Long hair in ghost in asia mythology

[Mrbunny]

Hey guy want to run a asia feeling game and have been watching some horror movies, can anyone tell me why all those creepy chicks in it have long black hair?
Is it just a movie thing please help.
Thanks.

 

[palleomortis]

Um...'Cuas most asian chicks have long black hair?

 

[shilsen]

It's mostly just a movie thing replicating a very specific genre. I've been reading about the supernatural from Asian myth and legend for over two decades and there really is no majorly specific trend, which isn't surprising since Asia involves cultures as divergent as Japan, India, Thailand, China, Pakistan, Mongolia, etc. If you want to run an "Asia feeling game", you'll have to pick some specific aspects to focus on, just like if you pick an "African" or "European" game.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

The most immediate movie I can think of is "The Bride with White Hair (1 & 2)" starring Bridgette Lin. You could say she was sort of a ghost, though I guess in her case it was long hair except that it was white. One thing I do know is that white is the colour of death to the Chinese. But she wasn't a ghost in the traditional D&D sense since she was corporeal. Also I think the circumstances in how one died has a lot with what kind of ghost they become. In her case she felt completely betrayed by her lover which prompted the change when she died tragically (she's alive in most of the 1st movie, all of the killing with hair thing mainly happens in the 2nd movie)...

 

[Krug]

I guess long unhindered hair, in cultures where hair is often bundled up or restrained, is a sign of independence or freedom, particularly from males who would seek to dominate the female form, and thus possibly a sign of power and occasionally madness. Malaysia's Pontianaks, female ghosts, are also often portrayed with long flowing hair.

 

[Richards]

I think I remember hearing (in an Asian Studies elective course in college) that in Japanese, the word for "hair" is either the same or very similar to the word for "ghost." So in a way, it's kind of a pun.

(Actually, I just had my son peek in his Japanese/English dictionary, and the words for "ghost" and "hair" are pretty distinct. Still, it might have been "hair" and "spirit" or something similar - "hair" is "kami," which is one of the root words for "kamikaze," meaning "divine wind." Maybe "kami" also means "divine" or "supernatural," and that's where the "ghost" part comes in? I'm just guessing here - and going off of memories from college, which are some 20 years old by now.)

Johnathan

 

[Morrow]

The long hair thing in horror movies might have less to do with cultural conventions and more to do with the uncanny valley. Things that look very nearly human, but don't quite make it are very disturbing. You run into that problem in animation, animated people that look to close to the real thing can be off-putting. It seems to me that you can get a similar effect by taking a normal person and obscuring their features behind long hair. You don't have to change the person's features at all to make them look wrong in some not quite definable way.

Morrow

 

[Alzrius]

I think I remember hearing (in an Asian Studies elective course in college) that in Japanese, the word for "hair" is either the same or very similar to the word for "ghost." So in a way, it's kind of a pun.

(Actually, I just had my son peek in his Japanese/English dictionary, and the words for "ghost" and "hair" are pretty distinct. Still, it might have been "hair" and "spirit" or something similar - "hair" is "kami," which is one of the root words for "kamikaze," meaning "divine wind." Maybe "kami" also means "divine" or "supernatural," and that's where the "ghost" part comes in? I'm just guessing here - and going off of memories from college, which are some 20 years old by now.)

You almost got it the second time around. "Kami" is indeed the word for hair, and "kami" is also the word for spirits/gods. Incidentally, the word can also be used for paper, as well as a few other things.

Japanese is a language full of homophones, and this is one of those examples. It comes from the fact that kanji, the writing system they imported from China, has characters that are meaning-based instead of phonetic-based, like our alphabet. The kanji for "hair" kami and "gods" kami look nothing alike, for example. This can be confusing since, depending on context, the same kanji can be pronounced many different ways that don't sound alike, but mean the same thing.

As an aside, the spirits/gods "kami" is somewhat imprecise because (from what I know of Shinto), there isn't a fair distinction between "spirits" and "gods" like we have in the west. There are eight million kami, but some of them are meek, powerless little spirits, and some are so mighty that gods seems like a much more appropriate term. Hence the imprecise translation.

 

[Prince of Happiness]

Because it's scary.

Outside of that, long black hair is a pretty commonly used "look" for o-bake in Japan. I've seen quite a few ukiyo-e prints with the same features. Others don't, but the idea is there. Probably because it's scary. I mean, why do zombies in most zombie movies now look all nasty and rotten, instead of freshly dead? Because it's scarier (by and large).

So, to sum: Because it's scary.

 

[heirodule]

I guess long unhindered hair, in cultures where hair is often bundled up or restrained, is a sign of independence or freedom, particularly from males who would seek to dominate the female form, and thus possibly a sign of power and occasionally madness. Malaysia's Pontianaks, female ghosts, are also often portrayed with long flowing hair.

I believe this is true. Apparently, ancient japanese art that portrayed women with bundled hair, but with a few stands hanging loose represented prostitutes and were a form of pornography.