A Handful of Yokai- The Shirime

 

While all Yokai follow the strange rules and rituals of Japanese folktales, none surpass the Shirime in bizarre yet pointless behavior or in absurd bodily features. During dark nights in Japan, a lone figure dressed in a kimono approaches fellow travelers in the street. It asks for a moment of their time. Before the accosted travelers can answer yes or no, the stranger steps out of its kimono, turns around, and drops to its hands and feet. The horrified travelers recoil in fear and revulsion, not at exposed privates, but from a large glowing eye staring back at them from between the stranger’s buttocks.

 

The Shirime (literally meaning “butt eye”) simply wants to scare unsuspecting travelers. This simple mischievous desire makes them less dangerous than some other yokai, but that bizarre and unsettling prank more than makes up for it. While all Shirime posses the hidden eye and a humanoid form, how effectively they pass for a human varies in the telling. Some say the Shirime looks like a normal person. In other tales, it has a head but no face. In either case, the Shirime blends in well enough to stalk city streets at night searching for unwary pedestrians to shock.

 

For all its shocking bodily horrors, no story records the Shirime’s origins. In the earliest recorded story from the Edo period, before even the Shirime received its own name, the Yokai was compared to a Noppera-bo, a creepy faceless shapeshifter. Without more details, the Shirime could be anything from a ghost damned by a misdeed, a human cursed to an exhibitionist existence, purely a monster, or a trouble-making badger spirit.

 

Shirime (Mischevious humanoid with a rectal eye)

Initiative: 8

Physical: 6

Mental: 6

Social: 7

Health Pips: 10

Special Traits:

Startling Exposure- The sight of a Shirime’s rectal eye is so horrifying anyone viewing it must pass a Resolve test with 6 black dice. If passed, they suffer no further penalty. If failed, they suffer 3 black dice to any actions performed while the eye is in sight and 6 black dice to attacks against the Shirime.

Damage: Well aimed kicks (7)

Adventure Ideas

To make the Shirime even weirder, what if when it stands up like a human it’s actually upside down? So it’s “legs” are really its forepaws, and it’s “arms” are hind legs. It normally moves forward in a disturbingly fast “backwards” crawl with its eye open to avoid tripping or bumping into walls. Try fighting that.

The social season lies in ruin thanks to a Shirime’s rampage in London. It infiltrates the best parties, grabs everyone’s attention, and then exposes its eye. No young lady of breeding dares be seen socially until the Yokai is caught or appeased.

A fully human-seeming Yokai could have an entirely normal life aside from its nocturnal exposure. Anyone could be the Shirime, but nobody really wants to check the suspects.

The Shirime could be a symbol of repression. The act of seeing the Shirime’s eye could shock its victims out of closely held inhibitions. A plague of bawdy, irresponsible behavior all centers on that one city block with all the nocturnal obscene exposure cases.

 

The Shirime could also represent the ugliness behind polite society being pulled into the light. A Shirime masquerades as a street reporter exposing the hard truths of child labor, prison reform, and colonialism to an unsuspecting public. Their disruptive pranks and shocking articles offend as many readers as they enlighten.