Fuguruma Yōhi (Letter-Carriage Enchantress)Iconographic Edition, Sekien Toriyama Source

An interpretation grounded in the imagery and captions of Toriyama Sekien’s Hyakki Tsurezure Bukuro. The document cart was a conveyance for papers in the imperial court, temples, and aristocratic residences, kept ready for emergencies. The accumulated sentiments within long-kept love letters are thought to congeal and manifest as a lady-in-waiting–like apparition. With little basis in oral tradition, this is a conceptual yokai born of early modern literature and painting, more often told as a presence that displays and summons remorse than as one causing concrete harm. The customary name is Fumikuruma Yohi, though later sources sometimes confuse it with Fumikuruma Yoki.