with like an animatronic penguin just battering it well you need the what is it vitamin a from the livers or something so you don't get scurvy is that how it works is that i think they were doing it for fun you said that with such confidence i didn't know that penguins kept away scurvy i could be wrong so don't go eating penguins but just in case you ever feel a bout of scurvy coming on, there happens to be a penguin. That's why English sailors are nicknamed penguins in Japan. They call us pingu's.

Because we were always chewing on a penguin to keep away scurvy. The listener might want to jump back to the episode we did about, the double episode we did about William Adams, to make any sense of that penguin nonsense. I don't know if they'll get sense, but they will definitely get to hear it again. Yeah. Teresa, you've written a book on Japanese folklore, haven't you?

It's called The Book of Japanese Folklore, right? Japanese folklore just went through several names and we ended up sticking with that one. What kind of brought you to this topic and the podcast Uncanny Japan? What was your inspiration? So when I came to Japan in 1990, so this is like pre-internet and I kind of, I had no idea what a yokai or any of this stuff was, but I kind of ran into them in my daily life. Like my mother-in-law would say things that were kind of weird. And then I'd come across statues that were weird. And like, what is this thing? So yeah, I just started studying.

I decided this is something that I think that's again, pre-anime manga. Ghibli wasn't over in the West yet. And I wanted to introduce it to all my friends back home. So I was studying and I was writing stories and everything like, how can I get this over? And the stories were getting published. And then I needed, it wasn't enough, like, okay, let's do a podcast. And then I can, I can, I can tell more about all these weird things. And did that. And then all of a sudden it took off, like the internet came and everyone knows everything about Ghibli and Totoro and again, anime,, manga. And, yeah, so that was kind of my forte. But I never thought about writing a book of folklore or yokai, as it is. And then Adams Media came to me and said, hey, do you want to write this thing?

And I was like, oh, not fiction, kind of fiction. I could do that. And that's, yeah, and I said yes and really dug into it more than usual. So what is a yokai? It's a huge bucket. So it's anything like supernatural, otherworldly, sometimes ghosts are included, sometimes urban legends are included. They're born of, I guess, the imaginations of these ancient Japanese who had things happen.

Diseases cropped up and they're like, well, what's this? And let's, oh, it must be a supernatural little creature that does it. There's so many and they've pervaded for so long, even now, like all the mascots and everything in Japan. So it must be something very Japanese. It seems hard to draw like analogies to Western folklore because they see, it seems to cover like, like like you say like ghosts and spirits and fairies and gods or at least the gods of places and things and all like a huge a whole range of different types of things that would be clearly categorically different in in europe exactly seem to be okay is that is that right let in there. Yes, exactly. It really feels like that.

Get me a bucket of weird little guys from Princess Mononoke. Great. I tried to say that correctly. Did I get away with it? You did, you did. Okay, because I was about to say Mononoke like I would normally, but then I thought James is always correcting me. So Mononoke.

Just try and say it with a northern accent. Mononoke. So thank you very much for coming on and have you some tales of some yokai for us I do so I heard word that you did the Jinmen Ken

the human faced dog we left him alone that's what he wants, he wants to be left alone wouldn't you I'm a human with a human face, and I like being left alone. So I can only imagine how much dog with a human face would want to be left alone. For the new Alyssas, yeah, the Jim and Ken we covered in an episode with the comedian Yuriko Katane. And as far as I recall, it's a dog with a human face.

I'm picturing the face of Noel Edmonds, but I think that's based on one of your illustrations, James, and I'm not sure that's canon. I think that's a fair shout. It can run as fast as a car on a motorway. It does green poop and eats rubbish out of bins, and a sighting of it involves someone seeing it whilst it was eating rubbish out of a bin. It turned around and looked at him and said,

in Japanese, leave me alone. Leave me alone. Hoiteke. Awesome. Great catchphrase as well. Such a great catchphrase. It really is. In Japanese, it's even better.

It just sounds funny. It sounds like an old man kind of like, yeah, get out of here. What is it in Japanese? Hotoike. Hotoike. Hotoike. It's kind of a slangy, male slingy.

But today we have another human-faced thing. Is it a human? It's not a human. Thank goodness, because no offense, that would be a little disappointing if it was a human-faced human. Human-faced human. No, but it's kind of attached to a human. It's older.

