Yokai Encyclopedia

A cove in southern Sado preserves the story of an old woman who rises from the sea. She appears at dusk, when the weather is breaking and darkness settles over the water. Her skin is pale, and she holds both hands behind her back as though carrying something, but the original account never says what the burden is. People around Shukunegi said that Usuoi-baba appeared only once every two to five years. Seeing her was not thought to bring illness or immediate shipwreck, and no tale has her lure or devour anyone. Modern yokai encyclopedias often place her beside Iso-onna and Nure-onna, but she is better understood as an apparition associated with poor fishing or a sudden change in weather. The name Usuoi-baba is rarely recorded outside this local body of ghost stories and may have belonged to Shukunegi alone.

Yonatama is a sea spirit of the Miyako Islands, described either as a mermaid or as a fish able to speak in a human voice. Fishers on Shimojishima caught one and tried to roast it over their net. When a voice from offshore called its name that night, Yonatama answered that it was trapped in the fire and asked its companions to send a tsunami to save it. Only a mother and child are said to have escaped to Irabujima in time. After the wave, the ground beneath the fishers' house collapsed, and the hollow was remembered as the origin of Tōriike. The name Yonatama is commonly read as a union of 'sea' and 'spirit,' and the being embodies both the sea's bounty and its anger. Interwoven with memories of the Great Meiwa Tsunami of 1771, the tale remains a warning against treating the ocean with contempt.

This form draws on the Nosoko story in which a fisher finds Zan in his net. The mermaid-like creature weeps and begs for its life. When the fisher releases it, Zan answers that mercy with a warning of an approaching tsunami, allowing the villagers who believe it to escape to the mountains. Zan is generally understood as a folkloric image of the dugong. Dugongs were long regarded in Ryukyuan waters as messengers of the gods: familiar animals of the shallows, yet beings approached with awe. Zan does not cause the disaster it predicts. It senses danger before human beings can and stands between sea and land to preserve life. Yonatama, another island spirit associated with a tsunami warning, brings the wave in anger after being roasted. Zan takes the opposite role. Together they reveal two moral faces of the sea: cruelty toward a marine creature may call forth vengeance, while mercy may be repaid with rescue. Zan remains one of the Ryukyuan sea's gentlest prophets because its power rests not on punishment, but on gratitude.