DING DONG IT'S TIME FOR JAPANESE
OPEN YOUR BOIMANKO
Tonight's lesson is about kanji pertaining to religion, gods, spirits, and other matters of faith. So let's say you're both laying in bed with your sister and you're bored. You're lucky enough to have a reprinted book from Toriyama Seikenm one of his "Illustrated Demon Horde" books. (These are real by the way and a very good read if you're interested in Japanese spirits and demons.)
幽霊(ゆうれい) is the word for ghosts, phantoms, and other supernatural creatures of the sort, but pertaining to those that are distinctly Japanese.
These are spirits of those that died at sea in shipwrecks and disasters. According to legend, is is these spirits that wreck people's ships, fill them water, and drown their crews. One way of warding off these evil spirits was to throw onigiri(rice balls) into the sea, hoping that would make them fuck off.
Wrathful, vengeful spirits. These spirits are driven by revenge and are thought to be capable of killing people who have wronged them, as well as being able to cause natural disasters such as earthquakes just for the sadistic sake of killing even more people. There are lots of tales about these ones, like how a samurai broke a promise to his dying wife about never remarrying. Her ghost then proceeded to rip the head of the samurai's new bride off of her body until she was slain by armed guards who vanquished her with Buddhist incantations.
Women of Naught, or Nothingness Women, are the souls of mothers who lost their children to war and famine. These seem nice at first as they actually go out of their to protect the lives of vulnerable children, but they may end up completely absorbing those children. They also have the ability to peer into a child's soul while they're being absorbed, so they can find whatever information they need from them. They were all once loving, kind mothers who simply couldn't handle the grief of losing their children.
Snow Woman. She is actually quite a popular yurei. There are lots of legends featuring her, including one where she met a man, fell in love, and proceeded to marry him of her own accord. However, when she was nervous about bathing with him, her husband forced her into the tub, where she fell in and disappeared. Only a few icicles rose up to the surface. It's quite a lot to go over here, but I do recommend reading anything you can find about Yuki-onna.
I'll direct you here for that hyakumonogatari.com/2013/12/18/yuki-onna-the-snow-woman/
Those are just a few spirits found in Japanese mythology, but there's a metric fuck ton more. We'll be moving on to this word here, 神
神(かみ) refers to Japanese gods and deities. You can probably name a few of these off the top of your head such as
天照、伊弉冉尊、稲荷、軻遇突智、and 伊弉諾尊 (Amaterasu, Izanami, Inari, Kagutsuchi, Izanagi)
They're all 神 stemming from 神道(しんとう), the ethnic religion of Japan. You can certainly find people honoring these gods and plenty more at a 神社(じんじゃ), a Shinto Shrine. You know those beautiful red archways at Japanese shrines? Those are called 鳥居(とりい)
If you ever visit a Shinto shrine, you may have the chance to see 絵馬(えま), which are wooden wishing plaques of worshipers, and are left hanging at the shrine in the gracious hopes that the gods will answer them. That word may seem odd since it's literally written as "Picture Horse", but that's because people used to gift horses to the shrines in ancient times, since horses were seen as vehicles of the gods. The idea was that by gifting a horse, the gods would probably be more likely to listen. But horses were fucking expensive as shit, so all the peasants and plebs started making horse figures out of clay and other materials before, finally, the practice of drawing a picture of a horse on a wooden plaque became a common custom, probably since it was the cheapest, easiest option. As such, the wishing plaque tradition was born, and that explains why it's represented by those two kanji.
The act of visiting a shrine for worship is referred to as 参拝(さんぱい). However, if the New Year just kicked off and you take your first visit to a shrine, this is referred to as 初詣(はつもうで). This is the first shrine visit of the New Year, where people come to honor the gods and pray that the year will be good and filled with blessings.
So now you know what 神道 is. You know that a common architectural feature of a 神社 is a 鳥居. Most of your visits to a shrine will be called 参拝, while the first visit of the New Year will be called 初詣. You know that 幽霊 are Japanese ghosts and spirits, 船幽霊 are cunts that will try to sink your ship and fill your boimanko with salt water, 怨霊 will literally behead your waifu and it will take a squad of magic Buddhist samurai to stop them, Japanese MILFs that just lost their children turn into tragic 無女, and the legend of the 雪女 is one of the coolest reads out there.