Susuwatari (Japanese ススワタリ; "wandering soot"), also called Makkuro kurosuke (真っ黒黒助; "pitch-black assistant"), is the name of a fictitious yōkai which was devised by Hayao Miyazaki, drawn by Ghibli studios and known from the famous anime-productions My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away where, in the former, they are identified as "black soots" in early subtitles and "soot sprites" or gremlins in the later English dubbed version.
Susuwatari are described and shown as tennis ball-sized, pitch-black and fuzzy-haired beings with two large eyes and long, thin legs.
In My Neighbor Totoro,[1] the house the main characters move into is full of Susuwatari, which are rationalized as Makkuro Kurosuke (pitch-black assistant),
an optical illusion caused by moving quickly from light into darkness.
They later reappeared in Spirited Away as workers in Kamaji's boiler room.[2] The protagonist Sen (Chihiro) befriends a number of them by helping them carry coal.
Sen is told that if these Susuwatari aren't given a job to do, they
turn back into soot. Another character, Lin, feeds the Susuwatari much
like farmers feed chickens, throwing handfuls of the Japanese candy kompeitō onto the ground for them to eat.[2]
Konpeitō (金平糖, コンペイトー), also spelled kompeitō, is a Japanese candy.[1]
Konpeitō is usually 5 to 10 mm (0.20 to 0.39 in) in diameter
and is produced by repeatedly coating a sugar syrup over a core
consisting of a grain of coarse sugar.Originally the core was a seed.
The process is somewhat similar to the dragée process, except the candies are produced by being ladled with sugar syrup and rotated slowly in a large heated gong-shaped
tub called a "dora". Each grain of the core sugar grows over the course
of several days with the continued rotating, heating, and application
of syrup, grows into a ball covered with tiny bulges. It usually takes
7-13 days to make konpeitō and they are crafted by artisans even today.[7]
The word "konpeitō" comes from the Portuguese word confeito, which means a sugar candy.[2] This technique for producing candy was introduced to Japan in the early 16th century by Portuguese traders.
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