So the jimenken, the dog, kind of is a recent, like I said, more of an urban legend. But this one goes all the way back to the 1600s. There's quite a few records of it, even in China, I guess, if you want to dig way back. So it probably came from China, but it kind of came into its own in Japan, too. So 1600s, 1700s, 1800s, there are, you've got stories written about it about it you've got artwork it's an ukiyo-e there's pictures of this thing there's medical records and there's newspaper articles i even found a newspaper article about it what it is jinmin soul and the word soul so jinmin human faced soul is sometimes translated as tumor but it's going to get gross.

It could also be pox. Oh. Skin eruption. Boil. Pustule. So it's a human-faced skin eruption. Like a human-faced zit. Wow.

But big, like really big. But bigger. It grows. So it starts out, the story seems to be that it starts out, you wake up one day and you're like, oh, there's something on my knee. That's strange. And you leave it alone. But a couple days later, it's getting bigger and bigger. And then eventually it gets big enough that you look at it and you're like, oh, geez, that a pair of eyes and a nose? Could that be a mouth? Does it have ears? And you go to the doctor and it seems like doctors can't do anything about it they just poke and take notes which again it's in medical records like a doctor actually wrote down that it had two ears and closed eyes what yeah yeah so it's very on the on the is this made up or yokai real thing i don't know so yeah there's real medical records of it doctor can't do anything send you home you go home do you both get a lollipop for being brave or is it just you

should that is yes because what happens is when you go home and you're drinking to numb your pain of having this face on your knee or could be anywhere, usually knees, but it could be shoulder, stomach, whatever. You think to yourself like, oh, wouldn't it be interesting if I fed or gave a little sake to its mouth? I know, right? No, no. I mean, I don't even know what's going to happen in the story, but I've heard enough stories to know this is a mistake.

This is not going to end well. Don't give it sake. And it laps it up and it says, mm-mm, and it wants more. So you give it more and it starts to get red in the face, I guess. And then you start saying, well, maybe it wants to eat. So you give it some food and then it starts eating. And it turns out that eventually it becomes like an entity of its own. It starts demanding.

Like every day it's like, feed me, give me more sake. And people start wasting away because they can't eat and drink themselves because everything they've worked, all the food that they have in the house has to go to their little jingmen soul. Ay, ay, ay. Ay, ay, ay. Wow, like a parasite. Like a parasite, yes.

Destroying the host. Destroying the host. Can they speak? Yes, some of them do. And this is where yeah. Destroying the host. Destroying the host. Can they speak? Yeah, some of them do. And this is where I found, there's another story. I just found this one actually the other day. This one's not in the book because I just found it. And there was a story of, this is in when?

1600. So the late 1600s, there is a man, young man, he's living with his parents. And the story goes, I love this one. So his father had laid hands on the maidservant. Uh-huh. Out of jealousy, the wife killed the maidservant. Well, I'm not sure. I'm not sure she was the one to blame in that situation, but.

Yes. Okay. So the maidservant gets killed. After that, a swelling appears on his right shoulder. So he's getting a jingmen so. A few days later, his wife suddenly dies, which is a little suspicious. And then he gets a swelling on his left shoulder. So it's got one on each shoulder.

Then they start talking to each other and to him. So he's got a swelling here talking. He's got a jingmen so here talking. And they're constantly talking to him. he's got a swallowing here talking he's got a jim and so you're talking and they're constantly talking to him they just don't stop when he ignores them he suffers from such difficulty breathing that it seems as if he would die so he can't ignore him they're just like then a traveling monk comes through and he stays at his house and he learns about the situation obviously because talking talking so it's yeah it sounds like it would be quite noisy something difficult to hide so he chanced the lotus sutra

in front of the swellings on the father's shoulder as a result snakes emerge from them and they're pulled out they're buried in a mound he offers them prayers and then finally the the jimin's show so on his shoulders disappear and all is well i mean it's not it's not well it's not well the wife is dead the maidservant's been murdered i feel bad for the maidservant particularly badly where did the snakes come from, sorry? They were inside the... Inside the saw. ...pastules, evidently. Yeah. So even though they had faces, evidently, they were actually snakes.

This is the only one I've ever heard about snakes. Usually it's... It's like the thing is a little head kind of thing. It is a little... I mean, when it comes to snakes, certainly better out than in. You don't want them... You don't want them in your shoulders. You don't want snakes emerging from any part of your body, but you also don't want them staying in there.

