Yokai Encyclopedia

Based on Toriyama Sekien’s depiction, this interpretation frames the yokai as a watchful presence peering through a skylight during Kōshin night. It is identified with the Sanshi or treated as a spiritual agent acting on their behalf, examining human sloth and broken vows and, upon transgression, bringing misfortune with sharp claws. The name also appears in historical kana as “Shaukerá” or “Seukerá,” and its concrete form varies by region and source, yet it is positioned as a yokai that visualizes the normative ethos of Kōshin belief. Early modern sources offer little explanatory text, with later folkloric readings filling the gaps.

Seen as a ghost light born from the lamps of Mibu-dera, Sōgenbi is frightening not because a fire suddenly starts, but because the man who stole sacred light is made into fire himself. Temple lamps illuminate the Buddha and sustain prayer for the living and the dead. Stealing their oil or offerings is therefore more than the theft of an object: the offender takes light from a place of worship. Sōgenbi is that stolen radiance turned back upon the thief, burning the monk’s face as it drifts through the night. Sekien’s design is powerful because the fireball is never anonymous. The Sōgenbi in *Gazu Hyakki Yagyō* places a face inside the flame and makes the viewer ask whose fire it is. Unlike a distant Kitsunebi or Shiranui, it traps the likeness of a sinner in the light. Sōgenbi is therefore closer to an onryō than to a natural ghost-light phenomenon, yet remains a ghost unable to lose the last trace of its human face. Mibu-dera is essential to the apparition. The temple is now widely associated with the Shinsengumi and Mibu Kyōgen, but the Sōgenbi story brings its Jizō Hall, sacred lamps and monastic discipline to the foreground. Unlike a fire wandering over mountains or sea, this one is born from the ethical order within a temple. It can be read as a member of the religious community who betrayed its trust and can no longer leave the grounds. Sōgenbi connects in three directions. It resembles Kazenbō as the fiery spirit of a Kyoto monk, Ubagabi as a punishment involving stolen oil and sacred light, and the wider category of onryō as a dead person whose unresolved condition persists as calamity. At the centre of that triangle, Sōgenbi becomes more than a fire yokai: it is a compact Kyoto ghost story in which temple, wrongdoing and punishment after death burn together.

A half body glimpsed at the edge of a schoolyard closes the distance to the sound of "teke teke." This school ghost story, whose name became established in the 1990s, includes upper- and lower-body forms as well as old-woman and male variants. A later backstory of a young woman killed in a train accident was overlaid on it, and the 2009 film *Teketeke* linked Kakogawa, Kashima Reiko, and death after 72 hours to make today's familiar image especially vivid.

Based on Toriyama Sekien’s “Tesso” motif, it appears as a giant rat draped in robe-like shadows, with red eyes and teeth said to be iron-hard. Its origin lies in the vengeful spirit tale of Raigō tied to disputes over the ordination platform at Onjōji, where rivalry between Enryakuji’s Sannō faction and the Miidera side was cast into story and overlapped with real rat damage to temple sutras and treasures. Names vary by period and source, with “Raigō Nezumi” and “Miidera Nezumi” coexisting. Medieval war tales exaggerate its numbers into a calamity of swarming rats, while from early modern times it links to shrine legends of pacification and blessings. Chronologies in records do not always align and the tale is highly narrative, yet shrine and temple names, linked verse, and oral lore support a core tradition. In some regions, extermination stories feature a great cat of Mount Hiei or guardian deities, reflecting the boundary-conscious rivalry between two religious centers.

An amalgam of seven-in-a-row ghost tales found across Shikoku. Its core traits are threefold: seven figures advance in single file without a word, they appear at crossroads, on night roads, or at rainy dusk, and an encounter portends misfortune. Names, time of appearance, and garb vary by locale. In Sanuki they look human but are usually invisible, perceptible only through a ritual vantage—peering from beneath a cow’s hindquarters. A subtype limited to crossroads at the dead of night is called Shichi-nin Dōji, and certain once-busy junctions are remembered for their passage. The Shichi-nin Dōshi, who appear in rain wearing straw raincoats and hats, are linked to executed souls; a folk remedy to dispel the gloom after meeting them is to fan oneself with a winnowing basket. In Tokushima, seven child spirits accompanying the Headless Horse are said to have faded after Jizō statues were erected for their repose, reflecting a regional belief that memorial rites quell calamity. Though sometimes conflated with Shichi-nin Misaki, local names and functions differ; Shichi-nin Dōkō are identified by the outward feature of seven spirits marching in a line.

