Hyakkai Zukan |
30 Yokai in Sawaki Sūshi’s 1737 Picture Scroll

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

Understood as a spirit linked to dreams, it approaches sleepers at night and brings visions that portend good or ill. Some accounts depict it beckoning with a staff, but its name and character are not fixed; it is often treated as the personification of dreams themselves. It is said to be named in an Edo-period picture scroll, but no definitive image is identified, records are sparse, and its origins are unknown.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A yokai appearing as a shaven-headed boy with a single large eye in the center of his forehead. More prankster than predator, it startles people by popping up suddenly and is often portrayed with humor. A folk pun led to the belief it dislikes beans, which later shifted into depictions of it favoring tofu. It appears in Edo-period picture scrolls and essays, and is often encountered outdoors or by the roadside.

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.

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.

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 Yako (also read nogitsune) is held to be the lowest in rank among fox yokai, set at the opposite pole from the white foxes—the benevolent foxes revered as messengers of the god Inari. It is an ordinary wild fox of the hills and fields that, with age, has come to deceive and possess people; in the Edo-period hierarchy of foxes (Tenko, Kūko, Kiko, Yako) it was counted at the very bottom. Whereas the higher foxes are regarded as formless spiritual beings, the Yako is distinctive as the one rank thought to keep a visible body of flesh. That much closer to the human world, it has long been known for near-at-hand, tangible mischief: leading travelers astray, taking on disguises to startle them, and possessing people. It is also written as yakan, a word that originally referred to the jackal in the Buddhist scriptures but came in Japan to be confused with the fox.

Kamikiri is a catch-all term for a phenomenon said to snip off a person’s hair before they notice. Rumors spread through Edo-period cities, with victims of any gender. Attacks came suddenly in dark places or on the way to the privy; accounts say the topknot or hair tie would drop to the ground several yards away, still bound. Sightings were rare and inconsistent—described as a “jet-black thing” or “catlike.” Its motive and nature are unknown, often treated as an invisible haunting.