So at some point you're going to have to choose, and better to have them all wriggle out. I'm not a doctor. But you could be. Yeah, I've got pretty much most of the qualifications. You want to get the snakes out of there? Oh, yeah. As ever, we just need to remind listeners,

we are not trained medical professionals. A lot of people have somehow got the impression that we are doctors. We're not doctors. If you do have snakes in your shoulders, just, you know, dial one. Just squeeze them out. Squeeze them out.

Do it yourself. Squeeze them out. Or try and contact a 17th century Japanese doctor. Very reasonable rates. Travelling monk, that works. Seems traveling monks are very efficient. That's a terrifying prospect. I had no idea that such a thing ever happened in real life.

There's another story. This is the newspaper article. This one's interesting too. So this is an actual newspaper article. 1882, August 25th, the Kyoto Shiga Shimbun. And it says that in Nanmuro District, Mie Prefecture, a farmer developed a swelling resembling a human face around his groin. The swelling opened its mouth and appeared to be asking for food, so the farmer tried giving it some rice. The swelling quickly devoured about one shou, which is like 1.5

kilograms of rice, and it still seemed unsatisfied. Wow. I mean, did he put any soy sauce on the rice or was it just plain? It doesn't say. And is that one and a half kilo, is that in its uncooked state or is that cooked? We don't know. Because that could be a huge quantity of bland rice. And if I were living on a guy's groin, eating bucket loads of bland rice, I wouldn't be satisfied. Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Whoa, Alistair Beckett King.

I will not have you besmirching the good name of Japanese rice. Genuinely, good rice is really good. Not 1.5 kilos good, but I would not have you say it's bland. All right. I mean, yes, it's good. I wouldn't shovel a kilo and a half of it into my groin. Even if it was asking for it. There's no follow-up on that story that's it that's it there's like i have so many questions about this there's no letters to the editor that would surely have prompted letters no follow-up letters wow i couldn't find any or not even in you know like

you know the misconnections one. Oh, yes. In the metro they have for people who see somebody on public transport that they like to chat them up in a way that I think is, it's 95% creepy and 5% charming. Yeah. You know, I was the passing monk who was on the lookout for snakes, you were feeding 1.5 kilograms of rice

to your crotch face. Maybe meet up for some more rice. And a little sake too. Wow. Just see what happens I suppose. Yeah. Let nature take its course, which it's definitely terrifying. I don't know if I'd call this nature, what we're hearing about here. But I suppose, thinking about it,

and without being too graphically disgusting, you do get tumours that have things like teeth, don't you? And that's one of the features of a mouth, a tooth. The human body does do weird things. So I suppose something like this could happen. If they have the wrong cells, not the wrong,

but if they have the cells for growing hair, they will be full of hair. It can happen. Right. It could happen. I feel a bit ill. Yeah, I do as well.

I'm glad I didn't eat a kilo and a half of rice For this Bland or otherwise I know A little queasy No that's okay That's okay

I started it With the whole Subjuice 1600s Japan started it With it's disgusting facts True True True

They did say that Elephantitis Is it that Elephant Is it Elephantisis Oh That's it that elephant? Is it elephantisis? Oh. That's it. Wow.

Elephantisis. Elephantisis. It is caused by an infection with parasites classified as nematodes. Oh. Back to parasites. And worms would come. Oh, my God. This has got even grosser.

So, yeah, nematode is a type of worm, isn't it? It is a type of worm, yes. So could worms come out, James? Potentially worms could come out. The listener can't see your face, but it's the face of a man reading about worms. It's the face on a man's knee of a face reading about worms. Oh, wow. Turn Google Images off.

This is horrible. I thought this was all going to be fake supernatural stuff but now i'm realizing this is just hard cold science and it's disgusting yeah it turned that way didn't it i thought with with the japanese faces on things we'd reached a low of a human face dog eating rubbish out of a bin and doing green poos. Yeah, with green poo. I thought that was the most disgusting thing we were going to hear about from Japan. That had a human face. It's got worse. Well, there's a cure.

Well, that's a relief. Goodness, finally. So it sounds like the doctors can't do anything. The priest comes in and either he prays, evidently, does his Lotus Sutra, or there's one story of a monk who comes in and again, the man's wasting away. What do I do? I don't know what to do. Sell everything.

