“the conceptual world of pre-eighteenth-century zoology must-from: From a ‘domestic commodity’ to a ‘secret of trade’: snails and shells of land molluscs in early
have accorded little importance to the orientation of a
shell”. We will refer to this as the ‘Gould hypothesis’.
"If drowning children sounds brutal, then consider the preferred object of [the kappa's] thievery: the human liver. As river dwellers, kappas were thought to lurk beneath the old fashioned toilets that overhung the river and to use that vantage point to truly invade people's private space. By reaching through the anus, kappas could snatch the internal organs of an unsuspecting toilet-goer. Collateral damage in this transaction was a mythical organ called the shirikodama, a little globe that was believed to plug the anus."
