Baku (dream eater)
The baku is the dream eater: a beast with an elephant’s trunk and tusks that devours bad dreams. Its picture was hung in houses and its name written on pillows, and people called “Baku kurae!” (“Devour, O baku!”) after a nightmare.
Meaning
Baku, also called Shirokinakatsukami, is a creature whose particular work, Lafcadio Hearn wrote in 1902, is eating dreams. An old book Hearn owned gave the male baku the body of a horse, the face of a lion, the trunk and tusks of an elephant, the forelock of a rhinoceros, the tail of a cow and the feet of a tiger. Henri Joly (1908) describes a hairy head with a long trunk like an elephant’s, two tusks, a spiny backbone, a spotted hide and an ox tail, and thinks it presumably inspired by the tapir; Chamberlain, in 1905, called it seemingly a large quadruped allied to the tapir, whose only function is to devour evil dreams.
Origin and history
The baku came from Chinese lore. Hearn’s old book told how the emperor Kōtei, hunting on the eastern coast, met a baku that spoke like a man, and how pictures of the baku were hung in Japanese houses, in the time of the old Chinese learning, to keep evil away. The Chinese character for its name was put in gold on the lacquered pillows of lords and princes to protect the sleeper from evil dreams. On waking from a nightmare, Hearn wrote, people still said “Baku kurae! Baku kurae!” (“Devour, O baku! devour my evil dream!”), three times, so that the baku would eat the dream and turn the misfortune into good fortune. An old love song he quotes complains that the night is so short the baku will not even have time to eat the lovers’ dreams.
Pillows, then and now
Hearn and Joly disagree about whether the pillows survived. Hearn, in 1902, found such a pillow rather difficult to come by and pictures of the baku very rare. Joly, six years later, writes that the character, once hung in houses against pestilence, is still painted on pillows to bring sleep.
Baku or hakutaku
Hearn gives Hakutaku as another name for the baku. Joly thinks this a confusion: hakutaku usually names a different creature.
Baku and the tapir
Both Joly and Chamberlain compared the baku to the tapir. The resemblance is in the trunk; the baku of the old book is a composite of many animals, and speaks.
Read next
- Next in Yōkai and creatures of Japanese folkloreKirinThe kirin is the Japanese form of the Chinese qilin: a one-horned beast with a deer’s body and an ox’s tail that treads without a sound, harms no living thing and appears only under wise rulers. In modern Japanese the word also means giraffe.
- The same shape in Andean and Inca symbolsInti Raymi (festival of the sun)The Inca festival of the sun, held at the June solstice in Cusco. Banned under Spanish rule, it was revived in 1944 and is staged every 24 June at the Coricancha, the main square and Sacsayhuamán.
See also
Kitsune (fox), Tanuki (raccoon dog), Bakeneko and nekomata (cat yōkai), Jorōgumo (spider woman), Tengu, Kappa.
Sources
- Lafcadio Hearn, Kottō (1902), Lafcadio Hearn, Kottō: Being Japanese Curios, with Sundry Cobwebs, New York: Macmillan, 1902, “The Eater of Dreams”, Macmillan (Internet Archive), “The Eater of Dreams”, pp. 245–248
- Henri L. Joly, Legend in Japanese Art (1908), Henri L. Joly, Legend in Japanese Art: A Description of Historical Episodes, Legendary Characters, Folk-lore, Myths, Religious Symbolism Illustrated in the Arts of Old Japan, London: John Lane, 1908, John Lane (Internet Archive, University of Toronto copy), entry 62, Baku
- Basil Hall Chamberlain, Things Japanese (1905), Basil Hall Chamberlain, Things Japanese: Being Notes on Various Subjects Connected with Japan, fifth edition, London: John Murray, 1905, John Murray (Internet Archive, University of Toronto copy), “Supernatural Creatures”, p. 444
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from curves and waves or lines.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 10, 2026. How we research
Added .