The Illustrated Night Parade of a Hundred Demons

Kodama, often searched in English as “kodamas,” are Japanese tree spirits: presences believed to dwell in old trees, or sometimes in the trees themselves. In older belief, a tree that had lived for many generations could hold a sacred presence, and the delayed voice that returns from a mountain or valley, known as yamabiko, was also understood as a reply from the kodama. The idea reaches back toward Japanese tree divinity: some interpretations connect kodama with Kukunochi, the tree deity named in the Kojiki, while the Heian-period dictionary Wamyo Ruijusho records “Kotama” as a Japanese name for a tree god. Genji monogatari also places kodama among beings that are hard to separate cleanly from oni, kami, or fox spirits, showing that the word already carried an uncanny, yokai-like edge in the Heian imagination. A kodama usually does not look like a separate monster; it may be indistinguishable from an ordinary tree, yet the tree is feared as charged with spirit, and careless felling could bring misfortune. Toriyama Sekien’s Gazu Hyakki Yagyo illustrates this under the title Mokumi, explaining that a god appears in a tree more than a hundred years old and drawing aged human figures beside an ancient trunk. Written as 木霊, 木魂, 木魅, or 谺, kodama sits at the meeting point of tree soul and echo: the forest speaks back, and the tree is imagined as the one answering.

The tengu is a yokai and quasi-divine being said to dwell in the mountains of Japan, a lord of the heights inseparably bound to the yamabushi ascetics of Shugendō. Its forms fall broadly into two lineages. One is the long-nosed tengu, with a ruddy face and high nose, clad in the garb of a mountain ascetic, bearing a feather fan and one-toothed high clogs; the other is the crow tengu, with a crow's beak and wings, and beneath them follow lesser kin such as the leaf tengu and the wood-chip tengu. What was once conceived as a bird like a black kite hardened, over the medieval period, into the image of the long-nosed mountain ascetic. The tengu is at once a demon that obstructs the Buddhist Law and, once subdued, a guardian deity who protects it—this dual nature is the essence of the tengu. The notion that an arrogant high monk falls and becomes a tengu was bound to the Buddhist "way of the tengu," and was depicted as satire in late-Kamakura picture scrolls. Within mountain worship, on the other hand, the tengu was revered as guardian of the mountain and master of martial and magical arts, a being that tests or guides the practitioner. From Mount Kurama and Mount Atago in Kyoto onward, each of the sacred mountains of the realm was said to have its own great tengu, and the early-modern Tengu Sutra counts their number at forty-eight.

The echo heard in mountains and valleys is personified as Yamabiko—literally “mount echo.” While recognized as a natural acoustic reflection, it’s also told as a mountain spirit, a retainer of mountain gods, a tree spirit (kodama), or a mysterious creature of the deep woods. Picture scrolls sometimes show it with beastlike features. Responding with the exact words it hears, it inspired both awe and caution.

An old witch-like yokai who dwells deep in the mountains. She is also known as the foster mother of the folk hero Kintaro.

The yamawaro is a yokai of the mountains of western Japan, often said to be the form a kappa takes when it climbs into the hills in autumn. About the height of a child, it has long legs, a body covered in fine hair, and is said to understand human speech. The *Wakan Sansai Zue* records it with long reddish-brown hair, a round face, pointed ears like a dog's, and a single eye above the nose. It is said to lend a ready hand with mountain work, yet it also loves sumo, plays tricks on cattle and horses, and even climbs into people's homes to soak in the bath. In Kumamoto it is told that the creature dislikes the inked line of a carpenter's ink pot, and that drawing such a line keeps it away.

Inugami are possessing dog-spirits found mainly in western Japan, counted alongside fox possession and kuda-gitsune as a powerful occult force. Shikoku—especially Tokushima, Kochi, and Ehime—is regarded as their heartland, with traces reported from Shimane and Yamaguchi down through Kyushu to the Satsunan Islands and Okinawa. Families believed to host hereditary Inugami—called “Inugami bloodlines”—were stigmatized, leading to marriage taboos and social discrimination. Their form and temperament vary widely by locale, with traditions describing them as mouse-like, weasel-like, or bat-like, among other shapes.

Nekomata is one of the most widely known and complexly evolved supernatural beings in Japanese folklore. Its form is depicted either as a beast that has grown gigantic over the years, or as a monstrous cat with a tail split into two. There are two distinct lineages for the concept of this yokai: one is the "terrifying beast Nekomata living in the mountains," seen in Kamakura period literature, and the other is the "Nekomata as a house yokai, an old cat kept in a home for many years that transforms," which became established from the Edo period onward. In Japanese folk belief, cats are often seen as entities concealing demonic or spiritual powers, and the awe of a creature crossing that boundary crystallized into the image of this two-tailed yokai.

