Heavenly Life Thunder Beast

--The morning after a severe thunderstorm, a woodcutter went to see the ruins where lightning had struck. There he found an old tree broken in a horrible state and a lizard covered in scales.Crab-likeThere was a beast.

Hello, this is Kamiyo. It's getting really cold, how are you all doing? It's amazing how quickly the temperature has changed recently.

Even though we live in a world of advanced science, we are troubled by the ever-changing weather patterns. For people in the past, when there was no weather forecast, the sky must have seemed even more moody and supernatural.

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So, this time I would like to introduce a monster related to the sky. Its name is "Thunder Beast"As the name suggests, it is a beast that can freely control lightning..." This is how it is often portrayed in fiction, butThere is generally no such statement in the original text..

This yokai has its own folklore in various parts of Japan. Its appearance also varies depending on the legend, with the thunder beasts of eastern Japan generally looking like mammals, while those of western Japan have unusual motifs even for yokai, such as crabs, spiders, scorpions, and seahorses.

By the way, there is an anecdote about a mammal-like thunder beast that appeared in Akita Prefecture, and it was caught and eaten, but it had no bitterness.Easy to eatIt seems that it was the taste. As expected of Japan, a country of gluttony. Well, it's strangely convincing that a people who enjoy eating octopus, squid, pufferfish, and sea cucumbers would eat a beast-like monster.

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Given the wide variety of descriptions of the thunder beast, it seems likely that the vague name thunder beast was given to this monster.Perhaps this is to lump all these diverse animals together.

There is another world above the clouds, where so-called heavenly beings, gods, live. Thunder and rain are moments when the heavens and earth connect, and on rare occasions, heavenly beasts fall from them. It was because people were able to accept this understanding that these beasts were collectively called thunder beasts. Thunder beast is not an individual name, but a classification name.

If you think about it that way, the mammal-like things of eastern Japan and the strange things of western JapanEqually Thunder BeastsI think we can understand it like this. Yes, the beasts that live in the sky world areAll Thunder BeastsThat's it.

The recent abnormal weather has been terrible. Maybe this year several thunder beasts have fallen from the sky. Thinking about this, I look at the clear winter sky.

(Image: Picture Book Hyaku Monogatari)