Sell all your possessions, sell your farms and get everything in gold. So this looks like it's going in a bad direction. And then he goes, now take that gold and i want you to buy all these herbs and herbs and minerals and rocks and all kinds of weird stuff he just says buy all this stuff so the man does it he doesn't have anything else to do so he buys all this stuff and then the monk sits there and all day long he starts feeding one thing another thing to the to the little mouth, little skin eruption thing. Yeah. Nom, nom, nom.

That's the noise I imagine it making. In the end, it is a kind of lily that it doesn't like. So eating everything up. The priest is doing trial and error. Trial and error. Yes. Like he can go to the hippie shop and they can test you for all kinds of food sensitivities. They're basically using magic until they find the one and then you have to just avoid fennel or something they feed it

into your little mouth it's a little it's a lily and it was the last one he tried and it said no yeah it did it went yeah it closed its mouth and said no no you'd hope it would be the last thing he tried though i wouldn't just keep trying a few other things. Seems cruel to carry on afterwards. Put this on the short list. Can't we get rid of it now? No, this is science. You bought all this stuff. We're going to use it all.

So yeah. How did it work? What happened? So yeah. So it didn't want to eat it. It said, no, no, no. And he forced it in its mouth. And then it went like, ah.

And then the guy started feeling better. And it was like seven days later to some amount of time. It actually has the amount of time. Like seven days later, it just gets smaller, smaller, smaller, and it completely disappeared. And the man was healthy again. Wow. An unexpectedly happy ending. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And nobody needed to murder anyone's maid. No. No maids or wives were murdered. Or snakes. Or snakes. Yeah. The snakes came out of it fine in that one as well.

Did they talk about anything else apart from their hunger? Do they offer any opinions on the world? I heard about whispering and, but I couldn't find a lot of good stuff about it. But yeah, kind of like it talks to you at night. Like, you know, you're sitting there. It says things. There is a legend, isn't there, of a man with a face on the back of his head let me just google it i i think there's that tom waits i was gonna say poor edward

yeah edward mordake the tom waits song on alice edward mordake had a a demon twin on the back of his head according to the lyrics of Tom Waits. I don't know if this is true. I'm just remembering words from a song. From 1895. The first description was found in an article in 1895. I don't think it is true. I don't think it's true.

It's all true. Aside, I think Tom Waits is the eyeball kid because the eyeball kid's birthday is Tom Waits' birthday, the 7th of December. What does the eyeball kid because the eyeball kid's birthday is tom waitz's birthday the 7th of december what does the eyeball kid do he's just an eyeball on a on a i assume on a cushion i don't actually know if that's canon he's just one big eyeball who uh is very popular he makes it to county hall with his act which i think is just being one big eyeball we have one of those in japan too to be fair it's one of tom waitz's weirdest' weirdest songs. There is a York eye though that is an eye, isn't there? Yes, that's what I was going to say.

Meidama Oyaji. Yes, it's just an eyeball. He's got two little feet though. Well, that's probably what the eyeball kid was. It does look young, to be honest, that eyeball. It does look like an old eyeball. Yeah, it's around the eyes, isn't it? That's where you show your age.

But the eyeball itself, very youthful. But does grow, just to squash that rumour. Yeah. Oh, so your eyeballs do grow, do they? Yeah, babies aren't born with human-sized eyeballs. I mean, that's a real anti-baby stance. Yeah, I've revealed myself as being very anti-baby. Shake shaft in babies aren't human shock.

How dare you? I want to distance myself from James's comments. I'm pushing my pro-toddler agenda. So we've got dogs, we've got tumours. Do any other things, any other yokai have relatableness? Can we put a human face on any of these demons? There's human faces. It's Jin Min Joo, which is fruit on a tree.

And it's a tree that has little heads. And they talk. They do a lot of talking. Really? They laugh at you when you walk by. Like the flowers in the Disney Alice in Wonderland. They were real mean girls. Were they?

I haven't seen Alice in Wonderland in a long time. What are they like? They just had a go at her and were like, oh, you're not very pretty, are you? They were like, look at her petals. They're rubbish and her leaves are all wilty or something. They were really quite tough to the poor girl. The ones in Japan, if you make them laugh too much, they fall and shatter.

