Yokai Encyclopedia

The Binbōgami traces its roots to the personification of medieval poverty and began to be named explicitly from the Muromachi period onward. It commonly appears as a gaunt old man carrying a plain paper fan, believed to dwell in closets or the corners of tatami rooms. Banishment is not easy, and ritual sending-off is preferred over force. Saishōshi records guiding it outside the gate with a branch on the last night of the month, Tankai describes setting grilled rice and roasted miso on a wooden tray and letting them drift downriver from the back door, and Nihon Eitaigura tells of honoring it respectfully on the Night of the Seven Herbs so that, appeased, it turns to bring fortune. Numerous folk beliefs link it with fire and household order, as in Niigata’s New Year’s Eve hearth customs and Ehime’s taboos against disturbing the fire. Miso, said to be its favorite, is cited both as an attractant and a taboo, with roasted miso rites preserved in many regions. Though a punitive deity, it is said to grow uncomfortable where diligence, cleanliness, and frugality are observed, and in folk religion it functions as the counter-concept to household gods of fortune, serving as a barometer of family luck.

Based on Toriyama Sekien’s imagery, this version foregrounds the character of a page serving the Rain Master. It appears with a Japanese umbrella stripped of its ribs worn like a hood and a lantern in hand. Its origins lie more in printed books than in oral folk tradition, and in yellow-covered comic books it shows up as a menial helper. The ideas of rain and service to nobility converge, shaping it as an attendant akin to small child-deity retainers. It does not wield an explicit divinity that summons rain, remaining subordinate to a being that governs rain’s power. Depictions vary—one eye, hat, lantern—depending on period and source, with no single fixed image. Lacking a known local provenance, it spread notably through Edo’s publishing culture.

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.

Rather than a physical substance, the reviving incense is told in narrative tradition as a medium for reunion with the dead. The Chinese motif of seeing a figure within smoke was adopted into early modern Japanese literature and theater, where the handling of censers, incense wood, and ash is rendered with ritual care. In yokai picture compendia it sometimes appears as a type of tool-born apparition, with set-piece depictions of a visage forming in the incense smoke. It is often interpreted not as recalling a spirit itself, but only as manifesting a semblance or shadow. Medicinal virtues are mentioned as apocrypha in materia medica, yet Edo-period notes record skepticism and file it among curious tales. In Kamigata and Edo rakugo, a tryst lasts only until the incense or stick burns out, making the quantity and duration of incense a key stage device.

A post–early modern belief that a pillar installed upside down, defying carpenters’ respect for a tree’s natural root spread, brings mishaps to a house. Persistent midnight house-settling, creaking beams, and uncanny whispers were read as the “curse of the inverted pillar,” prompting reinstallation or prayer. Shigeru Mizuki notes leaves birthing a spirit from the reversed wood, or the pillar itself transforming, yet older records more often treat it as signs of noise, misfortune, and ill omen. Deliberate inverted motifs used as apotropaic design (e.g., Yomeimon) belong to the ritual idea of intentional imperfection and are distinct from this yokai. As a taboo rooted in building folklore, it appears in regional carpenters’ lore, temple and shrine records, and essays.

Based on the belief that tools become spirited after a hundred years, this yokai is depicted with an old iron cauldron for a head. It lingers in the night, issuing faint tremors and steam that produce low sounds. The ringing is read as an omen of fortune or misfortune, falling silent if met with careless clamor, and responding when approached with reverence. It embodies divinatory function and the memorial veneration of well-used objects.

An image based on folk belief that crabs with human-like patterns on their carapaces washed up on Sanuki shores embody the vengeful spirits of the defeated Taira clan. Historical sources tie these crabs to various locales, with Sanuki famed due to memories of the Battle of Yashima. As a yokai, it is said not to harm people directly, but to make onlookers recall the karma of the battle and feel awe. It is distinctly linked with acts of memorial service and consolation for the dead, and differences from other regional names are considered nominal only.

