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Abumikuchi

ah-BOO-mee-KOO-chee

Abumikuchi

Abumikuchi

Their soul is listening — speak, and they will answer.

Basic Description

Abumikuchi is a tsukumogami depicted as a stirrup sprouting eyes and a mouth. It appears in Toriyama Sekien’s Hyakki Tsurezure Bukuro, where discarded arms and tack are said to gain a spirit over time. Sekien quotes a line from the Noh play Tomonaga, evoking battlefields, but offers no specific tale. The theme centers on the grudge and attachment of tools treated with neglect.

Folklore & Legends

Situated within the Edo-period tradition of animated tools in picture scrolls and books, Abumikuchi is paired with the “Saddle Fellow” in Hyakki Tsurezure Bukuro. The common reading is that stirrups left on fields after war acquire numinous power, though no place names or characters are tied to a fixed oral tale. Modern authors sometimes describe it as waiting for its master, but that motif does not appear in Sekien’s original entry.

Tsukumogami
Centennial tools possessed by spirits ── the artifact yokai depicted in Sekien's Hyakki Tsurezure Bukuro

Tsukumogami

Tools and vessels used over long years are said to acquire spiritual life and transform when discarded and neglected, becoming beings known as tsukumogami. In the Muromachi-period "Tsukumogami Emaki", it was preached that tools transformed after a hundred years; the scroll depicted old implements, thrown away during house-cleaning, marching in a procession on the night of Setsubun holding grudges against humans. In the Edo period, Toriyama Sekien synthesized this worldview in his "Hyakki Tsurezure Bukuro" (The Illustrated Bag of One Hundred Random Demons), bestowing charming yokai forms upon individual objects such as biwa lutes, shamisen, koto, tea kettles, sutra scrolls, masks, and book carts, woven together with wordplay and historical anecdotes. Gathered here are the souls inhabiting tools, reflecting human sentiments—used, forgotten, yet impossible to fully discard.

Detailed Analysis

Character Profile

This section is our own creative profile for storytelling. It is not historical fact or scholarship.

Rarity
Rare

For more detailed information and diagnosis results about 戦場跡の鐙・鐙口, please click here.

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