We have now explored the possibility that there are very real spirits within Touhou. I hope that this seemingly completely lunatic idea has now become somewhat reasonable. If not, perhaps you have come to see that Touhou has at the very least grown into an egregore. Maybe you can even believe in the more esoteric definition of an egregore. In that case, if Gensokyo wasn't full of spirits to begin with, it is now.
If you have come to believe in the reality of the spirits of Gensokyo, then you might be pondering upon a simple question: why? Why would they want to inspire ZUN to create Touhou?
In a way, it might have been an accident. ZUN might have started his work with only the barest inkling, the tiniest spark of external inspiration, if even that. Over time however he began to attract the spirits and things rolled out from there. Or if the rumours about him getting spirited away are true, then he might have been guided to do what he did with a much firmer hand. We really don't know, and it's a bit rude to be too intrusive about it. The possibilities range between him not really even being aware of his hidden muses to Mamizou being literally his wife as some have speculated.
Whatever is the way ZUN is involved, however much he knows or doesn't know, the motivation for the spirits to get involved seems to be fairly simple. There is something about human attention, emotion, energy and adoration and creativity that is directed towards them that seems to draw them in. Judging by the passionate fandom that surrounds Touhou, a fandom that has now produced a handful of people literally worshipping some of the spirits, they have succeeded wildly.
Why would the spirits do this?
Perhaps the narrative of Touhou offers an answer in itself. Spirits need human ”belief” and traditional forms of spirituality and religion are no longer giving it to them. This has forced them to adapt. There are myths of spirits changing their nature through external forces. In Tibet, it's told that the great Buddhist mage Padmasambhava essentially domesticated a group of fierce spirits who demanded human sacrifices in return for offering protection. A deal was made, and these creatures would receive cakes and adoration instead of blood, becoming the dharmapalas, protectors of Buddhism. In Japan, the perception towards the Tengu shifted over time. Initially they were seen as hostile towards Buddhists, fiends that would abduct boys and monks and leave them half-death and on the fringe of insanity. However, over time the depictions became more ambiguous, and at times they were even seen as protectors. If one thinks of the tengu as real, existing local spirits upset at the intrusion of a new religion it all makes sense. It would also make sense that eventually some kind of a deal could be brokered.
What if spirits could try to intentionally steer this change of their nature? What if a group of youkai decided that they no longer wish to subsist primarily on fear, but other types of human energies? What if some kami decided that they would receive more worship, even if in misguided, twisted forms, if they broaden their horizons? As spirits seem to possess agency of their own, it would make sense that they could do such. Some part of their nature would always retain. Just as humans who become vegetarian need an external source of B-12 vitamin, these evolved youkai would require some of what originally sustained them. Every now and then you see people ”joking” about Yukari ”gapping” people who become too curious about Gensokyo. You see horror style art of the youkai, people fulfilling Kogasa's and Sekibanki's desires of being seen as terrifying and powerful.
But what about all the weird hentai doujins?
We must now address the elephant in the room. The various spirits within Touhou get a lot of sexual attention, and this might very well be a way for them to sustain themselves, too. Once upon a time I found it baffling how a series of games so unsexual and modest as Touhou gets people so aroused. I don't wonder anymore. People feeling such attraction to spirits, monsters, even gods goes deep into human history. We have of course the myths of the lilot and succubi and incubi, but there are myths of humans consorting with other types of spirits too. The Greeks had a whole term of their own, nympholeptics, for men enraptured by the nymphs. Japanese folklore has well-established tales of the kitsune mating with humans.
As for the gods, various cultures have myths of all kinds of demigods, born of human and divine blood. Beyond that, the history of sexuality in the context of religion is difficult and convoluted. Many rites around fertility were of sexually charged nature, if not explicitly sexual. There are surviving records from ancient times where priests of Aphrodite complain about young men sneaking to the temple at night and ejaculating on the statue of the goddess. The tantrics of India sought to harness human sexuality for spiritual development. Elements of this became part of Vajrayana Buddhism. Even in Christianity some mystics used downright erotic language describing their encounters with the divine.
