#spider lily

Spider Lily

Photography by David Velez

first post after like eight years of idling being an artfight post go rahhh

character is Pandora

art dump

Something I find kinda interesting in terms of Western fandom stuff is that most people do know that spider lilies in anime are somehow connected to a bad omen, and being related to death in some way, but not really why.

In Digimon Survive it is kind of the first sign that the Otherworld is bad news. The kids awaking between the spider lilies.

And I tried to look it up on the anglosphere internet, and... yeah, it is nothing that seems to be well documented. The bots seem to know the rough outline, which is so weird. But yeah, the knowledge is not really there. I would be mistrustful of the bot output, if I had not been told the exact same by a Japanese anthropologist before.

There is a handful of reasons. A big one is just when those flowers bloom. Because they are autumn bloomers. They bloom around the same time as the autumnal higan festival - which like many Buddhist holidays deals with the passing of the dead. Because of this the flowers are called higanbana in Japanese. So "the Higan Flower" or "the flower of the other shore" (meaning: the afterlife). But apparently there was also a second reason - at least from what I have gotten told.

The other reason why the spider lilies are associated with bad omens is related to them being planted around rice paddies once upon a time. At least from what I have been told. As you know, rice is important in east Asia, and for many people rice was the main source of nutrition. The flowers were planted to keep away pests. I am admittedly not sure if this actually worked, but as it is... often that does not matter.

However: parts of the flower are edible to humans. If you cook them, you can actually get rid of many of the toxins, making them an emergency food source. Additionally, this I have been told by the aforementioned anthropologist, some people would also eat it raw, apparently, as for humans the toxins mostly create nausea, which can during a famine overwrite the feeling of hunger. So, culturally, the flowers are associated with famine. And hence an ill omen.

I also have seen some claims around that prior to Buddhism becoming widespread in Japan, when people were still burying their dead, apparently the flowers were also planted around graves to deter animal predation. But I cannot find a viable source for that, so I would take it with a grain of salt.