Rooted in Toriyama Sekien’s illustration and brief caption, this lineage reads the shell box through the history of kaiawase shells and bridal trousseau chests. Lacking firsthand anecdotes, it stays within the general tsukumogami frame, overlaying the folk view that long-serving objects acquire feeling. Its form is childlike, with a key association to crawling baby dolls. Late at night in a silent tatami room, the lid of the shell box is said to open slightly, and a small childlike figure peeks out. It causes little harm, and is said to vanish when household goods are treated carelessly.

A version based on Toriyama Sekien’s interpretation of the obi in Konjaku Hyakki Shūi. Though an everyday garment, the obi was said to turn into a serpent at the threshold of sleep and dream. This draws on the Natural History note that sleeping on a sash brings dreams of snakes, a belief also known in Japan. Sekien further composed that the triple sash of a jealous woman coils into a sevenfold venomous snake, punning on the kinship of malice and serpent-body, and presenting a visual reading in which emotion is projected onto objects. In folk terms, it warns that keeping a sash by the pillow invites ominous dreams, admonishes jealousy, and entwines concepts of sleep, dreams, and taboo. Rather than a literal attacker, the Snake-Obi is a symbolic specter that mirrors the viewer’s heart and reminds proper handling of sashes and bedding within the home.

A spiritual presence dwelling in votive ema plaques, known from shrine and temple origin tales and ghost stories. It appears most often at dusk or in dreams, and its form is thought to reflect the donor’s wish or the plaque’s artwork. As an old man it teaches or warns, and as a woman it may invite or manifest. It is not a deity itself, but a spirit residing in an offering, revealed through the power of the sacred precinct. It shuns being taken home without cause, defiled, or thrown into fire, and favors proper return or ritual burning. Encounters can be auspicious or ominous, with fortune depending on one’s conduct.

In Toriyama Sekien’s Hyakki Tsurezure Bukuro, Suzuhiko-hime is a female-form implement yokai whose head is layered with bells and cords and whose hand extends an open fan. The caption recalls Ame-no-Uzume’s kagura before the rock cave “as in a dream,” but does not call her the deity, her transformation, or a bell from the myth. Compared with unnamed bell-bearing figures in Hyakki Yagyō Emaki and Yoshitoshi’s Hyakki Yagyō, she emerges not from regional ghost lore but from an image that was repeatedly reworked.

Reconstructed strictly from Sekien’s original image while preserving the absence of contemporaneous commentary. The figure is a gaunt woman whose body from the feet to the hips stretches like a serpent, extending from an alley up to the second-floor lattice of a townhouse to peer inside. Her actions are chiefly to startle, with no fixed malice. Regional proper names are uncertain, and later popular tales (brothels, satire, etc.) are treated as accretions. She is understood as a symbolic apparition that exploits nighttime quiet and architectural features, instilling unease in residents through her gaze.

An iconographic reading of the Dōjōji bell as depicted in Toriyama Sekien’s Konjaku Hyakki Shūi. While a note alludes to a variant in which the woman, transformed into a serpent, coils around the bell hiding Anchin and heats it until it melts into scalding liquid, hearsay also holds that the bell itself survived in historical record. Its “yokai nature” here is less an ensouled object than a visualization of folk belief in obsession possessing a vessel and causing anomalies. It represents Edo-period reception where Noh, sekkyō, and engi traditions intermingle.

Told as an urban-legend-style ghost tale from Edo’s Honjo district, this curiosity lies in the pairing of objects and institutions rather than vivid supernatural feats. The phenomenon itself is scarcely described; the very adoption of a drum for duty is treated as uncanny. Shaped by the locale, samurai compound regulations, and a city prone to fires, the oddity of sound lingered in memory and became a tale. A variant recounts that striking a wooden clapper produced a drum’s sound, hinting at auditory error or transmission drift. Sources appear in local topographies and essays, and typically lack specific origins or named figures. Later creative retellings add ghosts of fire brigades or watchmen, but older lore is restrained, focusing on the strange pairing of residence and watchtower.

