Yokai Quiz
Zashiki-warashi (House Spirit)
You settle into the back rooms of an old house and, with nothing but footsteps and a presence, brighten the whole home.
The zashiki-warashi is a yokai in the form of a child, said to live in old houses in the Tohoku region of northern Japan, Iwate Prefecture in particular. Yanagita Kunio's “The Legends of Tono” records tales of noises in a room where no one should have been, and of meeting a child in the hallway.
A house with a zashiki-warashi is said to prosper. Yet only a handful of people have ever seen one clearly. Some tales say that when children are playing, there's suddenly one more of them than before. Rather than standing out front, you warm a place up with your presence, and you're there just as you always are.
The zashiki-warashi settles into the inside of someone's home. You're at your strongest close to people's daily lives, keeping to your unchanging rhythm. But somewhere with no one around, or where you're expected to change how you act to suit others, you can be unsure where to put yourself.
Strengths
- Out of the spotlight, you can keep up the small things that make a place feel warm
- Wherever you are, you keep your own pace and help settle the people around you
- You can value your ties with your household and neighbors over the long term
Where you may stumble
- The things you've done go unnoticed, and the effort only you know about keeps piling up
- After a long time somewhere with no one around, you start to feel uneasy
- At a big gathering, the party breaks up before anyone gets around to talking to you
Sounds familiar, Zashiki-warashi (House Spirit)?
- You walk around the house so silently that people at home jump when they see you
- When guests come over, you make the tea in the kitchen and take ages to actually come out
- When someone leaves something behind, you quietly put it back near its owner
Where you shine
In a warm home where people come and go, or a neighborhood where people have known each other for years, small unseen efforts are what make it feel like home. Places like that are where the Zashiki-warashi's quiet strengths come across.
Tips for “Zashiki-warashi (House Spirit)”
- Casually let someone know about just one thing you did
- When you go somewhere with few people around, bring one familiar thing with you
- Every so often, take one step forward and be the first to say hello
Matches
See every match in the Yokai Quiz compatibility chart →
Bake-danuki (Shape-shifting Raccoon Dog) — The Zashiki-warashi with its noises around the house and the Bake-danuki with its belly drum both make themselves known by sound before they're seen. You both settle in among people, so just hearing each other at night is enough to tell how the other is doing.
Rokurokubi (Long-Necked Yokai) — The Rokurokubi also lives quietly in people's homes. Neither of you steps out front, so you can share a roof without fuss, and you can get along in the same easy way with both the face the Rokurokubi shows by day and the one it shows at night.
Ittan-momen (Flying Cloth) — The Ittan-momen sweeps down from the open sky right up to people and changes shape with the wind. To a Zashiki-warashi who wants to stay in the back of the house as it always is, that way of showing up is unsettling, and to the Ittan-momen, it's a mystery why the Zashiki-warashi stays in the same room forever.
Close neighbors
These differ from this one on just 1 of the 3 axes. If one of your axes was near the middle, you may have their side too.
Which one are you? 18 everyday situations, about 3 minutes.
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