Chokuboron（CHOH-koo-BOH-ron）

Guided by Sekien’s imagery and captions, this reading foregrounds its nature as a tsukumogami, a spirit of aged utensils. The little goblin, komusō-like with a sake cup as a hat, emerging from a box accords with the belief that long-used drinking vessels and tools gain spirit and appear at set times. The caption’s citation of Xuanzong and the Spirit of Ink bolsters the idea that spirits arise in objects such as calligraphy, painting tools, and sake ware, with Chokoburo composed pictorially as one of that kind. It does not point to a concrete religious entity of komusō or boro, but playfully borrows half-monk, half-lay visual cues, with a name born of puns and association. No locale of oral tradition is identifiable; its character is chiefly that of a visual怪 within Edo print culture.