It was many years ago now that I made the discovery of my lifetime in rural Kyoto. Twin discoveries really. The one everybody knows is the lost Assyrian Codex, which gave us entire new psalms and an authoritative text of Tobit. It certainly made my Bubbies proud. But that is not what I, personally, treasure most; for it was in Kyoto that I had an extraordinary encounter that rekindled my belief in the supernatural.
We call them dybbuks or demons. But to the people of Hondo, they are
yokai
: creatures from someplace else who appear seemingly at random, for good or for ill, their defining feature being not goodness or evil but their very strangeness. I was a rakish young man back then, and I didn't believe in such things, I believed mainly in pleasure and adventure. I had not yet made my miraculous discoveries. I had not yet met Shirime.
1.
The sun was setting as I pulled my horse, with its saddlebag full of books and effects, up to the inn. This was a small village about 20 kilometers south of Kyoto city, along the road from the port of Osaka to the former imperial capital. I knew I should be looking at sacred sites in this part of the country, but not much else.
It turns out, there are many times many such places in Japan. According to the innkeeper, a chatty middle aged man with an impressive bun of dark hair, I would find several shrines within an hour's ride of this village alone.
I was tired from my travels, and while my Japanese was passable, I still found myself tiring of trying to absorb all this information. I had to beg to speak on matters other than business. It was then that our conversation turned to local lore of a different kind: hauntings, misadventures and the like. One such story was of a strange monster, a yokai, who made some of the locals afraid to go out at night.
It was said they never hurt people, although several women had fainted. The creature, you see, looked like a hooded man who would suddenly appear at the edge of the shadows. Those whom they approached would grow apprehensive as all attempts at conversation were ignored. At last, the creature would reveal their true face - most who'd seen it couldn't, or wouldn't, describe it - and then vanish into the darkness as quickly as they'd appeared.
"Shirime?" I asked.
"Yes, that is how the monster is known," said innkeeper Motosuwa. "Why isn't clear, but the eye is... wrong, somehow."
"Just one eye?"
"I believe so."
"And this is usually close to midnight?"
"Any time after full dark, really. I hope you brought all your things to the room."
"I have, but actually I am going to step out. Before bed I like to use this" - I gestured to the wood pipe sticking out of my breast pocket - "and look at the sky. I'm a... a night person."
"Then be careful, night person," he said. "And sleep well."
The night air was chilly that time of year. I bundled up, went out and stood by the single lantern that lit the path up from the village's main street. If I held my hand up to block its light I could still see the stars quite well. The American tobacco I'd brought on my trip was quite aromatic, not the best I'd had, but it traded quite well around here. A lazy cloud of smoke and condensation from my breaths wafted away towards the road.
When I first spotted movement in the shadows, partway across the clearing, I thought it was a bush waving in the slight breeze. Then the "bush" articulated and slowly strode forward, trailing dark robes. I gripped the hilt of my utility knife, meant more for bushwhacking than protection, but I resisted panic. I was conscious of my status as a guest in this country, where until lately visitors were unheard of. It wouldn't do to make something of nothing. Given their dress and the circumstances, I supposed they might be a traveling monk, come to stay the night.
I tried to recall the polite greeting for this time of day. "Konbawa? Sorry, I am only a traveler, stranger-San. But Motosuwa-San is awake. That way," I said, gesturing up the path behind me.
But the creature did not continue up the path, veering instead directly towards me. From up close, I could see there was something strange about their movements. As though the joints under those robes bent the wrong way for a human...
"Sir," I remembered the honorific, "The inn is that way."
The creature slowed its approach, but did not stop. By this point I had lost all composure, my mind frantically scrabbling for an explanation, so when my lips found the name, it came as a relief, a foothold.
"Shirime?"
They stopped short at the name.
"I knew it, you're the one they all talk about. It's, uh, nice to meet you."
The figure seemed to nod slightly, and in a faint, labored, crackling whisper that I couldn't be quite sure was actually spoken aloud and not a voice in my head, it affirmed:
"Shirime."
"Do you call yourself something else?" This got no answer.
"I am called Levitz. I'm a traveler here."
The response drifted back:
"Levitz."
For a long beat, they stood motionless as though no longer sure what to do. Weren't they going to show themself?
"Well, go ahead," I said, "vayzn zikh," lapsing into my mother tongue.
The creature turned themself around with motions that seemed to defy all reason. The cloak seemed not to turn with them. For a moment I saw them in profile, on all fours like a large dog, then suddenly upright again. Lanky digits, I wouldn't swear to whether they were fingers or toes, reached out from baggy sleeves to throw aside the cloak, revealing...
It was nothing like the picture in my head.
The yokai was crouched backwards, head and shoulders facing away and lowered nearly to the ground, powerful legs and... ankles?... extended to thrust forward a pale white butt that split to reveal a single, large, beautiful, hazel eye. The white of it seemed to glow in the darkness.
I stood dumbfounded. This was impossible. A yokai that understood me in Yiddish?
So I asked. "Tsi ir redn eydish?!"
"...Ya."
"Well now I've seen everything. Tell me, Shirime-San, do you smoke?"
2.
They did, in fact, smoke. I say "they" because, although I learned a great deal about Shirime, none of it shed any light to whether they were man, woman or neither.
They did possess what I thought were testes, small ones, nestled in a taut, smooth sack below the giant eye, although let's be honest it could have been any sort of bilateral vestigial sex organ; but no other sexual parts to be seen. I couldn't even see their mouth, although they'd managed to creak out a few hoarse words from somewhere, and they were puffing the pipe from roughly where one might expect a belly button.
It was evident they weren't about to vanish or run away, so, this being an increasingly chilly and windy night, I invited them inside. We stole hastily across the empty tavern to the rooms. I laid out some rice wine and leftover chicken broth, and beckoned for them to take a seat on the edge of the bed, since that's all there was. Comfortably perched, they cast about with their one eye, surveying the meager accommodations as they supped.
By way of yes or no questions, I learned a little about my guest. The locals seemed to have this idea that Shirime delighted in scaring or pranking people, but that couldn't have been more wrong. They were basically stranded on the island, lonely and friendless. They'd had another life somewhere else, although details were hard to get across. Now they lived in the woods and studied humans from afar.