Oh. So if they were mean, you could just make them laugh, and then they fall, and then they're dead. Yes. Wow. Good. That's like the ultimate heckler event. That would be how you would crush a heckler

by making them laugh so much they fall off a tree i have had an audience member fall off a chair before and it's actually more disruptive in a show than you would think james it's not ideal were they a human-faced apple because i imagine that is even more disruptive they were they were a human face human. Oh, okay. They were holding three pints. Oh, wow. That's pretty good.

I suppose all their... They were very, very drunk. All their concentration went into that and not to the maintaining being sat in a seat. Yeah, wrenched the seat, which was screwed into the floor, out of the floor. It was...

The pints went down me. It was very funny at the time. I mean, it sounds like the guy had talent. Yeah, you've got to give him credit. And I think that was his first time falling over professionally. I wonder if he was trying to feed some kind of growth down his throat. If I had had, yeah, a series of mouths, thirsty mouths. If I'd had three thirsty mouths on my torso region,

they would have been, they would have laughed that right up. Did they say what sort of fruit these faces are? Are they like little, I'm imagining like a conference pear with like a sort of droopy, jowly face. I think I'm imagining a particular Pokemon who has faces on his fruit. There are Pokemon based off of them. Yes, yes. I forget the name, but yeah, yeah.

There's a Pokemon based off them. And they got little faces. They talk to you. They sing. They giggle. And then if in some legends, if you eat them, you gain immortality. So there's that. Seems to be no downside to these fun loving face fruits.

Well, except for them yelling at you and saying that you are ugly. Oh, quite snarky. Okay, I had forgotten about that. Yeah, so those are the other ones. I think there's like three. There's the human-faced dog, the human-faced fruit tree, and the human-faced skin eruption. That's incredible.

Three disgusting legends from a wonderful country. Thank you. Sorry about that. No, the fruit weren't disgusting. The fruit were lovely and sounded delicious, frankly. But they had a stat that walled off. I'd love to eat a sarcastic fruit. Oh, what are you going to do, eat me?

Yeah, I am, actually. I'm a human. I could easily eat a sarcastic fruit. What are you going to do? Eat me? Yeah, I am actually. I'm a human. I could easily eat a fruit. We've got an extra human-faced creature for your judgment, Alistair. Yes, please. There's a human-faced fish and they're called... Yeah, they're a type of carp. I've heard of these before.

I've seen a video. You can see a video. Are they real? Yeah, I've seen a video. No way. Yeah. Human-faced carp. The markings. And you look down and it looks just like a face is looking up at you. video you can see are they real yeah i've seen a video no way yeah yeah human face carp the markings and you look down and it looks just like a face is looking up at you oh looking at you out of the

water it's really disturbing first time i saw him was my son was in kindergarten and his little kindergarten we used to walk to kindergarten together and the little girl would always stop at a bridge and look over and i was talking to her mom and she's like, oh, she likes looking at the human-faced carp. And I was like, what? And then she said, oh, there's one, there's one. So that was my first like, there's a human-faced carp? Oh, my gosh. Wow.

I'm looking at them and the drawings of them have the happiest little pink faces. The smiliest little doll's face, but the actual fish look furious. Yeah, yeah. They've got an absolutely furious expression. Yeah, they're kind of like, because they're moving their mouth and doing the fish thing, breathing. They just look like they're muttering away, moaning away, don't they? Like, meh, meh, meh, meh, meh, meh, meh.

So you've seen them? Yes, yes. And if you go to a lot of carp ponds or koi ponds and you look really hard, they surface sometimes. Like they just randomly are there. So it's not like just one area. So keep your eyes out and you can spot one sometimes. Some are better than others.

Some are like very, very human-faced and some are like, that's a little human-faced, maybe not. This is not a blobfish we're talking about as well this is this is a you know a pond fish that you yeah near the surface yeah i was sad to learn that the blobfish doesn't look like that you know the way the blobfish looks that's what it looks like if you bring it up to the surface because it lives under such pressure that's that's it it's sort of explosively decompressed. Oh, is it much more taut? Yeah, it's all Botox down in the depths of the sea.

And that's only when it comes up to the surface. That's why he looks so miserable. He's like, I don't live here. This isn't my house. My ocean area. So the beach near where I live is very deep, evidently. It's a beach. And I was always told, you never swim there, never swim there.

