KAH-meh-OH-sah
Their soul is listening — speak, and they will answer.
KAH-meh-OH-sah
A utensil yokai depicted by Toriyama Sekien in Hyakki Tsurezure Bukuro. It appears as a water jar given eyes, nose, and mouth, praised as a felicitous vessel that never runs dry. The entry is accompanied by celebratory verse and is often read as a coda to the volume. No local folk tradition is known; it is generally considered Sekien’s creation, later interpreted as a tsukumogami.
No region-specific folktales are recorded. The source is Sekien’s illustration and caption, which implies auspicious, inexhaustible water—“however much is ladled, it is not exhausted; however much is drunk, it does not change.” Modern explanations sometimes frame it as an aged water jar turned tsukumogami with the power to control water, but such abilities lack support from traditional local lore.
Kameosa across multiple art-style decks
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.
This yokai is included in the following collections:
This section is our own creative profile for storytelling. It is not historical fact or scholarship.
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