Monster Monks

It has been a while since we’ve had a Japanese monster, so here’s one now. David Maybury of Children’s Books Ireland drew my attention to this modern take on an ancient spectre, it is the first image below. The beast is the Umibōzu. Or if you prefer 海坊主, a name that combines the character for sea with the character for Buddhist monk.


The illustrator is Shigeru Mizuki and the image is from the Yōkai Jiten, an encyclopaedia of traditional monsters published in 1981.

These spirits live in the sea and if you happen to come close to one your best defence is to look away and pretend not to see it. The Umibōzu are peaceable enough if you don’t hassle them. The worst thing you can do is try and chat with one. That will result in it sinking you and your vessel.

Some say the Umibōzu are drowned holy men, they have the shaven heads of a monk and when seen at sea they often appear to be praying. I read that they are sometimes described as having serpentine limbs like tentacles. These limbs, their big eyes and smooth heads make me wonder if the idea of the Umibōzu may be based on sightings of the Giant Squid. Such squid are rarely seen near the surface but this rarity might have made their appearances all the more frightening.


I got this image of a Giant Squid from here.


This well-known 19th century image of the Umibōzu was created by the wood block artist Utagawa Kuniyoshi.

Dead or Alive

Newfoundland is in North-East Canada. I have a friend from there and he recently sent me a copy of this poster. It could be found pinned up in Newfoundland towns in the 1980s.


Wanted! Big squid.

It was a serious attempt by a biologist called Frederick Aldrich to gather samples of the giant squid, Architeuthis dux. The chances of a live squid trashing around a coastline like in this picture are pretty slim, although it does make for an exciting poster. It was more likely that Newfoundlanders would find giant squid corpses or parts of corpses washed up on shore. A while ago on this blog I wrote about a different kind of big squid, the colossal squid, Mesonychoteuthis Hamiltoni. We knew about that creature for decades before one was seen alive or even in one piece. That was because parts of its distinctive tentacles were occasionally washed up on beaches, biologists looked at them and knew that there had to be an undiscovered species out there.

Newfoundland has a long history with the giant squid. In 1873 the first complete specimen of a giant squid ever seen came ashore there and was photographed in the bathtub of the local reverend.


Giant squid found in Newfoundland in 1873, hung above the bathtub.

In the 1870’s many giant squid washed up on the shores of Newfoundland. No one knows why those years were a particularly busy time for strandings but many scientists believe that they happen in regular cycles and are therefore predictable. The length of time between mass strandings is not known, but Frederick Aldrich suggested it might be 90 years. Aldrich correctly predicted another group of strandings that occurred in the 1960s.

In both the 1870s and the 1960s most of the beached squid were dead by the time they were discovered. There was one massive exception. One giant squid was struggling in the shallows when fishermen came across it in 1878. I assume this discovery is the scene illustrated in the poster. They managed to hook the dying beast with a grapnel and stopped it from washing back out to sea. They measured it at seven metres or about twenty feet long. It might have been the biggest giant squid ever captured. We don’t know for sure because then, unfortunately, the fishermen chopped the creature up. They used it for dog food. Frederick Aldrich may have been worrying about this possibility when he offered a reward.

A Bit Deep

Deep Deep Down will be published in the UK later this year. We have been working on the cover image recently. Once again Jonny Duddle has been doing a fine job. As a taster, this is just a little chunk.


The cover art for Deep Deep Down is by Jonny Duddle.