Can you love an animal with balls bigger than itself?
Today on Yokai for Slackers at Work, I bring you the Tanuki (狸), the Japanese racoon
dog.
It’s often mistaken for a badger or a raccoon, but no, a raccoon dog is its own thing.
I kinda love these guys, they’re fun-loving and totally nuts.
So I’ll talk about the tanuki’s magical powers, show a million old illustrations of
them doing weird things (you don’t wanna miss that), and then tell you a popular tanuki
story.
Alright, let’s get the ball rolling.
Did you know that Mario’s flying suit is a tanuki suit?
It’s literally named the Tanooki Suit.
So old stories about the tanuki originated from Japan itself.
They didn’t come from China, like stories of the kitsune, the fox.
These guys are pranksters.
They like nothing more than to go around playing jokes on people.
And they have powerful magic to help them in this noble goal.
Nowadays, people associate tanuki with wealth and success, shop owners may have tanuki figures
in their shops.
Why do they have this reputation?
It has to do with their...prominent assets, we’ll get there.
You often see tanuki depicted with large bellies that they like to drum.
They sometimes use the sound to lure people into the woods so they get lost.
Belly drumming is also fun at parties for music.
That’s right, tanuki like to get together in awesome balls-to-the-wall parties and dance
and drum their bellies.
The modern tanuki wears a straw hat, holds a sake flask because it likes to drink, and
also holds a bag of IOUs because it doesn’t like to pay money.
The tanuki’s second most powerful ability is shapeshifting.
It just needs to put some leaves on its head and poof, it can turn into a human.
Its human disguise is so good that it can live its whole life among humans without suspicion.
It loves alcohol and human food, and will assume human form just to buy them, similar
to what Elon Musk does.
Shop owners are fooled into thinking they’re human, but they’re not, and neither is Elon.
You may be saying, “Oh, that’s not so bad having them buy stuff.
It’s good for business.”
Except, these creatures are super cheap.
They’ll give you money for a bottle of sake, but once they depart the store, that money
will turn into leaves or scraps of paper.
Shop owners may put figures of tanuki in front of their shops to discourage real ones from
entering, because they’d think another tanuki had already visited the shop.
Like the kitsune, the tanuki does transform into fair maidens to seduce men, but it really
gets a kick out of turning into Buddhist monks.
A tanuki in this disguise is called tanuki-bozu (狸坊主).
They’d actually perform Buddhist rituals like a real monk.
There’s an interesting history here.
Tanuki-bozu are usually drawn as fat and lazy, they drink alcohol, not at all the stereotypical
devout Buddhist monk who can live for months by eating a grain of rice and their own suffering.
This was artists making fun of corrupt Buddhist monks back in the day who grew fat off of
donations and were not at all devout.
So how do you spot a tanuki who has shapeshifted into a hoo-man?
There are several signs.
It may have a little glow while in human form.
Its clothing would stay dry in the rain.
And sometimes it messes up and a tail pops out.
A tanuki can also change into things, like trees, lanterns, and even the moon.
Yep, it would sometimes change into the moon when the actual moon is already out, making
people quite confused and them quite amused.
Alright, the tanuki’s most powerful ability and most prominent feature is described in
this beautiful old song that schoolkids used to sing.
Yes, I’m singing it, I’m so sorry.
“Tan tan tanuki no kintama wa, kaze mo nai no ni bura bura.”
It means roughly, “Tan-tan-tanuki’s balls,
the wind has stopped blowing
but still they swing-swing.”
*sniff* beautiful..
I put a link in the description below for an actual person singing it
That’s right, the best feature of the tanuki, the one that immediately smacks you in the
face, is its gigantic balls.
More specifically, not the balls inside, but the pouch that holds them.
It’s very powerful and versatile.
The tanuki can massage its potato sack into any shape.
You may be saying, “Well I can that too,” but can you expand it to the size of a rug?
Go ahead and try, then send me a video for proof.
Don’t--don’t--don’t send me
Surprisingly, the tanuki’s large fruit basket has nothing to do with sex.
It represents luck and wealth.
The idea is that since they can stretch their scrotal skin, they can also stretch money
to last a long time.
Since they can make their man-apples swol, they can also give you a swollen wallet.
In fact, one way to say testicles in Japanese is kintama (金玉), which literally means
golden balls.
So how did the tanuki’s giant globes, these super-Earths, become a thing?
Good question, and I tried to research it for you.