The kappa is among the most famous of all Japanese yokai, said to dwell wherever there is water—rivers, ponds, and marshes alike. It stands about the height of a four- or five-year-old child, with a water-filled dish (sara) set into the crown of its head, a shell on its back, a beak for a mouth, and webbed hands and feet. Its body is greenish or reddish in hue and is sometimes described as smelling fishy. That dish on its head is the very source of its power: should the water spill or dry out, the kappa is believed to lose its strength at once. From this came the well-known trick of bowing deeply to a kappa so that, returning the courtesy, it tips the water from its dish and can be caught. The kappa has two faces. One is fearsome—dragging people and horses into the water and taking their lives. The other is dutiful—keeping its promises faithfully, delighting in sumo, and sometimes passing on miraculous bone-setting remedies. Found across the whole country, it goes by more than eighty regional names: Garappa, Medochi, Enko, Hyosube, and many more. Among all the yokai of Japan, few are so deeply rooted in local life.

Kawauso are otters that, after many years, become yokai. They understand human speech and excel at shapeshifting. They delight in mischief such as snuffing out lanterns on night roads to lead travelers astray. Many tales describe them luring people while disguised as a beautiful woman, a child, or a monk. Old dictionaries even note, “An aged otter becomes a kappa,” and in some regions they are treated as the same being or close kin to kappa.

Akaname is a yokai said to appear in old bathhouses or abandoned bathrooms. It is usually depicted as an impish child with a long tongue, sneaking in during the night to lick the grime, mold, and scum stuck to tubs and walls. Although rarely described as harming humans directly, its very appearance was regarded as an omen of uncleanness and served as a cautionary tale to keep the bath area clean. Alternate names include Akaneburi and Aka-neburi.

The tanuki is, as an animal, the Japanese raccoon dog, _Nyctereutes procyonoides_, a canid native to Asia that includes Japanese subspecies such as the Honshu and Ezo tanuki. Japan's Ministry of the Environment distribution survey of tanuki, foxes, and badgers from 2022 shows tanuki living across most of Japan except Okinawa Prefecture. As a yokai, the tanuki stands beside the fox as one of Japan's two great animal shapeshifters. The saying "foxes have seven transformations, tanuki have eight" gives the tanuki one more degree of shape-changing power. The earliest textual clue is often traced to the Nihon Shoki entry for 627, which says that a mujina in Mutsu Province changed into a person and sang. In classical usage, however, tanuki, mujina, mami, and related graphs were often confused across regions and texts. The 1924 "tanuki-mujina case" and its not-guilty ruling by Japan's highest court show that the confusion even became a legal issue. Bake-danuki powers include placing a leaf on the head to transform, drumming on the belly under the moon, stretching the famous "eight-mat" scrotum into rooms, nets, umbrellas, or weapons, and the broader repertoire of seven or eight transformations. Edo-period artists such as Utagawa Kuniyoshi and Tsukioka Yoshitoshi made the tanuki a visual icon. Famous tanuki legends cluster in Shikoku, Sado, and Awaji: Awa's great tanuki include Kincho Tanuki, Rokuemon, and Tasaburo; Sado has Danzaburo Tanuki; Awaji has Shibaemon Tanuki. Two frameworks coexist and are often confused: the Three Great Tanuki Legends, Inugami Gyobu, Bunbuku Chagama of Morinji, and the Shojoji tanuki-bayashi tale; and Japan's Three Famous Tanuki, Danzaburo, Tasaburo, and Shibaemon. From the Meiji period onward, Shigaraki ware tanuki became nationally famous after Emperor Showa's 1951 visit and poem, and the 1952 "eight auspicious signs" fixed the modern shop-front figure. In postwar culture, Isao Takahata's Pom Poko from 1994 gathers famous tanuki from around Japan, while Tomihiko Morimi's The Eccentric Family from 2007 imagines Kyoto as a city shared by tanuki and fox families.

Kama-itachi are yokai said to ride dust devils or sudden whirlwinds, slicing human skin as if by a blade. Victims often feel little pain at first and may not bleed until later. From the Edo period on, they’re depicted as weasels with sickle-like claws, though explanations vary by region—some attribute the cuts to the phenomenon itself, to wind deities, or to minor spirits. The term is also a classical winter seasonal word.

A yokai depicted only as an image in Toriyama Sekien’s Edo-period Gazu Hyakki Yagyō. It appears with scissor-like claws resembling those of a crab or scorpion, but the book gives no explanation, and its nature remains unknown. Some link it to the hair-cutting yokai “Kamikiri” seen in earlier picture scrolls, or read it as a visual pun connecting fishing nets and small crustaceans. Later writers often describe it as snipping mosquito nets or fishing nets, though historical evidence for this is limited.