And I didn't know, why is it a beach? I'm just going to wait. No, you can't because it drops off. And then the Mariana Trench is not too far from out there. Mariana Trench. So it's very, very scary. Yeah. It's pretty cool.

So anyway, we get those a lot. Like the boats will go out and they'll bring back fish and they'll bring back. Yeah. They're used to living in this incredibly pressurized deep and then they come up and they they look all sad oh wow explodey same thing happens to guys when they stop working in finance and they move out to the countryside just go completely and look very sad because they're out of their high pressure environment yeah no very sad oh i've got a big house, but I'm sad. I'm used to a high-pressure environment.

How many is that now? That's four fantastic, revolting, and very weird human-faced things from Japan. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Shall we score? Let's do it. Do you have some categories for me

well terry i advise you to i think we should begin with naming because all the names are japanese so alice is going to feel a bit guilty about marking them down hopefully fingers crossed fingers crossed he can't hear me right now. Okay. Naming? We've had gin, so many gin men. There's more gin and men than you can shake a stick at. If you look at the end of that stick, it's got

a human face as well. We've had sue. So. Okay. And what else? Because I've already forgotten. Gin men ju would be the fruit. Gin men ju. Gin men gyo would be the Okay And what else? Because I've already forgotten Jinmenju Would be the fruit Jinmenju Of the tree

Jinmengyo Would be the fish Gyo Is that all? Wow And which one was the The guy who lives on your knee? Which one's he?

That's Jinmenso That's Jinmenso Okay And so means Like tumour or boil Pox Yeah Oh

And we could just sort of slide in The old Jinmenken from And you can have a Jinmenken And so means like tumour or boil. Pox, yeah. Oh. And we could just sort of slide in the old gin men, Ken, from... And you can have a gin men, Ken, in it. Well, I mean, is that five gin men in total? I think that's four, right? Four. Yeah. Well, then I think it's probably four out of five.

Yes. Okay, that's good. That's good. Nice one, the gin men. So, right, for second category, let's go go for supernatural let's see how this plays out supernatural you say well i was expecting it to be more supernatural than it was because it sounds like i was just hearing cold hard science and maybe it was just just my headphones but i was hearing very plausible accounts about a guy with a little fella on his knee who's

just a bit hungry. It just likes a drink. You know, it's late at night, in your flat, there's a little guy living on your knee. You're eating. If you're hungry, he's hungry. It's like dogs. So, I just don't know if that's supernatural.

Snakes coming out, out again that could be explained with the the old nematode worms maybe i'll be honest i don't know what they are or how big they are but don't look into it it's gross uh and the fish with a human face that someone's just nature has just drawn a human face onto those fish yeah that's not that's that's science again the fruit that mocks you that's supernatural sarcastic fruit come on sarcastic fruit yes that nature has not done that no no if uh yeah if i was getting zinged from a plum i would be what oh no this is outside of the realm of possibility this blackberry bush is being very cruel

the last thing you want is a caustic kiwi This is outside of the realm of possibility. This blackberry bush is being very cruel. The last thing you want is a caustic kiwi. A cutting gumquat. Some barbed asides from a pineapple. Gags from a gooseberry. So, in conclusion... That's all the berries I can think of All the alliterative berries Cork is from a cranberry And in conclusion

It's So I'm going to go with Three out of five For Supernatural Because I think The fruit is really really good And that's giving you three But the rest of it

I think it's all real I 100% believe it Definitely happened. And I don't say that very often on this podcast, but this happened. A man had a little fella on his knee. Fact. But did it ask him for sake? Can a groin take 1.5 kilos of rice?

That's a lot of rice. I imagine a lot of it was falling onto the floor and maybe down cracks in the floorboards. I don't know whether Japanese houses would have had floorboards at that time, historically. I think it was tatami all the way, baby. Tatami. Okay, I don't know what that is.

So we're settling on three then? Yes, I'm afraid it's a good three, but that's mainly the fruit. Fair enough. Okay then. Fruit's doing all the pulling. Our third category. Now, I think we have used it before, but it's such a good one for this topic. It's putting a human face on it.