This traditional image is based on the band of old tools described in the Kyoto University manuscript of the *Tsukumogami Emaki*, copied in the early modern period. The setting is the capital during the Kōhō era (964–968). During the year-end soot-sweeping, tools that had served households for a long time are thrown into the alleys inside and outside the capital. Cast out without reward into places where they would be trampled by oxen and horses, the implements resent the callousness of humans and begin consulting on how to become monsters (yōbutsu) and exact their revenge. Only one, Ichiren Nyūdō, a prayer bead rosary, objects. Accepting being discarded as karma, he advises them to "repay enmity with grace," but he is beaten so badly by the angry hand-staff Aratarō that his fasteners break, and he retreats with the help of his disciples. Then, Master Kobun brings up the logic of yin and yang. He explains that all things merely manifest temporary forms according to yin and yang; if they cast away their lives on Setsubun—when yin and yang switch places—and entrust themselves to the Creator God, even implements can obtain a different form. On the night of Setsubun, the old tools end their own lives as taught. They then all at once transform into yōbutsu that no longer fit their original purposes—men and women, the elderly and children, various goblins, and beasts. They make their home deep in Nagasaka, behind Mount Funaoka, a place close to the capital where food is easily obtained. They venture into the capital to snatch and devour people and livestock, and upon returning, they pour sake, dance, and compose waka and Chinese poetry. Those who were once "objects" used by humans now re-enact human culture, claiming it as their own. The picture scroll does not depict this transformation as magic that completely erases the original tools. Because faces sprout on the implements discarded by the roadside, and then human, demonic, or bestial bodies are granted to them, the viewer can trace back what became which yōbutsu. The people of the capital cannot see their forms and cannot pursue them by force of arms, so they have no choice but to pray to the gods and Buddhas. Meanwhile, the yōbutsu master Go, Sugoroku, Kemari (kickball), archery, and poetry; they are shaped not merely as a mob, but as a group that excessively mirrors the refinement and pleasures of human society. Before long, the band decides that failing to show respect to the Creator God who gave them their forms would make them no better than heartless trees and stones, so they build a shrine and name it "Henge Daimyōjin" (Apparition Great Deity). They install a head priest, shrine maidens, and ritual musicians, and even prepare a portable shrine. On the dead of night on the 5th day of the 4th month, they form a splendid procession and head east on Ichijō Avenue, only to encounter the retinue of the Chancellor (Kampaku), who is heading west for a provisional appointment ceremony. The attendants fall from their horses, but the Chancellor stares down the yōbutsu from within his carriage. Inside the amulet he wears is a Sonshō Dharani written by a certain high priest; flames erupt from it, scattering the procession. Receiving the report, the Emperor orders divination, offerings to shrines, and prayers at various temples. When the high priest who wrote the Sonshō Dharani performs the great Nyohō Sonshō ritual at the Seiryōden, on the sixth day, seven or eight protective child-deities (Gohō Dōji) wielding swords and jeweled staffs appear in the light. The child-deities fly north and assault the yōbutsu's castle. However, they do not massacre them; they declare that their lives will be spared if they cease harming people and revere the Buddhist law. The defeated old tools do not simply blame their predicament on humans, but recognize it as retribution for taking life, and awaken to the desire for enlightenment. The one they look up to as their master is Ichiren Shōnin, whom they had previously banished. They visit his hermitage deep in the mountains, and Aratarō, in particular, apologizes for the sin of striking him. Ichiren forgives them, saying that it was precisely because of that blow that he himself was able to awaken to the path, and he has them all take the tonsure. The old tools inquire about the depths of various sects, seeking the teaching that leads most swiftly to enlightenment. Ichiren preaches the Shingon esoteric doctrine of "becoming a Buddha in this very body" (Sokushin Jōbutsu), and imparts the path of mudras, mantras, and visualization. There is a play on words embedded here: because many of them were originally "vessels" (ki), they are also "great vessels" (taiki) capable of receiving the teachings. In this scene, the explanation that a divine spirit possesses the vessel from the outside and animates it is also rejected. It is precisely because the implements themselves changed their forms, became aware of their sins, listened to the teachings, and practiced asceticism that they can become the subjects of enlightenment. Citing the legend that Kōbō Daishi manifested the form of Dainichi Nyorai at the imperial court, Ichiren preaches that Shingon teachings are the most superior for swift enlightenment. While the story uses ghost stories of implements as an entry point, it ultimately compares the teachings of various sects, guiding the reader into a religious discourse where the path of Buddha-nature and practice is opened even to those deemed heartless. Ichiren achieves Buddhahood at the age of 108, and the remaining disciples enter separate deep mountains and dark valleys to sever their dependence on one another. Building hermitages among rocks or under pines, after intense practice, they each become different Buddhas. The conclusion of the story does not show raging old tools being tamed by humans to become guardian spirits. It is a drama of "Hijō Jōbutsu," demonstrating that even implements deemed to have no heart can achieve Buddhahood if they repent, receive teachings, and practice asceticism of their own accord. This traditional image does not add the character of a "gentle guardian deity who grants good fortune if cherished"—which is absent from the historical sources—but instead centers on the immense transformation from resentment, to imitation, defeat, religious awakening, and finally enlightenment.

