Shiro Ukari

 


When I think of Japanese ghosts my mind usually goes to things that are quite scary, such as yurei and shiryo. There is one kind of ghost like yokai that is rather harmless, and even cute in a cartoonish sort of way, and that is the shiro ukari. The name means white floater, and it looks like a pale white creature with a long ghostly tail and vacant staring eyes. They move by floating off the ground, so they move about at the same height as standing people, but without touching the ground.


The shiro ukari was harmless being, and generally considered a nuance rather than frightening. It just wanders aimlessly, getting people’s way and observing the world is wide eyed naivety.


The thing is, the shiro ukari was never actually a ghost, but a veiled way for the upper classes to make fun of country folk when they came into the city. Pure white in Japan represents emptiness. In this case it meant emptiness of mind, complete naivety in derogatory way, being stupid and ignorant of the city ways. While floating about represented the aimless and confused wanderings of someone who had just moved to the city and didn’t know where anything was, and possibly didn’t have work or housing yet.


The shiro ukari comes from scroll paintings from the Edo period, when Japan was becoming more urban and many country living people were moving to the city. It was never meant to be a creature people actually believed in, so much as it was a classist joke by the city residents.



https://creatures-of-myth.fandom.com/wiki/Shiro_Ukari



https://yokai.com/shiroukari/?srsltid=AYCX9vLxpALKvHC4U5JylMA3-_-xCz-zzmJgH-mR5_i-SW_Elc5MeLpI




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