The jorōgumo is a Japanese yokai whose popular image coalesced from several distinct traditions: the name of a living spider species, early modern ghost stories of spiders transforming into women, Toriyama Sekien’s woodblock illustrations, and regional legends of spider pools (*kumobuchi*). Rather than a single beautiful woman dwelling at a specific waterfall, its appearance and behavior vary widely across historical eras and literary records. The written title 絡新婦 was not coined as a literal description meaning "a bride who entangles people." The *Wakan Sansai Zue* glosses the characters 絡新婦 with the reading *chorōkumo* and notes that it is "commonly called *jorōgumo*". The written name represents an intersection between a spider name found in classical Chinese materia medica and the spoken Japanese word *jorōgumo*. Tales of spiders appearing in female form predate Sekien’s art. In the 1677 collection *Tonoigusa*, a samurai grows suspicious of a young woman carrying a child and strikes her with his sword; the following day, he finds a slashed, dead *jorōgumo* alongside numerous human skeletons in the ceiling crawl space. In the 1732 collection *Taihei Hyaku Monogatari*, a man named Magoroku from Sakushū Takada is invited by an older woman into an illusory mansion where a young maiden urges him to marry her; when he flees, he returns to his own veranda, only to discover a tiny *jorōgumo* and an enormous cluster of webs beneath the eaves. Magoroku is not devoured; the narrative centers instead on the hazy boundary between dreams and illusions. In his 1776 work *Gazu Hyakki Yagyō*, Toriyama Sekien gave the title "Jorōgumo" (絡新婦) to an illustration depicting a long-haired woman in flowing robes overlaid with spider legs, surrounded by a swarm of tiny spiders. Wavy lines extending from the spiderlings suggest silk threads, smoke, or fire, but the print includes no explanatory text, nor does it depict a musician seducing a man. A bibliographic investigation conducted by the National Diet Library likewise found no classical literary source that matches the popular modern story of a beautiful woman playing a biwa lute to lure men and ultimately devour them. Waterside traditions of the jorōgumo reflect an entirely separate layer of folklore. Tales of "spider pools" (*kumobuchi*)—in which a spider attaches a thread to a person's foot, only for the individual to shift the silk onto a tree that is then dragged into the water—are distributed throughout Japan. At Jōren Falls, this thread-shifting motif merged with a taboo legend about a woodcutter who retrieves his dropped hatchet from a beautiful woman and dies after breaking his promise of silence, creating the famous Jorōgumo lore known today. Recognizing the differences among these sources reveals the jorōgumo not as a simple seductress, but as a yokai that mirrors human carelessness toward tiny creatures, the boundary between dreams and reality, the hazards of waterside terrain, and the cultural process by which names and images weave disparate legends together.

Sōgenbi is a monk’s ghost light associated with Mibu-dera in Kyoto and depicted by Toriyama Sekien in the *Gazu Hyakki Yagyō*. It is recognised by the tormented face of a monk floating inside a ball of fire. The name is also written Sōgen-bi, “Sōgen’s fire,” after the monk at the centre of the tale. In Toriyama Sekien’s *Gazu Hyakki Yagyō*, the apparition is not an anonymous glow: the face enclosed by flame makes the fire the visible fate of a person. According to the legend, Sōgen served at Mibu-dera’s Jizō Hall but stole lamp oil and offerings from the temple. After death, karmic punishment turned him into a will-o’-the-wisp. In the line of tales preserved in the *Edo Kaidan-shū*, including *Shin Otogi Bōko*, Sōgenbi is not a natural light but a sacred lamp defiled by theft and returned as punishment. Vengeful spirit, flame and temple ground meet in a distinctly Kyoto apparition.

Tsurube-bi is a mysterious fire that moves up and down from treetops at night like a hanging bucket. It appears in Toriyama Sekien’s Gazu Hyakki Yagyō, interpreted as the fiery apparition from Kyoto’s Saiin noted in Edo-period ghost tales. In Shikoku and Kyushu, it’s said to be a wood spirit turning into a bluish-white fireball that dangles from branches. The flames do not burn things, and faces of people or animals sometimes appear within. Considered a type of will-o’-the-wisp, it’s often reported on quiet mountain paths.

Furari-bi is a strange fire depicted in Edo-period yokai art, often shown as a bird wreathed in flames. Examples appear in Toriyama Sekien’s Gazu Hyakki Yagyo, Sawaki Suushi’s Hyakkai Zukan, and the anonymous Bakemono-zukushi. Explanatory notes are scarce, so its nature is unclear. Generally it is understood as a manifestation of unappeased spirits wandering as fire, with the birdlike visage serving as a symbolic form.