It’s a tough nut to crack, but I did read about one possible reason for the tanuki’s
scrotal origin.
So metal workers used to make gold leafs by wrapping gold in tanuki skin and hammering
it into thin sheets.
The tanuki’s skin was tough and the gold was malleable.
Hence, malleable tanuki ballsack?
Makes total sense.
It seems like the reason their large seed pouches became so popular was because artists
had so much fun drawing them.
There’s a bunch of illustrations of tanuki using their gene pockets for everything.
And I’m going to show them to you.
Get ready for a million woodblock paintings of animal balls.
[1] This is a net to catch birds.
It’s so detailed, it’s got little hairs and everything.
[2] A yard sale.
[3] Net to catch fish.
[4] Used as umbrellas and raincoats.
[5] A tarp for a shop.
[6] Shop signs.
[7] Flexing.
[8] Anti giant fish weapon.
[9] Scientology meeting.
[10] Scrotal drum, scrum.
[11] A tengu with a ballsack for a nose.
[12] A freaking scrotum boat, a scroat.
[13] Making mochi.
[14] Target practice.
[15] Softshell turtles.
[16] Scrotum man.
[17] And wheelbarrow.
So tanuki are usually fun-loving and upbeat, but there are darker stories about them.
Here’s one called Kachi-kachi Yama (かちかち山), or Crackling Mountain.
Kachi-kachi is that crackling sound that a fire makes.
Here goes.
There was a farmer who everyday put out food for his bunny rabbit to eat.
One day, he saw that his bunny was eating the food--oh no it wasn’t his bunny, it
was a tanuki.
He immediately caught it and tied it to a tree.
He left the tanuki hanging there, intending to make soup-nuki later for dinner.
When the farmer’s kindhearted wife was making mochi,
the tanuki, being a tricky creature, said,
“Fair maiden, you look tired.
Please untie me so that I may help you.
I won’t run away.”
The wife did untie him, and it was the last thing she did because the tanuki killed her.
But that wasn’t enough, he also cooked her into soup.
He then put leaves on his head and--poof--shapeshifted into the wife.
When the farmer returned, the wife-nuki pretended it made the tanuki soup and served it to him.
He thought wifey-soup was delicious and curiously familiar.
Then the tanuki changed back, told him the truth, and ran away, leaving the farmer devastated
but full.
The bunny (remember the farmer’s bunny?) saw everything and became hopping mad.
He told the farmer, “Don’t worry, master, I will punish that tanuki!”
to which the farmer replied,
“How come you can talk?”
and the bunny hopped out of the house.
The bunny was true to his word.
He befriended the tanuki and played some unpleasant tricks on him.
When the tanuki was carrying sticks on his back for a campfire, the bunny snuck a match
into the bundle and it started burning.
The tanuki heard the fire crackling.
“Do I hear fire crackling?” he said.
“Oh no,” said the bunny.
“The name of this mountain you’re on is Crackling Mountain.
It has a crackle sound.”
The tanuki said, “Oh.” and continued on.
Until of course the fire burned his back.
While he was lying in agony, the bunny offered to treat the burn with special medicine.
Unfortunately, the bunny’s healing herbs turned out to be hot peppers and the tanuki’s
life turned out to be full of suffering.
Finally, the bunny challenged the tanuki to a friendly boat race.
At this point, the tanuki still thought the bunny was his friend.
The bunny gave him a boat for the race.
Things were going fine until it turned out the boat was made of clay and it sank in the
middle of the river.
The bunny revealed his glorious revenge plan in a monologue as the tanuki drowned.
Nowadays, tanuki show up everywhere.
Like Studio Ghibli has a film called Pom Poko
where tanuki fight using their descendant incubators.
It’s completely nuts.
You guys, we’re doing something different today.
I made some new charm designs, yay.
One person has a chance to win a charm.
What you have to do is follow me on Instagram, and leave a comment on this Instagram post
guessing what the new 3 designs are of.
The hint is that they’ve all appeared in past videos.
Is this a ploy to get you to follow my Instagram?
You bet.
So you need to guess all 3 designs.
If more than one person guesses correctly, I’ll randomly choose a winner from among
the correct guesses.
You have 24 hours.
I’m not selling these anywhere at the moment,
so right now this is your only chance to get one.
Good luck!
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Alright, much love guys, and spread the knowledge!
Tan tan tanuki no kintama wa,
kaze mo nai no ni bura bura.