An edition based on visual readings of Toriyama Sekien’s Konjaku Hyakki Shūi and related images. Depicted as a human figure in Tang-style robes with a candle set upon a tray or stand on the head. Said to have had the voice destroyed by drugs and the body tattooed, composing poems in tears or fingertip blood in place of speech. Its true nature is not a monster per se but the tragic end of a person enslaved in a foreign land, giving it a strongly narrative character of human ethics and suffering, even while included in yokai catalogs. Details vary by source, yet the figure consistently stands in the night holding a light. Accounts of salvation or death are inconsistent and left unspecified.

The core of this version is not to view the Ubume as a completed "blood-soaked female yokai," but to trace how the relationship between humans and the supernatural changes the moment the baby is received. In *Konjaku Monogatari Shu*, Scroll 27, Tale 43, Taira no Suetake makes a bet in a test of courage with his fellow retainers of Minamoto no Yorimitsu. On a dark night in late September, fully equipped with armor, helmet, and bow, he heads alone to a river crossing in Mino Province to plant an arrow on the opposite shore as proof. On his way back, he is stopped by a woman's voice in the river. The woman presses him, "Hold this," the baby cries, and a strong, fishy stench of blood reaches the guards on the shore. Suetake receives the child on his sleeve, repels the woman who now chases him demanding it back, and takes it straight back to his mansion. When he opened his sleeve, what remained was neither a baby nor a stone, but a few tree leaves. What this scene shows is not the true identity of the Ubume, but the human attitude in the face of the supernatural. Suetake does not slash the woman, nor does he drive her away with prayers; he accepts her request and holds the child. His companions praise his courage, but the end of the tale merely juxtaposes the theory that the Ubume is a shape-shifting fox with the theory that she is the spirit of a woman who died in childbirth, without settling the matter. The fixed tropes of later eras, such as the blood-stained waistcloth, long black hair, and bird wings, are nowhere in the text. In other words, what is fixed in the oldest class of Ubume tales is the dark river crossing, the woman's voice, the crying baby, the stench of blood, the demand to hold it, and the transformation into leaves—not the yokai's appearance. It is in the early modern period that the physical bodies of women who died in childbirth came to the forefront. *Hyaku Monogatari Hyōban* explains that the lingering attachment of a woman who died "upon giving birth" becomes the Ubume, who cries with her lower body dyed in blood. *Kii Zōdanshū* tells the origin story where a pregnant woman who died was abandoned in a field, the child in her womb was born, and the mother's soul walks at night holding the child; it states that those who accept her request to carry the child on their back will be given wealth. Here, the blood of the Ubume is not merely a cruel depiction, but a sign that explicitly carves the cause of death onto the body. At the same time, the act of the encounterer holding the baby is reinterpreted from a test of courage to an act of temporarily taking on the unfulfilled childbirth and child-rearing of the dead. The transformation of the baby rearranges the conclusion of the story depending on the region. In a recording from Niigata City, the child received on the bridge gradually becomes heavier, and upon looking, it has turned into a stone. In a recording from the Naoiri region of Bungo Province, it is said to become a mallet or a stone. On the other hand, in the "Ubume's Gift" type, those who withstand the weight or do not refuse the request are bestowed with superhuman strength, a great sword, and wealth. The baby becoming heavier is not a uniform attack capability, but also a device to test the one holding it. If they cannot bear it, it becomes a horror story; if they hold it all the way through, it becomes a tale of bestowed fortune. This reversal makes it impossible to classify the Ubume purely as an aggressor or purely as a guardian spirit. The waterside functions as the boundary where the Ubume passes her request to the living. The river crossing in *Konjaku Monogatari Shu*, the bridge in Niigata, and the riverbank illustrations of later eras are all places that connect "this side" and "that side." Manami Yasui's iconographic research points out that the *nagare-kanjō*—a custom of hanging a cloth by a river for a woman who died in childbirth and asking passersby to pour water over it to hold a memorial service—is also depicted in Sekien's drawing. While it cannot be definitively concluded that memorial services by water were the origin of all Ubume tales, the structures of "asking a favor of an unknown passerby" and "the dead and the living making contact at the waterside" resonate strongly. The Ubume's request can be read as a story of handing over not only the baby, but also the duty of the memorial service to the next person. The syncretism with the Kōkakuchō (Guhō bird) added wings and the nature of snatching children to the mother's spirit. The nocturnal roaming woman in *Youyang Zazu* becomes a bird when wearing feathers and a woman when taking them off. Because she has no children, she takes the children of others, and it is a bird monster that warns against leaving children's clothes exposed to the night dew. In contrast, the Japanese Ubume tries to entrust the child she is already holding to someone else. Both share the explanation of being a woman who died in childbirth and an attachment to babies, but the direction of action is "snatching" for one and "entrusting" for the other. As Hayashi Razan applying "Kōkakuchō" to the "Ubume-dori" or Nue in the 1631 *Shinkan Tashikihen* shows, this became a major node that folded two stories with opposite directions into a single name. Painters visualized this folding together. In *Hyakkai Zukan*, the Ubume became a member of the named yokai illustrations, and Toriyama Sekien's *Gazu Hyakki Yagyō* consolidated the blood-stained white cloth, the baby, the rain, and the waterside into a single image. Tsukioka Yoshitoshi's *Wakan Hyaku Monogatari*, "Shume-no-Suke Urabe Suetake," takes the medieval Suetake tale as its subject but gives the woman wings on her back, superimposing the image of the Chinese bird monster. Because the original text has no wings, this is not a faithful illustration, but a reinterpretation that returned the "Ubume" understood by 19th-century audiences to the medieval tale. Looking at the iconography chronologically, we can see that the appearance of the Ubume was not the starting point of the folklore, but was created through the accumulation of reading, publishing, and painting. The "Onmesama" handed down at Daigyōji Temple in Kamakura demonstrates another reversal of the Ubume. According to temple legend, in 1532, Priest Nichitō saved a woman who died in a difficult childbirth by chanting sutras, and he built a pagoda for the Ubume to enshrine her as a guardian deity of safe childbirth. Folklore materials recount that the woman appealed to the priest on the bridge over the Namerigawa River, saying, "I cannot cross the river, and the child is sucking on my breasts, causing me pain," and later she requested a pagoda to save people suffering from difficult childbirth. Here, the Ubume who passes her request to the living on a bridge at night moves to the side of helping childbirth after receiving a memorial service. Terror and safe-childbirth beliefs are not separate attributes, but a continuous story of an unsaved spirit transforming into an enshrined deity. Even compared to the closely related Kosodate Yūrei (child-rearing ghost), they cannot be equated simply because of the theme of the death of a mother and child. The core of the Kosodate Yūrei is the story of a mother coming to buy candy to feed her child in the grave even after death; the nurturing continues from mother to child. The Ubume stops others on night roads and temporarily transfers the role of holding the baby. The former is a story of "the dead raising," while the latter is a story of "entrusting to the living." If we relate them while maintaining this difference, we can read the Ubume neither as a beautiful tale of maternal love nor as a punishment for death in childbirth, but as a supernatural encounter where the fear surrounding death in childbirth, memorial services, gift-giving, and the memory of society intersect.