Ubagabi is a will-o’-the-wisp that appears on rainy nights, with traditions centered around Hiraoka in Kawachi and along the Hozu River in Tanba. It flies as a fireball about a foot across and is said to sometimes show the face of an old woman or the shape of a bird. Explanations tie it to the curse of an old woman who stole lamp oil from Hiraoka Shrine, or divine punishment upon a woman who drowned after discarding her child; the phenomenon is noted in old books and picture scrolls. Contact is considered a dire omen.

A yokai said to appear at funerals, funeral processions, and graveyards to snatch coffins and corpses. In the early modern period it was told as a hellish jailer or thunder god’s doing, stealing bodies amid black clouds and lightning. Later it merged with bakeneko lore, spreading the belief that an aged cat becomes a kasha and preys on the dead. Reports occur nationwide and are not strictly framed as moral retribution. Traditional countermeasures include blades, prayer beads, mounded earth, and constant vigil.

Yanari is a catchall term for uncanny creaks, tremors, and noises that seem to come from houses and furnishings for no apparent reason. Older records note ominous rumblings from hearths, storehouses, and armories, often read as ill omens. Picture scrolls personify it as little goblins shaking a house, but lore usually leaves the cause unexplained. Explanations vary by region—angry spirits, beast spirits, or a house deity’s mood—and it is said to occur most often around midnight to the Hour of the Ox.

Ubume is a Japanese supernatural phenomenon (yokai) widely believed to be the spirit of a woman who died during childbirth or shortly after, appearing in the form of a woman cradling an infant. In many tales, she stops passersby at night at river crossings, bridges, and crossroads, pleading with them, "Please hold this child." The outcome varies depending on the region and the source: the baby received might suddenly become heavy, turn into leaves or a stone, or the person who manages to hold onto it until the end might be granted superhuman strength or wealth. Therefore, the Ubume is not merely an evil spirit that attacks people. She is an entity that gathers the severed bond between mother and child, the fear of the dead, and the courage and compassion of those who accept her plea into a single tale of an encounter. A famous surviving early example is found in the first half of the 12th century in *Konjaku Monogatari Shu* (Tales of Times Now Past), Scroll 27, Tale 43, "How Minamoto no Yorimitsu's Retainer, Taira no Suetake, Met an Ubume." When Minamoto no Yorimitsu was the Governor of Mino, his retainer Taira no Suetake went to a dark river crossing at night as a test of courage, where he was entrusted with a baby by a woman in the river. Upon returning to the mansion and opening his sleeve, he found only a few tree leaves. At the end of the tale, the narrator juxtaposes the theory that the Ubume is a shape-shifting fox with the theory that she is the spirit of a woman who died in childbirth, without deciding on her true identity. At this stage, the blood-stained waistcloth and bird feathers that became famous in later eras had not yet been depicted. On the other hand, care must be taken with the notation that writes "Kōkakuchō" (Guhō bird) but pronounces it "Ubume." The "nocturnal roaming woman" described in Scroll 16 of the Tang dynasty text *Youyang Zazu* (Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang) is a Chinese monster bird that becomes a bird when wearing feathers and a woman when taking them off, and has a habit of snatching people's children. Because it involved babies and women who died in childbirth, it was conflated with the Japanese Ubume, but they originally belonged to different lineages. According to the research of Manami Yasui, Hayashi Razan, who assigned the Japanese name to the Chinese Kōkakuchō, first specified in the 1631 *Shinkan Tashikihen* that "Kōkakuchō" is the "Ubume-dori" (Ubume bird) or Nue. While the Japanese Ubume has as its core "a mother's spirit entrusting her own baby to someone else," the Chinese Kōkakuchō has as its core "a bird monster that snatches other people's children." Understanding this difference reveals how the yokai known as Ubume changed its form by layering medieval tales, memorials for those who died in childbirth, knowledge of monster birds from China, and early modern yokai illustrations.

Umi-zatō is a maritime yokai depicted in Edo-period art as a zatō—a blind biwa player and Buddhist lay musician—standing at sea. Examples appear in Toriyama Sekien's Gazu Hyakki Yagyō and in a Hyakki Yagyō picture scroll held by the Matsui Bunko in Yatsushiro, Kumamoto. Neither image has an explanatory text, so the figure's origin and nature remain unknown. It carries a biwa and a walking staff and stands directly upon the waves. Some writers have connected the image with Umibōzu and other apparitions encountered offshore, but there is too little evidence to say more.

