A shōjō is a kind of Japanese sea spirit with a red face and hair and a fondness for alcohol. The legend is the subject of a Noh play of the same name. There is a Noh mask for this character, as well as a type of Kabuki stage makeup, that bear the name. The Chinese characters are also a Japanese word for orangutan, and can also be used in Japanese to refer to someone who is particularly fond of alcohol.
Chinese origins
Mythical creatures named "shēng shēng" or "xīng xīng" are mentioned in three passages of the Shan Hai Jing. Birrell, who translates the creature's name as "live-lively", thus translates the passages: The Chinese character Birrell translates as "green" is also used to refer to colors that in English would be considered "blue," and that illustrator Sun Xiao-qin, in Illustrated Classics: Classic of Mountains and Seas chose to portray the xīng xīng from this same passage as having blue fur. Birrell also includes the following note on the creature:
In cryptozoology, the shojo is often referred to as xing-xing and is believed to be a mainland orangutan. Bernard Heuvelmans lists this as an entry in his Annotated Checklist of Apparently Unknown Animals With Which Cryptozoology is Concerned.
In a tale involving shōjō and white sake, there was a gravely sick man whose dying wish was to drink sake. His son searched for it near Mount Fuji and came across the red shōjō, who were having a drinking party on the beach. The shōjō gave him some sake after listening to his plea. Since the sake revived the dying father, the son went back to the spirit to get more sake each day for five days. A greedy neighbor who also wanted the sake became sick after drinking it. He forced the son to take him to the shōjō to get the good sake. The shōjō explained that as his heart wasn't pure, the sacred sake would not have life-restoring benefits, but instead had poisoned the neighbor. The neighbor repented, and the shōjō gave him some medicine to cure him. The father and the neighbor brewed white sake together. Several plants and animals have shōjō in their names for their bright, reddish-orange color. Examples include several Japanese maple trees, one of them named shōjō-no-mai or "dancing red-faced monkey" and another named shōjō nomura or "beautiful red-faced monkey." Certain bright reddish-orange dragonflies are named shōjō tonbo, meaning "red-faced dragonfly." Other names with shōjō refer to real or fancied connections to sake, like the flyshōjō bae that tends to swarm around open saké. The Kyōgen-influenced Noh play shōjō or shōjō midare features a shōjō buying sake, getting drunk and dancing ecstatically, then rewarding the sake seller by making his sake vat perpetually refill itself. The shōjō from the play have been made into wooden dolls, they are one of the "most common" wooden dolls derived from Noh plays. Shōjō dolls are used to ward against smallpox. In Hayao Miyazaki's animated filmPrincess Mononoke, talking, ape-like creatures struggling to protect the forest from human destruction by planting trees are identified as shōjō. Shōjō appeared in a 2005 Japanese film The Great Yokai War. The Japanese artist Kawanabe Kyōsai, who was also known for his heavy drinking and eccentric behavior, humorously referred to himself as a shōjō. The March 30, 2012, episode of the television seriesSupernatural, "Party on, Garth", features a shōjō, although this shōjō appears to have features more associated with the onryō.
