Tsukumogami

Tools and vessels used over long years are said to acquire spiritual life and transform when discarded and neglected, becoming beings known as tsukumogami. In the Muromachi-period "Tsukumogami Emaki", it was preached that tools transformed after a hundred years; the scroll depicted old implements, thrown away during house-cleaning, marching in a procession on the night of Setsubun holding grudges against humans. In the Edo period, Toriyama Sekien synthesized this worldview in his "Hyakki Tsurezure Bukuro" (The Illustrated Bag of One Hundred Random Demons), bestowing charming yokai forms upon individual objects such as biwa lutes, shamisen, koto, tea kettles, sutra scrolls, masks, and book carts, woven together with wordplay and historical anecdotes. Gathered here are the souls inhabiting tools, reflecting human sentiments—used, forgotten, yet impossible to fully discard.