Nodera-bō is a monk-shaped yokai shown in the first, “Yō,” volume of Toriyama Sekien’s *Gazu Hyakki Yagyō*. Beside a bell tower choked with ivy, a gaunt figure crouches in a torn black robe, its thin hands drawn close to the body. *Nodera* suggests a temple far from habitation or one falling back into the wild; *bō* points to the figure’s monastic form. Sekien supplied no detailed caption for Nodera-bō, so no source can securely identify the temple, the person who might have become the creature, or an older oral tradition. Murakami Kenji likewise treats it as a monk-like yokai known first from Sekien’s image, making later origin stories unsafe to present as ancient lore. Its power comes from place rather than action. An empty temple, an untended bell, a frayed robe and halls sinking into grass create the sense that a sacred space is slowly slipping beyond ordinary life. Where Aobōzu or Nuribotoke foreground the strangeness of a religious body, Nodera-bō cannot be separated from the ruin around it. Human in outline but bound to a temple abandoned by humans, it is both a monk-like apparition and the shadow cast by the derelict temple itself.

A female yokai depicted by Toriyama Sekien in Gazu Hyakki Yagyo. She is known for stretching her lower body up to the height of a building’s second floor to peer through windows. Sekien’s original print includes no notes, so her nature and identity remain uncertain. Later writers imagined her startling patrons on the upper floors of brothels, but historical sources mostly present her as a visual motif without fixed tales or a settled etymology—an emblem of a strange figure that peers from high places.

A yokai depicted by Toriyama Sekien in Gazu Hyakki Yagyo: a blind monk-like figure whose eyes are set in the palms of his hands rather than on his face. Sekien gives no commentary, and its origins are unknown. Similar images appear in a Tenpo-era Hyakki Yagyo scroll as “Teme-bozu” and in Bakemono-zukushi. Often shown in desolate fields under the moon, it is symbolically portrayed as a being that watches its surroundings through the eyes on its palms.

Tesso is a yokai said to be the vengeful spirit of the monk Raiyō from Onjōji (Miidera), which took the form of a giant rat. Framed by the rivalry between Enryakuji and Miidera, it is depicted as a massive rat that gnaws through sutras and Buddhist images. The name “Tesso” comes from Toriyama Sekien’s Illustrated Night Parade of a Hundred Demons; older sources call it Raiyō’s Rat or the Miidera Rat. The tale blends a grudge-ghost narrative with folk fears of rat damage, and memorial rites linger at shrines and temples around Mount Hiei and Ōtsu.

Established in prominence during the Heian period by Taira no Kanemori's poem in the *Shui Wakashu* (1006)—"Is it true what I hear, that a demon hides in the Black Mound (Kurozuka) of Adachigahara in Michinoku?"—this is the legend of the hag (Onibaba) of Adachigahara in Mutsu Province (modern-day Nihonmatsu City, Fukushima Prefecture). She is the ultimate embodiment of the yokai archetype of the "mountain crone who shelters travelers, only to attack them at midnight and devour their livers." Dramatized as the Noh play *Kurozuka* (Adachihara) by Kanze Kojiro in the medieval Muromachi period, and further perfected as the Joruri and Kabuki play *Oshu Adachigahara* (premiered 1762) by Chikamatsu Hanji and others during the Edo period, it remains the most representative Japanese hag legend, still performed today. The primary site of the legend is Kanze-ji Temple (founded 727, Nihonmatsu City), where the "Kurozuka" within the precincts is said to be her burial mound. The tragic narrative of her true identity, "Iwate"—who, in her desperate search for a liver to cure her mistress, unknowingly murders her own daughter—was added in later eras, deepening the tale from a simple monster story into a profound human tragedy.

Rokurokubi is known as a yōkai whose neck stretches unnaturally long at night. Read older books in chronological order, however, and no single form emerges. Under the same name gather figures close to the nukekubi, whose heads separate completely and fly; people who experience the event only as a dream; bodies and heads that appear linked by a thin line; and figures able to lengthen a long neck at will. The earliest currently identifiable candidate for the name is "rokurokubi" in volume two of the haikai anthology *Takatsukuba*, listed by the *Nihon Kokugo Daijiten* as an example from 1638. Yet surviving bibliographic records also date the book to 1642, so the original must be checked again before calling it an absolute first appearance. The name "Rokurokubi" appears in *Seishō Senku* in 1648, and the title "Rokurokubi of Fuchū in Echizen Province" appears in *Shokoku Hyaku Monogatari* in 1677. These early examples show that the name was spreading from the middle to late seventeenth century. In *Sorori Monogatari*, set in Echizen, a man meets a woman's head on a night road and follows it; when the head flies into a house, the sleeping woman says she has dreamed the frightening dream of being pursued by him. Ashamed of her own deluded thoughts, she enters Buddhist practice, but the story does not say she became a monster through jealousy. The strange event is one in which a person's mind or soul seems to have left the sleeping body. China's *Soushen ji* includes a woman of the Luotou people whose head flies by night and returns to her body at dawn. In the *Youyang zazu*, the Feitou Liaozi develop a ringlike red mark on the neck, sprout wings from the head, and eat crabs and earthworms. These closely resemble Japanese detached-head forms, but they do not prove that Chinese tradition simply became a Japanese yōkai. In Japan, knowledge from Chinese texts, ghost stories, illustrated books, and comic kibyōshi overlapped to shape several images of the rokurokubi. The 1737 *Hyakkai Zukan* depicts a nukekubi, while Toriyama Sekien's *Gazu Hyakki Yagyō*, first published in 1776, presents Hitōban (飛頭蛮) with the reading "rokurokubi". In Sekien's image, a sleeping woman's body and floating head are joined by a slender line. One study argues that such lines were later represented as elongated necks. In *Kyōgen Suehirogari* (1788), the neck of a woman in love stretches from Edo to Kamigata, producing laughter rather than fear. Lafcadio Hearn's "Rokuro-Kubi," included in *Kwaidan* in 1904, is not about a beautiful woman with a long neck. Kwairyō, a samurai turned monk, meets five headless bodies and five heads flying through woods in the mountains of Kai; he moves one body to prevent a head's return and fights the attacking head. Its direct source story is an episode in volume four of Jippensha Ikku's *Kaibutsu Yoron*. The red writing, the tactic of moving the body, and power limited until dawn belong to this particular line of tales.

