Also called Baku, Mo (Chinese), Baku-san
In Japanese folklore the baku is a chimera that eats bad dreams. People called on it after nightmares and slept with its picture or name under the pillow.
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Take care: This charm is harmless, but frequent nightmares can be a sign of stress, trauma or a sleep disorder worth discussing with a doctor.
On Setsubun or New Year's Eve, the court handed out pictures of a ship with the character 貘 painted on the sail. People slept with them beneath their bedding and the next morning gathered them to float away or bury, carrying off bad dreams in a rite related to the great purification.
Uses: ship picture, baku character
Street sellers sold prints of the takarabune, the treasure ship carrying the Seven Lucky Gods, on the evening of January 2. Slept upon with a palindrome poem recited three times, they promised a lucky first dream. The aim shifted from expelling bad dreams to inviting good ones.
Uses: takarabune print, palindrome poem
Hearn described the baku as an eater of nightmares and the custom of calling on it. Into the early twentieth century, Japanese children kept baku charms or pillows bearing its picture by the bed, and baku-shaped pillows are still sold today.
Uses: baku charm
In China the mo was a fabulous beast whose image was used to ward off pestilence and evil, sometimes painted on screens. An early seventeenth-century Japanese bestiary, the Sankai Ibutsu, still describes the baku as a guard against disease rather than a dream eater; the nightmare role grew in Japan.
Uses: picture of the mo
The baku came to Japan from the Chinese mo, a mythical beast assembled from parts of other animals and credited with driving off pestilence and evil. By the Muromachi period it was known in Japan, and the custom of sleeping on pictures for the new year had begun. The court's dream ships carried the character for baku on their sails so it would swallow bad dreams before they could come true.
In the Edo period the custom grew into the popular takarabune prints of the Seven Lucky Gods, sold every January for hatsuyume. Lafcadio Hearn introduced the dream-eating baku to English readers in Kottō in 1902. The name baku is also the Japanese word for the tapir, which is why modern images sometimes look like one. Baku carvings and pillows are still sold at shrines and gift shops across Japan today.
In Japan salt (shio) is a common means of purification rooted in Shinto ideas of cleansing impurity: sprinkled after a funeral, heaped in small cones at doorways, and thrown by sumo wrestlers before a bout.
The ancient practice of sleeping in a sacred place to receive a guiding or healing dream, made famous at the sanctuaries of Asclepius such as Epidaurus. Given here as a modern dream-question practice; it is not medical care.
A small cloth pouch of dried herbs slipped inside the pillowcase, made in different eras with rosemary against evil dreams, hops for sleep, or mugwort for vivid dreams.
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