A yokai illustrated by Edo-period artist Toriyama Sekien in Konjaku Hyakki Shūi. It is said to spy on human affairs from behind a folding screen (byōbu), peeking even over a seven-shaku-tall screen. Some regard it as a visual invention drawing on Chinese classical anecdotes, while others interpret it as a tsukumogami—an aged screen that transformed after long years of witnessing bedroom secrets. It lacks strong place-based lore, with its identity largely defined by pictorial sources.
Folklore & Legends
Known from Sekien’s image and note as a creature that peers over folding screens. Later kaidan collections tell of a gaunt woman peering from behind a screen on a wedding night; removing the screen ends the haunting. The evidence suggests the prototype is artistic in origin, while regional oral tales are later retellings and compilations that reinforced the link between screens and voyeuristic hauntings.
Centered on the commentary in Toriyama Sekien’s Konjaku Hyakki Shūi, this reading emphasizes the habit of peering in from beyond the folding screen. Rather than causing harm directly, it primarily spies on hidden affairs. Some note that the image of lofty screens in Chinese classics shaped its formation, while in Japan it became linked to the belief that bedroom furnishings can accrue spirit, with a folding screen that has long reflected human lives aging into a yokai. It is not a fixed local deity but is understood as a type of haunted implement tale (tsukumogami).
Character Profile
This section is our own creative profile for storytelling. It is not historical fact or scholarship.
The diagram below is a diagnostic evaluation chart for Iconographic Tradition–Conforming Version. The higher the value of each item, the stronger that characteristic is expressed.
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