Of course, you had to come back to the classic topic that we only really get to use when there's a gin and there's a men in the room. Putting a human face on it. And you've put so many human faces on things. We put them on shoulders knees groins fruits all the fruits we can think of numerous fruits there was a gooseberry for a second so many human faces on so many things we've almost put a human face on a human face you've you've put a human face on putting a human face on it exactly right right. Exactly right, Alistair. And also the cameo from a friend of the

show, the Jim Menken. Leave me alone. The dog with the human face. So it's five out of five for a human face. And if I were writing it, I'd be putting a little eye and a mouth on the five to give it a human face. The round bits of nose, isn't it? I would make that the nose. It's a big

bulbous nose. I can picture it there. The top bit's the nose, isn't it? I would make that the nose. It's a big bulbous nose, yeah. I can picture it there. The top is the eyebrow. Yeah, you've got it. You've got it, James. Five out of five. A solid five for putting a human face on it. What is your final category?

Terry, do you want to say it? I'll remind you what it is. It's the weirdest barbershop quartet. How about the weirdest barbershop quartet? So is that the, that is the gin men that we have met? Yes. All lined up? Well, I can only really, I can only pass this one if you can tell me,

if you can correctly arrange in order them by pitch. Well, I think Ken's on bass. A bass. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Yes. That's a deep bass baritone, yes. I would pick the saw next.

You know, the tune with the growth. The saw? Oh, yeah. So we, Ken, saw, and then what's the fish? I would have thought perhaps that would have been kind of a very high kind of. Oh, well, I'm thinking the fruit for that. Yeah, I was thinking fruit for high. Yeah, yeah, of course.

The fruit's going to be the cutest. So what they call it. So we've got Ken, Saw. What's fish again? Fish, Gyo. Ken, Saw, Gyo. The fruit one. Do, do, do, do.

Okay, now could you just sing that beautifully for me, James? All at once. All four at once. All four at once. We can get it in the edit. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Leave me alone.

Leave me alone. Well, the second one should have been give me some rice, but okay. Give me some rice. Leave me alone. Give me one and a half kilos of rice I'm simply a fish I don't like your hat

that doesn't suit you did we both do the same put down from the fruit we've been recording this podcast for too long and you'll put

auto tune on my ones to make it sound better right a shocking bad hat nice yeah well I was going to say four out of five and you'll put auto-tune on my ones to make it sound better, right? A shocking bad hat. Nice. Yeah, well, I was going to say four out of five, barbershop quartet, but I'm going to make it five out of five just because you did it.

You were the fifth, like the fifth Beatle. Yes. You were the George, what's his name, George? You were the George Martin of that group. Come on in, play a little bit of piano. Yes. Well done, James. Five out of five.

Yes. We did it, Terry. We did it. We did it. We got five for something that could so easily have been a four. We broke the system. It's the fifth Beatle that did it. Thank you.

Thank you so much for coming on the pod, Teresa. Thank you. Would you like to remind our listener the names of your, I mean, you've written a lot of things, but is there anything

in particular you'd like to plug again? So, the Book of Japanese Folklore? It's a great title. An Encyclopedia of the Spirits, Monsters,

and Yokai of Japanese Myth. It's the new one. Is that out now? Is that coming soon? Is it available for? It's pre-order now but like any day now i think the end of the month they're going to start shipping so just google the hell out we'll

pop a link in the notes but yeah and of course that is the uncanny japan podcast absolutely for people who've enjoyed my butchering of japanese folklore these these are the real stories yeah just imagine it with more correct information and and fewer mispronunciations by me. I mean, what a bunch of scary things. Yeah, that was really great. Mmm. Also gross. Also quite gross.

Yeah, really horrible. Apologies. Mmm. Yeah. But thank you very much to Theresa Matsura for joining us and thank you very much. Thank you, Theresa.

Thank you to Joe for editing this episode. joining us. And thank you very much. Thank you, Theresa. Thank you to Joe for editing this episode. Cheers, Joe. If you want extras, please join us at patreon.com forward slash lawmen pod. And thank you very much to all the people who are already supporting us on that. You're what makes this happen. Thank you to you. And if you want to come see us in real life, what are they going to do? Just sort of

Try and dox us And hang around our houses Please don't No no James No no If people want to see us In real life They could come to

The old fire station In Oxford On the 25th of May Crucially it's got to be The old fire station Where our gig's happening And not a functioning Fire station

No that would be Dangerous We won't be there 2024 Leave me alone No, that would be dangerous. We won't be there. 2024. Leave me alone.