HOSS-soo-MOH-ree
Their soul is listening — speak, and they will answer.
HOSS-soo-MOH-ree
Hossumori is a tsukumogami—an artifact spirit—said to arise from a monk’s fly-whisk (hossu) used in Zen practice. In Toriyama Sekien’s Hyakki Tsurezure Bukuro, it is shown seated in full lotus beneath a canopy, absorbed in zazen. Sekien alludes to the Zen kōan of “a dog’s Buddha-nature,” suggesting that even a humble ritual tool can manifest Buddhahood. It embodies the idea of a long-used sacred implement gaining numinous presence and sitting in stillness to pursue enlightenment.
Appearing in Edo-period art, Hossumori follows the Muromachi-era Hyakki Yagyō scroll tradition of animated household objects. Sekien invokes the legend of Daruma’s nine years of meditation to imply that a well-worn fly-whisk acquires a resident spirit. Later notes sometimes say an old hossu may dance at night, but there is no fixed local oral tradition; the figure is chiefly known through paintings and their captions.
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.
Displaying the Maya calendar KINs that Hossumori, the Fly-Whisk Guardian protects.
This yokai is included in the following collections:
This section is our own creative profile for storytelling. It is not historical fact or scholarship.
For more detailed information and diagnosis results about 禅坐する払子の精・払子守, please click here.
Discover the yokai most similar to your personality with our yokai diagnosis
Draw an omikuji fortune and discover the yokai watching over you today.