A superstition in wooden architecture: a pillar set upside down, with the tree’s root end on top and the crown end below. Such a reversed pillar was feared to creak and boom at night, bring decline to the household, and invite fires. From early modern times, tales and folklore records say the pillar itself could curse the home, or that leaf-spirits might appear. Traditional carpenters stressed the tree’s natural orientation and taught this as a building taboo.

A nocturnal mischief-maker that appears in bedrooms to flip pillows or switch a sleeper’s head and feet. Most records date from the Edo period onward. Its form varies—sometimes a child, a monk, or left undefined. In Toriyama Sekien’s Gazu Hyakki Yagyō it resembles a small guardian-statue figure. Having one’s pillow reversed was once feared as a sign of disorder between body and soul, linked to illness or death.

Yuki-onna is an apparition that takes the form of a woman on snowy nights, mountain roads in blizzards, and villages buried in white. The familiar image is of a young beauty in white who freezes people with her cold breath, but that is not the whole of Yuki-onna. In Tateshina, Nagano Prefecture, she is told of as a “spirit woman of the snow” who harms no one and carries felled trees across ravines by night to make bridges. A record from Niigata describes a woman who leaves blood-speckled footprints in the midnight snow and kills those she meets. In Akita she is a woman with a smooth, featureless face; in Shōwa Village, Gunma Prefecture, a threat mothers recited on snowy nights to children who cried or would not sleep; and in Wakasa Town, Tottori Prefecture, a white woman who arrives riding a heavy snowfall. Under the same name stand a harmless snow spirit, a deadly encounter, a child-minding phrase, and even a figure glimpsed only for an instant. The name’s history begins in haikai poetry before it appears in ghost-story collections. An early printed example with a confirmed publication date is a verse in the 1642 anthology *Takatsukuba*, compiled by Yamamoto Saibu; “Yuki-onna” was then repeatedly used in works such as *Kebukigusa*, *Yama no I*, *Konzan-shū*, and *Masuyama-i*. The word first invited the wit of imagining the whiteness and form of snowy scenery as a woman, then gradually acquired clearer contours as the name of a supernatural being. Volume five of *Sōgi Shokoku Monogatari*, published in 1685, describes a young white woman about one jō—roughly three meters—tall, standing beside bamboo in Echigo. Her face, hair, skin, and even her unlined white robe are translucently white; a companion explains that she is a snow spirit taking human form. Although the title bears the name of Sōgi, this is not the travel journal of a fifteenth-century renga poet. It is a kana-zōshi of 1685 that borrows Sōgi’s persona as a traveler to tell tales of curiosities from around the country. Sawaki Sūshi’s *Hyakkai Zukan* (1737) and Toriyama Sekien’s *Gazu Hyakki Yagyō* (1776) place Yuki-onna in an image as a named yōkai in her own right. Sekien’s page gives only the name “Yuki-onna”; it does not say that she freezes people with her breath, seduces men, or fears fire. Yōkai pictures made a form easier to share, but did not supply every later story at once. The best-known story today is “Yuki-Onna,” which Lafcadio Hearn included in *Kwaidan* in 1904. In a ferry hut during a blizzard, Yuki-onna freezes the old woodcutter Mosaku to death with her white breath, then spares the young Minokichi and orders him to keep the night secret. The following winter she appears as Oyuki, a traveling woman, becomes his wife, and raises ten children. When her husband tells the forbidden memory, she reveals herself; for the children’s sake she does not take his life, but leaves as white mist. This marriage, secrecy, maternal attachment, broken promise, and separation made Hearn’s Oyuki especially memorable, but they are not traits shared by every local Yuki-onna. The appeal of the name Yuki-onna is that it does not close around a single setting. Snow erases roads, absorbs sound, and transforms distance and shape. In different places and periods, people who looked at snow found a young woman, a mother, a giant face, or a wavering shadow within it. Yuki-onna is the whole accumulation of those images.