This version is grounded in Toriyama Sekien’s illustration and notes, emphasizing its link to the concept of the demon-revealing mirror. Faces of the uncanny appear on the surface, not necessarily reflecting an external yokai but a spirit residing within the mirror itself. In the lineage of tsukumogami tales, it accords with the belief that long-used implements gain numinous life, sometimes changing mood according to how their owner treats them. Relying on early modern woodblock-book imagery, it has few concrete encounter or harm narratives, and is mostly told in general ghost-story frames such as glimpsing a strange visage when peering into a mirror in a dim room at night. Later depictions of raccoon-dog forms or showy powers are traced to films and children’s books and are set apart from the classical image.

A reconstruction based on Edo-period yokai picture scrolls. Depicted with a humanlike face marked by iron-blackened teeth, raising a three-fingered hand, appearing from behind fences or in ruined houses and shouting “uwan.” No early sources clearly state direct harm to people; its main behavior is appearing and intimidating. Because of similar regional names and frequent mansion backdrops, it is sometimes taken as a house-dwelling entity, but this is unproven and the portrayals are spare. Later creative tales—such as being driven off by a retort or killing victims—should be treated separately from the core record.

An interpretation grounded in Toriyama Sekien’s depiction. On night roads and at crossroads, a blazing wheel cruises low to the ground, its axle set with a monk-demon mask that fixes passersby with an unblinking stare. Meeting its gaze or succumbing to fear is said to drain one’s vital spirit, leaving the victim stupefied. Its origins trace to Kyoto wheel-ghost tales and likely overlap with the katagiriguruma motif, yet Sekien adopted a nyūdō mask and fixed it as a male figure. The source is uncertain, defying a firm label as vengeful spirit, tsukumogami, or will-o’-the-wisp. Countermeasures include posting a paper charm reading “This is the village of Katsumo” at the doorway, or avoiding eye contact and hiding. Few variants name specific places or people; the core image remains a plain yokai preserved in classical records.

The zashiki-warashi is not simply a young god of good fortune in red clothing. Tales 17 and 18 of Tales of Tōno include a boy of about twelve or thirteen, an unseen presence known only by rustling paper and snuffling, and two young girls who leave a household. The stories associate it with a home’s prosperity or decline, but the original does not say that the children caused the disaster. As Kizen Sasaki’s 1920 collection shows, its names, forms, rooms of appearance, and explanations of origin vary greatly by region.