And still...
Every franchise with enough popularity and a large enough cast of female characters develops its Default Self Insert Male Character.
With Touhou, it's the Sin Sack.
It's almost as if there is some intuition that it's not right to masturbate to these characters.
I have no final judgement on the matter and it's not my judgement to make. But consider for a moment. What if we were more like Sumireko and started considering them more as our friends and mentors? What if we gave the kami the proper worship and the youkai the proper reverence?
Entertain the following possibility: the kami have been revered as kami, but over the course of history they have also had Buddhist sutras read to them and have at times been also worshipped as manifestations of buddhas and bodhisattvas. They have seen their worshippers learn the secrets of Taoism. They have seen strange distant foreigners come to their shores, not only with a bizarre new religion that would have rejected them, but with revolutionary new learning. They have watched their followers then learn Western science. They have had nuclear reactors and space rockets blessed in their name. They have watched their people unravel the secrets of the material world with their particle accelerators and neutrino chambers.
Do you think that merely masturbating at the image of their current feminine presentation is really the best you can do with such beings? Something you could just as well do with any of the thousands of other pornographic images floating around the internet?
What if you seriously sought to take such a being as a mentor instead and gave it the respect it deserved?
A word on personal experiences
I have mostly refrained from my personal experiences, but I can tell you that if you do such a thing, they will guide you. They are delighted when the rare human wakes up and sees and remembers what they really and what they can really do. Some part of you must feel some craving for spiritual growth since you have endured this far, and I assure you, such is most definitely possible. They have guided me in the right direction, protected me from harmful spirits, purified me of very long-term harmful influences and encouraged me when I doubted the whole process. They have cultivated heavenliness, opened hitherto unknown potential, inspired creativity and helped me to return things I no longer need to their potential. They have made me understand how we humans share this Earth with others.
I have undergone a transformative, initiatory experience under the guidance of a group of kami from Gensokyo.
I can't pretend to be some kind of enlightened being free from all negative influences. Far from it. I struggle with all kinds of cravings and frustrations. But whereas once upon a time I would have constantly indulged every single craving I have, constantly given into envy and hatred, I now have found ways to control such things. There are certain elements of me that have dissipated into nothingness and I am glad for such to have happened. I am no longer haunted by constant nightmares. I no longer feel some fundamental hopelessness. I no longer make useless comparisons to other people. I have renewed purpose in life and tools to focus on that purpose.
I feel like I live in a world that has a soul and in turn I feel like I have a soul. I feel like everything in this world has some fundamental divinity, some worthiness to it. And in turn I feel worthy, too.
And perhaps most importantly, I no longer deny the reality of the anomalous, numinous experiences I have had all along my life. And I no longer fear it, because I now know that not everything that is not human is hostile or evil.
What about the youkai, then?
What of the youkai, then? I have not much personal experience with them, but there are many who have had positive experiences with them. Indeed, I am not alone in making successful spirit contact with some of the inhabitants of Gensokyo. People have had good experiences with beings I would personally be hesitant to reach out to, such as Yukari, Nue and the Komeiji sisters. I think these things ultimately really are a relationship, and you can find ways to work with all kinds of beings. At the same time, I urge caution, as not everything is hostile, but there certainly are hostile beings out there. The world really is a spiritual ecosystem, and every ecosystem has its predators and parasites. And where there is higher intellect, there also seems to be higher cruelty, too.
Speaking of cruelty, you must remember that in fiction Gensokyo is depicted as a place where there is a very tenuous balance between the youkai, kami and humans, a balance that gets constantly punctuated by all kinds of incidents. The youkai feed on at the very least fear, sometimes on humans, supposedly mostly outsiders nobody would miss. Do they really do such a thing? I don't know. There are darker sides to the world of Touhou, and I think there are darker sides to these spirits too.