Ikiryō refers to a living person’s soul separating from the body and roaming abroad. Spurred by intense grudge, obsessive love, or deathbed yearning, it was believed to possess a target and cause illness or misfortune. Accounts span from Heian aristocratic circles to early modern popular belief. It may appear as a person’s shadow-double. Besides unintended separation, some tales describe sending one’s spirit deliberately through curses.

Yūrei are the spirits of the dead who remain in the living world, appearing at night or in places tied to them. They are said to manifest due to lingering attachments, grudges, or insufficient memorial rites. Their now-classic image—white burial robes, inverted or missing feet—became standardized in later periods. They appear at graves, bedside, or former homes, pleading through voice or vision. Buddhist memorial services can pacify them, though powerful resentment is believed to prolong hauntings.

A towering monk-like apparition that appears on night roads, at the end of slopes, crossroads, stone bridges, or atop trees. The more you look up at it, the larger it grows, terrifying those who give in to fear. Common countermeasures include saying “I’ve seen through you” or calmly looking down at it. Its true nature varies by region and may be a shapeshifted tanuki, fox, weasel, or badger. It is a well-known type found in Edo-period ghost tales and essays.

A yokai depicted in Edo-period picture scrolls such as Hyakki Zukan and Gazu Hyakki Yagyō. The texts offer no in-story explanation, but scholars link it to the folk observance of Kōshin night. On Kōshin nights, it was believed the Three Corpses (sanshi) left a sleeper’s body to report their sins to heaven; early sleep was feared to invite misfortune. Shōkera is understood as a harmful presence on that night—or the sanshi themselves—embodying a role of surveillance and punishment.

Hyōsube is a hairy, water-dwelling yokai found throughout the Kyushu region. Counted as kin to the kappa—or at least a close relative—it is said to move back and forth between the rivers and the mountains around the equinox. Its name is traced to its birdlike cry of "hyō-hyō." It is fond of eggplant, and in some areas the custom of offering the season's first eggplant still survives. The best-known stories tell of it slipping into a household bath to soak, leaving the water afterward thick with floating body hair; anyone who lays eyes on it, they say, falls ill with fever.

A mysterious yokai named only in Edo-period picture scrolls, with no surviving explanation. It is depicted with an immense, ox-like upper body and a single thick hooked claw on each forelimb. It appears in works like Hyakkai Zukan and Gazu Hyakki Yagyo; its lower body is unknown. Beyond its name and image, little is recorded, so its nature and origin are unclear. It is often paired with Otoroshi and treated as an embodiment of fear.

A name found in Edo-period yokai picture scrolls, depicted as a figure shrouded in long hair with its face hidden by bangs. It appears in works like Sawaki Suushi’s Hyakkai Zukan and Toriyama Sekien’s Gazu Hyakki Yagyo, but offers virtually no accompanying text; its nature and origins remain unclear. Spellings vary—such as “Odoro-odoro” or “Ke-ippai”—suggesting a play on the sense of dread and wild, disheveled hair.

A black, monk-shaped apparition from Edo-period yokai picture scrolls, shown with protruding eyes drooping downward. Examples appear in Sawaki Suushi’s Hyakkai Zukan and Toriyama Sekien’s Gazu Hyakki Yagyo. These sources provide no captions, so its origins and traits are unknown. In Sekien’s version it emerges from a household Buddhist altar (butsudan), leading later writers to interpret it as a spirit of altars or ritual implements, though historical proof is lacking.

Nure-onna is a waterside apparition with a woman's head and the body of a serpent. Below the waist, an immense scaled body replaces human legs; above it hangs the perpetually wet black hair that gives her the name 'Wet Woman.' In the wind volume of Toriyama Sekien's Gazu Hyakki Yagyō, she appears as a female face on a serpent's body, her long hair trailing in the water. Serpentine women also appear in earlier Edo picture scrolls such as Sawaki Sūshi's Hyakkai Zukan, showing how artists passed the image from one work to another. Stories from western Japan give Nure-onna a different but equally memorable role. She presses the baby in her arms upon a passerby; the moment it is accepted, it becomes as heavy as stone and leaves the victim unable to move. In some versions, Ushi-oni then attacks. Nure-onna is often discussed alongside Kyūshū's Iso-onna and regional traditions of Nure-onago, and has also been interpreted as a sea serpent transformed. Yet the serpent body is supported chiefly by paintings, and primary evidence directly linking every local tale to that image is scarce. Wet hair, the water's edge, and a child that binds the recipient are the more stable features shared across western Japan's female water apparitions.

