Temple Woodpecker
TEHM-puhl WUUD-peh-ker (teh-rah-TSOO-tsoo-kee)
Temple Woodpecker (Sekien Zufu depiction)
Animal ShapeshiftersYamato and Settsu regions (around present-day Nara and Osaka)
A form based on Toriyama Sekien’s illustration and accounts in war chronicles. It bears the will to hinder the Buddhist Law, pecking at temple timbers late at night as an omen of ill fortune. Tradition ties its origin to the vengeful spirit of Mononobe no Moriya, though its shape follows that of a woodpecker. In strange tales the sound comes first, a shadow is seen, and its true body is rarely caught. Folklorically it fuses bird-borne calamity lore with etiologies for temple damage.