Obake – whiskey river

whiskey river

“Obake, the Japanese “ghost,” is exactly what its name suggests: o is an honorific prefix, while bake is a noun from bakeru, the verb meaning “undergo change.” Japanese ghosts, then, are essentially transformations. They are one sort of thing that mutates into another, one phenomenon that experiences shift and alteration, one meaning that becomes unstuck and twisted into something else. Obake undermine the certainties of life as we usually understand it.

Centuries ago in India, the Buddha taught that nothing in this world is stable, no form of existence is anything more than a wandering through flux. People may think they have a self, and may strive to build an ego, or worry about their personal consistencies or reputations, but these concerns are delusions. A “self” is an imaginary construct; and so, in a sense, “transformation” is actually the truest manifestation of being. Obake, the ultimate transformers, point up the folly of our human security in the unchanging status of things, and obliterate our proud sense of understanding the structure of the world.”
– Toriyama Sekien
Tim Screech, Mangajin Issue 40

We often feel strange when we are undergoing change or transformation. Perhaps the strangest I’ve ever felt was in that period of time when I had my breakdown, and literally felt disconnected from the world, as if I were a ghost observing the world around me. Everything seemed strange and different, as if I were seeing and hearing things others could not experience around me. I saw what they could see, and then also saw the “secret” messages I was seeing, and laughed at how little they could see.

We think the mentally disabled are less able than we are, but, in that brief time, I saw what they see, and it was more than I see day to day, more than I can now remember. In those “insane” moments of my life, brief as they were, I saw the illusion our lives really are. And laughed.

If there are ghosts and spirits, they laugh at us. No wonder we are afraid.