Comments on: Kappas

By: borntofightdinosaurs

borntofightdinosaurs — Thu, 03 May 2007 05:45:53 +0000

maybe it carries the water on its head in order to keep it flowing over its gills. when the water falls out, it dies of asphyxiation.

By: kittenz

kittenz — Wed, 02 May 2007 17:12:41 +0000

Native Americans also attributed supernatural powers to real animals, most notably to the coyote. I think that is probably true most native peoples: they tend to view the animals around them as real beings with supernatural powers, possibly in an effort to understand the mechanics and origins of their universe.

By: mystery_man

mystery_man — Wed, 02 May 2007 15:18:13 +0000

Alaska Boy- But the tanuki and kitsune may have been attributed supernatural powers, but at least they are real animals known to science. The Kappa actually has many supernatural elements attributed to them in the folklore. A lot of animals in Japan do, just check out the Honshu wolf thread to see what was written about the folklore behind it. This is what I mean by not being able to distinguish where the folklore ends and the real animal begins. From some of the stories of the Honshu wolf and tanuki told by rural old timers, you’d think they were a mythical creature if they hadn’t been confirmed by science to exist. It makes it hard to ascertain which cryptids in Japan could be real animals attributed with supernatural powers and which ones are actually just what they seem to be, which is folklore and superstition.

By: Rillo777

Rillo777 — Wed, 02 May 2007 03:10:30 +0000

Reminds me just a little of the pukwudji tales told by the Indians. Little woodland people that can be mischevious or kind. There’s supposed to be a group of them living a few miles from me.
I guess every civilization has their “little people” stories. Some of these certainly sound too fantastic to believe but, just to keep an open mind, the stories and alleged attributes of these creatures could be exaggerations gradually incorporated in the telling. Or maybe this is just one really strange world we live in.

By: kamoeba

kamoeba — Wed, 02 May 2007 00:10:36 +0000

For a good look at a Kappa in a fictional movie, check out the “Yokai Monsters” series from late 1960’s Japan. As far as I know, it was a three-film series with one film being remade very recently (I have not seen the remake). The three vintage Yokai Monsters films are available in North America on DVD and are in widescreen with beautiful color and subtitles (I’m not sure if the remake is available here though). In “Yokai Monsters: Spook Warfare”, a Kappa has a prominant role and the costume is quite interesting (sort of a Kermit the Frog/turtle thing). It’s better than wasting your time with Sci Fi Channel made-for-landfill movies.

By: Alaska-boy

Alaska-boy — Tue, 01 May 2007 20:35:35 +0000

As another reader who has lived in Japan, I would have to say that the Kappa is much more believable than most mythological Japanese creatures. They are also treated as such by the rural populace, (as opposed to the tannuki or kitsune, which are treated more supernaturally). There is at least one well-known form of water-dwelling primate in Japan, and I would not be surprised to see the Kappa turn out to be something similar. People forget that most of Japan is uninhabitable mountain wilderness.

In terms of wild speculation, those pictures from Africa of the three-toed, three-fingered primate there might indicate some sort of related creature….

By: mystery_man

mystery_man — Tue, 01 May 2007 15:30:12 +0000

Well, notice I left the end of my post open to the idea by saying “you never know”. I am not one to close my mind to it completely as I cannot back that up. I did not mean to dismiss the Kappa. In fact I am very interested in the Kappa phenomena and have heard many stories about it and I can honestly say that I sometimes do not know where the folklore aspect ends and the notion of an actual creature begins. It does not mean I do not respect the legends or the culture and in fact I am quite enamored of Japanese folklore and read a lot about it.

By: Pentastar

Pentastar — Tue, 01 May 2007 09:30:23 +0000

-Loren-
I just asked my wife about it and got that information. No bad intentions just sharing information. I thought that is the main point of communication.

My wife told me once that when she was a child she and her friends were out playing in the forest nearby a river and suddenly a strange looking hairy person came walking towards them from the nearby river. She described that creature to be the size of a ten years old human child but very hairy and dirty. She also said it walked in a very swaying style that made it appear to be drunk. THey ran back home and their parents told them to not go there again. Perhaps this was a Kappa creature.
Appearantly the Kappa is a naughty little creature.
Some temples claim to have or have had dead Kappas.

The Japanese tend to have a very open mind to these kind of things and not put anything aside until it’s proven to be non-existing or a hoax. Basically the opposite of the Western approach to BF and other cryptos.

By: shumway10973

shumway10973 — Tue, 01 May 2007 07:37:12 +0000

I find it interesting that western/american/european thinking denies any possibility of any other animal families (fish, bird, reptile or amphibians) might have something near to humans and/or our intelligent primate cousins, even though every ancient culture has at least one creature like the Kappa. The Babylonians had a water deity that walked with men in the day and slept in the water at night (referenced on Stargate SG1). There is an African tribe with a tale of alien fish like creatures (I know, we don’t do aliens here, but they were fish-like) that told the humans about the star system they were suppose to be from. That star exists, just “discovered” in the mid 1970’s. This mentality is the same one that has kept theologians saying that Behemoth was an elephant and Leviathan was a crocodile (Job 40:15-24 & 41). Many preachers still teach this, even though the descriptions don’t fit and we have knowledge of animals (dinosaurs) that fit the descriptions better. Not trying to start another argument off the original subject, just that this is the way the western thinking is. Everything is in a nice, neat box. No wonder there are so few who really are looking intently for sasquatch–their reality would be flipped upside down.

By: springheeledjack

springheeledjack — Tue, 01 May 2007 03:02:02 +0000

Alright, I’ll open up the debate again…:)

The kappa, mu jima, mermaids, BF, frog men, …all various forms of mutated humanoids…

now if you go for Atlantis and some of the tales told there, there were supposedly experiments with humans going on, and a couple of lesser races developed to do the grunt work…so how about all of these critters are merely mutations from a pre-civilization that supposedly had technology well beyond where we are today?

Top that…