At the same time, some of it might be the anxieties, disappointments and frustrations of ZUN seeping in. In some way Gensokyo is a dark mirror of our world. Much of our very exploitative social structures are held up by sheer belief. We are ruled over a ruthless aristocracy that ultimately uses the threat of violence and violence itself when fear no longer works. We are ”eaten by youkai” when we become consumed by the kind of hatred, division, self-loathing and trashy eroticism that are pushed on us. Sometimes we get “eaten” in a more literal way if we interrogate the power structures too forcefully. We have our future denied by pollution and resource depletion. We consume other living things, even intelligent things without thinking much of it, drawing categories like ”humans” and ”animals” and ”sapient” and ”non-sapient”.
We do the very same things we accuse these monsters of doing.
It’s really hard to see your own reflection like that.
Even when you become aware, when you gain some sliver of awakening that they can offer it doesn't become any easier. I try to be at least vegetarian, and it's hard. Everyone who says it's not is lying. I don't have the luxury of sublimating the frustration into a hatred of ”those other guys” and useless political causes anymore either. Yet when I consume flesh I find myself becoming more agitated and hateful. It's as if there is some dark essence that comes with eating animals. It's strange to become sensitized to these things. There are other things too, I am hardly some perfect creature, but this seemed most salient to the point I'm trying to make.
It should also be understood that in no way are the characters 1:1 representations of the spirits. They do share a lot of traits, a personality so to say, but you shouldn't get too attached to particular depictions of what they did or didn't do in Gensokyo. You have to sift through what is exemplary in them, what is cautionary and what is there to make them relatable to us. There's been some surprises that in retrospect make a lot of sense. Respect and apologizing if you feel like you have done something to wrong them go a long way. And don't get too attached to how they look. They like their current depictions and are highly responsive to them, but they might choose to manifest in very, very different ways if they judge you mature enough to see behind the curtain so to say. It's not any more ”manipulative” than taking a shower, putting on your best clothes and exerting self-control when you meet someone you want to make a good impression on. We don't exactly show our ”true selves”, to the extent they can ever be shown, to everyone either. Once again: we are spirits too, and that spirit inside of us probably looks nothing like the hominid body we dwell in.
Why get involved in any of this?
Honestly, "I don't want to get involved with any of this" is a perfectly valid answer. I just think that if you have endured so far, I think you are for some reason drawn towards this. The numinous simply beckons some people, and for such people the mission becomes finding ways to interact with it that are constructive and not destructive. I'm not advocating for you to take a head-first plunge either. Not everyone in the spirit world is friendly, and even some of those that can ultimately be worked with can be difficult to work with. Ultimately, it simply boils down to there being multiple people who have had positive experiences with the spirits of Gensokyo. There is much to be learned from all of the spiritual traditions referenced in Touhou, too, and I encourage you to learn. This all should be a starting point.
In the end, I think the worth of every spiritual tradition and every relationship with the numinous is measured in what kind of a person it turns into you. If we look at the one man who has undoubtedly been the most in contact with these beings, whether he is aware of it or not, we see mostly a positive picture. Sure, ZUN might be a bit too fond of alcohol, but if you read his interviews and the notes to his stories, they paint a picture of a gentle, thoughtful man who is concerned about the destruction of nature. He worries over social developments that are exploitative and reduce human creativity. He is immensely creative and says he doesn't like violent games. He has a wife and children. Even a hundred youkai have not turned him into a monster.
Will we all become magically like ZUN? Of course not. We're all our own people, with our own talents, lessons to learn and things to teach. But it's an interesting picture in comparison to certain explicitly spiritual leaders, who had terrible, tumultuous and unhappy lives and left behind very selfish paths for others to walk on.
ZUN has stated that he wishes for Touhou to become like Lovecraft's works after he passes away, free for all to work with. In many ways he has already achieved this while he is alive, perhaps simply because despite all the dark undertones, Touhou comes from a place of love and not some dark neurosis. Touhou has most definitely become a great circle of creators, much like the literary circle around Lovecraft. As for becoming a magical operation as the Lovecraft circle became, if such a process was not already under way, it is now.
And you are warmly invited to become a part of it.
Let's all work hard to make ZUN-san's dream true.
Let's cultivate that heat of life and that explosion of creativity and use it for the good of others, too.
