Kincaid's Vocabulary Notes

I want to make this site enjoyable to everyone, even those with no knowledge of Japanese. I try to translate every word. When talking about Japanese monsters, the translations can turn out a little lame (for example, in #1 the "99 legged bug" just doesn't have the same punch as tsukumo no ashi no mushi). However, if you don't know Japanese, you don't know it, and you're not going to learn it by staring at a bunch of strange words. So, I go for the literal translations sometimes. My one exception is Oni no Te. Literally, it means "Demon Hand". However, I don't think any true fan could bring himself to consistently call it that. So, I left it.

There is one more thing I would like to mention about what exactly Nube does to evil spirits. I sometimes use the word "exorcize" a little loosely. Usually, the word used in Japanese is "jobutsu". It literally means "become a buddha", and refers to the idea of having a peaceful afterlife. A spirit that cannot rest in peace for some reason often becomes an evil spirit/monster. Thus, if you can set the spirit at peace (jobutsu it), it will go to "heaven" and leave you alone. Sometimes just the proper incantation needs to be said. Other times something must be cleared up or taken care of first ("unfinished business"). Sometimes, of course, as in comic #1, the monster has no desire to be set at peace, so there is no choice but to destroy it with the Oni no Te. In the first comics, Nube always tries to set the spirit at peace first, and uses the Oni no Te as a last resort. Later on, though, he is more likely to just hack up the evil spirits in the first place, and only set at peace troubled good spirits. So when you see "exorcize", Nube might not just be trying to cast out a spirit, but might be trying to set it at peace and send it to heaven (getting rid of it for good).