The Raised-Collar Robe is said to be a monk’s high-collared garment that, after many years, turned into a yokai. It appears in Toriyama Sekien’s Hyakki Tsurezure Bukuro, shown with a censer set before it and prayer beads in hand, its stiff standing collar drooping over the face like a beak. Sekien notes it “may be the raised-collar robe of Sōjōbō of Mount Kurama,” hinting that a tengu-related monk’s robe gained a spirit. Concrete episodes or folktales, however, are scarcely recorded.
Folklore & Legends
Classified as a tsukumogami type in early modern picture scrolls and art books, it aligns with cases where worn ritual robes become uncanny. Sekien hints at a link to Sōjōbō, the great tengu of Mount Kurama, but cites no firm tradition. The idea meshes with beliefs that shugendō and yamabushi garb can accrue spiritual power, and that tools turn into yokai after a hundred years. Its presence owes more to printed and painted sources than to region-specific oral tales.
Yokai Cards2
Raised-Collar Robe across multiple art-style decks
A reconstruction based on the designs in Toriyama Sekien’s Hyakki Tsurezure Bukuro. The monk’s robes are a dull brown, layered thickly, with the collar hanging before the face to cast a beaklike shadow. Beads are held in one hand, a censer is set before it. Movements are unhurried; with each step the rustle of cloth sounds and a faint scent of incense drifts. Hints linking it to tengu remain only in the captions of the image, with no direct wings or long nose. It maintains autonomy as a tsukumogami, its tears and seams perceived as bearing will. It appears not where reverence for sacred implements is lacking, but shows signs near neglected robes and ritual tools, prompting awe rather than harm.
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 Ittan of Sekien Iconography. The higher the value of each item, the stronger that characteristic is expressed.
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