This is a story about yokai (Japanese traditional monsters)….Do you know one called “Noppera-bō”? It’s a faceless ghost. A similar monster exists in a tale of a Chinese story, too. It’s called Hundun and it is is one of Si-xiong (the four inauspicious beasts from Chinese mythology).
Well, as for this Hundun, it has no eyes, nose, ears or mouth. It’s exactly like the Noppera-bō, the Japanese monster, isn’t it? Also it’s said that the Hundun has a body which is like a dog and it hates good people and is flattered by bad people. In Taoism, it’s personified as “鴻均道人 koukindoujin”
In the book of Zhuangzi, this “Hundun” appears as a faceless emperor. In the story, when the eyes, nose, ears and mouth were created on the face of the emperor (Hundun), he died.
By the way, this very old story can be applied to the situation in present days as well. We try not to see, listen and speak to anything that we don’t want to. It sounds like the “Noppera-bō (faceless ghost)” In regard to the story of “three wise monkeys”, I think they are very similar …Well, there are various problems in the present society, but we try not to see those…Yes, Noppera-bō (faceless ghost) represents our society.
As its name indicates, “Hundun” means chaos. In the Greek mythology, chaos (Χάος, Khaos) was the primordial gods and represented a situation in which there was no cosmos. At the same time it represented a condition in which all the things were possible to be created from there. As I think about it, the Hundun represents the present society in which we seem to have an orderly society but we actually don’t. I wonder if we make eyes, nose, ears and a mouth on our society, it may suddenly die (end). I wonder if now is a chaotic time…?
