Satori (Kagawa)

Satori is a beast-form yokai of the mountains, said to read the thoughts of the one it meets and to anticipate them aloud. The figure is shown as monkey-like, and is told of in mountain districts including Takamatsu, Kagawa, as one of the mountain yokai of western Japan. The figure is established as a figural yokai of the early modern period. The canonical narrative places a traveller at a fire deep in the mountains, when a beast-form yokai appears and speaks aloud the traveller's passing thoughts one by one; the traveller, frightened and confused, is saved by an unforeseen happenstance such as a piece of firewood that bursts and strikes the yokai, which then flees in surprise. "Weak to that which is not thought" is the canonical trait. Toriyama Sekien's Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki (1779) figures the yokai under the name "Satori," shown as a hairy beast-man. Early-modern setsuwa and zuihitsu carry cognate cases; Murakami Kenji's Nihon Yokai Daijiten (2005) and the Nichibunken Strange Phenomena and Yokai Folklore Database compile cases, including cases from the Chugoku and Shikoku mountains. Adjacent mountain-encounter yokai include yamawarawa, yama-otoko, and Hidaru-gami. The thought-reading character preserves some continuity with the Chinese shoujou (orangutan) figure from natural-history works, and the figure has been discussed as a reconstruction at the point of contact between Chinese figures and Japanese mountain yokai.