Haunting Modernity: Tanuki, Trains, and Transformation in Japan

Abstract

This article explores a cycle of legends popular in Japan from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. Featuring a deadly confrontation between a tanuki ("raccoon dog") and a steam train, these narratives enact a conflict between a traditional animal of Japanese folk belief and a new technology that was rapidly transforming the countryside; they articulate anxiety about, and resistance to, the burgeoning infrastructure of modernity and the changes it would bring to the natural and cultural environments. Furthermore, as narratives of haunting, in which restless memories of the past disturb the easy flow of the present, these tales allow us to productively consider the relationship between time and place while also gesturing to the way tales of haunting can assume not only an affective quality, but political and ideological shades as well. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]