Nurarihyon is a yokai known in Edo-period imagery by his name and the figure of an old man with an enlarged, bald head. The name now often suggests an elusive arch-yokai, yet the earliest sources offer less a detailed history than a striking name and silhouette. The named humanoid figure in Sawaki Sūshi’s Hyakkai Zukan (1737) ranks among the oldest surviving depictions whose date can be established. Toriyama Sekien’s Gazu Hyakki Yagyō, first published in 1776, also helped circulate this image of an old man. These images say little about Nurarihyon’s origins or actions. Their silences invited invention: a “ringleader of monsters” in modern writing, an old man who enters a busy household in a children’s encyclopedia, and a leader of a faction in manga and animation. The journey from a silent image to a story’s central figure is itself one of Nurarihyon’s great fascinations. The history of the name is no simpler. The Seisenban Nihon Kokugo Daijiten cites a 1679 adverbial use of nurarihyon in Saikaku Gohyakuin, and a use as the name of a creature in Rigen Shūran from around 1797. A regional record from Akita names it as a member of a hyakki yagyō procession, while the Bisan Strait has a report of a differently shaped marine apparition. Across images, regional records, and modern reception, the same name has taken on a rich succession of forms.

The Oni of Gango-ji is a vengeful spirit said to have appeared at Gango-ji Temple in Nara. When temple pages stationed at the belfry died mysteriously, a strong-armed boy lay in wait, seized the oni’s hair, and dragged it around until dawn. Following the blood trail led to the grave of a former temple servant of ill repute; his restless spirit had become an oni. The plucked hair was kept as a temple treasure. Old texts and yokai art depict the creature as a monk-shaped demon.

A hairy, ogress-like yokai depicted by Toriyama Sekien in Gazu Hyakki Yagyo. Its mouth is split to the ears, and its entire coat of hair evokes bundles of o (fiber from ramie or hemp), which is thought to be the source of its name. Sekien provided no caption, so its nature is unknown. Similar images appear in earlier scrolls like Hyakkai Zukan under labels such as “wōwō” or “uwan-uwan,” placing it within a visual lineage of related creatures.

Aobōzu is a catch-all name recorded across Japan for several kinds of yokai; its appearance and nature vary by region. It is often described as a large monk-like figure, a blue-skinned priest, or a one-eyed monk. Toriyama Sekien depicts it in Gazu Hyakki Yagyō without commentary, leaving details uncertain. Traditions range widely, including animal shapeshifters, beings linked to mountain deities, and figures used to warn or discipline children.

A yokai name found in Edo-period picture scrolls and board games. It is typically depicted as a hairy face emerging from dark clouds, with a huge tongue and clawed hands. Full-body depictions and clear traits are not recorded. In Toriyama Sekien’s Gazu Hyakki Yagyō it appears above a sluice gate, but without commentary. The name also occurs in contemporary picture-sugoroku like Jikkai Sugoroku and in Hyakki Yagyō emaki. A similar motif titled “Red Mouth” appears in various scrolls. Scholars have suggested links to Onmyodo deities Akashita or the calendrical Akashita day, but no proof exists.

A yokai depicted in Edo-period picture scrolls such as Gazu Hyakki Yagyō and Hyakkai Zukan as a one-headed, sagging mass of flesh. Its face and body blur together, sometimes shown without eyes, nose, or ears. Owing to the name and descriptions, it is often mentioned as an archaic form or kin of the faceless noppera-bō, but its nature and origins remain unclear. The scrolls provide a name and image with little to no commentary.

Ushi-oni appears chiefly on the coasts, in deep pools, and in the mountains of western Japan. It is among the fiercest and most numinous beings in the yokai tradition. Its body has no single form: some artists give it a bull's head on an oni's body, while others set the same head on the body of a spider. The Heian-period Pillow Book already names Ushi-oni among the things that inspire terror. Its most striking quality is a radical dual nature. In one guise, Ushi-oni is a cruel man-eater and bringer of disease that spreads poisonous breath without discrimination. In another, it leads a mikoshi procession and uses its tremendous force to drive away other evil spirits. Over time, a frightening presence in literature became part of regional worship and festival performance. Few yokai show so clearly how a destructive power could also be received as a guardian.

The Uwan is a yokai of uncertain identity found in Edo-period yokai art. In works like Sawaki Suushi’s Hyakkai Zukan and Toriyama Sekien’s Gazu Hyakki Yagyō, it appears as a humanlike figure with blackened teeth, both hands raised, startling people with its voice. With no attached notes, its origins are unknown, but backgrounds of estate walls or ruined houses suggest it haunts residences. Some point to its three-fingered hands as hinting at demonic nature, though this is not established.