Chapter V: Rokuro-Kubi

The etymological meaning of _Rokuro-Kubi_ can scarcely be indicated by any English rendering. The term _rokuro_ is indifferently used to designate many revolving objects--objects as dissimilar as a pulley, a capstan, a windlass, a turning lathe, and a potter's wheel. Such renderings of Rokuro-Kubi as "Whirling-Neck" and "Rotating-Neck" are unsatisfactory;--for the idea which the term suggests to Japanese fancy is that of a neck which revolves, _and lengthens or retracts according to the direction of the revolution_.... As for the ghostly meaning of the expression, a Rokuro-Kubi is either (1) a person whose neck lengthens prodigiously during sleep, so that the head can wander about in all directions, seeking what it may devour, or (2) a person able to detach his or her head completely from the body, and to rejoin it to the neck afterwards. (About this last mentioned variety of _Rokuro-Kubi_ there is a curious story in my "Kwaidan," translated from the Japanese.) In Chinese mythology the being whose neck is so constructed as to allow of the head being completely detached belongs to a special class; but in Japanese folk-tale this distinction is not always maintained. One of the bad habits attributed to the Rokuro-Kubi is that of drinking the oil in night-lamps. In Japanese pictures the Rokuro-Kubi is usually depicted as a woman; and old books tell us that a woman might become a Rokuro-Kubi without knowing it,--much as a somnambulist walks about while asleep, without being aware of the fact.... The following verses about the Rokuro-Kubi have been selected from a group of twenty in the _Ky[=o]ka Hyaku-Monogatari_:--

Nemidar['e] no
Nagaki kami woba
Furi-wak['e]t['e],
Chi hiro ni nobasu
Rokuro-Kubi kana!

[_Oh!... Shaking loose her long hair disheveled by sleep, the
Rokuro-Kubi stretches her neck to the length of a thousand
fathoms!_]

"Atama naki
Bak['e]mono nari"--to
Rokuro-Kubi,
Mit['e] odorokan
Onoga karada we.

[_Will not the Rokuro-Kubi, viewing with_ _astonishment her
own body (left behind) cry out, "Oh, what a headless goblin
have you become!_"]

Tsuka-no-ma ni
Hari we tsutawaru,
Rokuro-Kubi
K['e]ta-k['e]ta warau--
Kao no kowasa yo!

[_Swiftly gliding along the roof-beam (and among the props
of the roof), the Rokuro-Kubi laughs with the sound of
"k['e]ta-k['e]ta"--oh! the fearfulness of her face!_[34]]

[Footnote 34: It is not possible to render all the double meanings in this composition. _Tsuka-no-ma_ signifies "in a moment" or "quickly"; but it may also mean "in the space [_ma_] between the roof-props" [_tsuka_]. "_K['e]ta_" means a cross-beam, but _k['e]ta-k['e]ta warau_ means to chuckle or laugh in a mocking way. Ghosts are said to laugh with the sound of k['e]ta-k['e]ta.]

Roku shaku no
By[=o]bu ni nobiru
Rokuro-Kubi
Mit['e] wa, go shaku no
Mi wo chijimi-k['e]ri!

[_Beholding the Rokuro-Kubi rise up above the six-foot screen,
any five-foot person would have become shortened by fear (or,
"the stature of any person five feet high would have been
diminished")._[35]]

[Footnote 35: The ordinary height of a full screen is six Japanese feet.]