Tosa Provinceとさ

A rendition based on records and oral tales of the shape-shifting otter. It mimics human speech, but its intonation and sentence endings sound off, and when pressed with questions it gives nonsensical replies. Its guises range from a beautiful woman to a child or a monk, distracting passersby and misleading them with tricks such as snuffing lanterns, inviting people to wrestle, or making stones and tree roots appear human. In some regions it overlaps with kappa lore, possessing great strength in water and luring victims to look upward to gain advantage. In the context of spirit possession, it is feared for sapping a person’s vitality and inducing lethargy. While violent episodes are recorded, most encounters amount to threats or pranks.

The visual depiction of Bakotsu in the *Tosa Obake Zoshi* adopts an extremely unique and theatrical narrative composition among Japanese yokai art. In a dimly lit room, separated by a torn and sagging old mosquito net, the bipedal, skeletal "Bakotsu" and a giant toad yokai named "Yadomori" are seated facing each other, as if quietly recounting their respective life stories. Though Bakotsu is a complete skeleton with its ribcage and skull entirely exposed, it wears a crude cloth wrapped around its waist, displaying remarkably human-like gestures. This bizarre confrontation hides deep folkloric roots specific to the Tosa region. "Yadomori" is the regional Shikoku dialect for a toad, which was originally revered as a beneficial creature and a "guardian deity of the house" that ate pests, and thus was strictly forbidden to kill. However, the scroll's explanatory text establishes that this particular toad was cruelly killed by humans and turned into a yokai out of sheer resentment. In other words, both the "Bakotsu" (burned to death in a fire and left on the roadside) and the "Yadomori" (unreasonably murdered by human hands) share a common background: they are "the grudges of animals that lost their lives due to the selfish convenience of humans and were denied proper burial." Their conversing within the boundaries of a mosquito net—a symbol of human daily life—can be deeply interpreted as expressing the tragic solidarity of "beasts" cast aside into the dark corners of human society. Additionally, in the Edo period, there was a custom of extracting fat (bone fat) by boiling horse bones to make extremely cheap, poor-quality candles, which were referred to in slang as "horse bones" . The coincidence between the remains of a horse used as a cheap candle to light the dark, and a yokai born from being burned to death in the disaster of a "fire," is by no means accidental. The practical wisdom of the people at the time and the dark underbelly of a society that thoroughly exploited life are sharply projected onto the visual design of the Bakotsu yokai. Standing up not to curse humans, but simply to assert its existence, its figure is the very embodiment of the anguished cries of voiceless animals.