A codified image of the classic Ushi-no-koku mairi centered on Edo-period etiquette. Clad in white burial garb with disheveled long hair, the practitioner inverts an iron trivet as a crown with three candles lit, hangs a mirror on the chest, and moves toward the shrine on single-toothed geta to muffle steps. At the sacred tree, a doll bearing the target’s name is pinned and a five-inch nail is hammered in each night. The witching hour is strictly the third quarter of the Ox Hour, with fulfillment said to come on the seventh night. If witnessed, the rite loses its power, so silence and care to leave no tracks are prescribed. In art, a black ox sometimes accompanies the figure; lore holds that straddling it on the final night brings success, while shrinking back means failure. Straw-doll usage became common in the early modern era, with roots in ancient scapegoat effigy piercings and Onmyodo katashiro rites. Folklore often stops short of asserting curses as real, instead telling that breaking taboos or exposure nullifies the act.

A type shaped by Edo-period print culture, centered on Sekien’s imagery and the psychologized readings in kyoka verse. Rather than a concrete monster, it personifies the feeling of being held back by a tug at one’s trailing hair, dulling decisions through interference from behind. Mizuki Shigeru cites tales from the Tsuyama area that give it a corporeal aspect—ruffling a woman’s hair, breathing hot air—but in all cases it touches from behind and stirs hesitation. It is often grouped with hesitation-inducing yokai such as Okubyogami, Sodehiki-kozō, and Furifuri. Though there are notes of it being enshrined in Ise, specific rites are unknown, and it appears mainly in moral and didactic contexts. Stories survive in both urban and local settings, yet no clear lineage of deity name or object is shown, with wordplay and the concretization of psychology driving its transmission.

The *Warei* is an entity that embodies the dynamics of *goryo* belief—where a vengeful spirit transforms into an honorable spirit (*goryo*) and then into a guardian deity—within the early modern history of Uwajima. In life, Yamaga Seibee was a retainer who devoted himself to the reform of domain administration. His unnatural death (the Warei Disturbance) and the subsequent chain of lightning strikes and shipwrecks that struck the participants gave people a tangible sense of a curse. The spirit, initially enshrined out of awe and fear, reversed its nature when his innocence was publicly recognized, acquiring the divinity of 'Warei-sama' protecting fishing and industry. The herd of *Ushi-oni* that parades in the Warei Festival at Warei Shrine is a ritual device to comfort and pacify this *goryo*, showing how monsters (*ushi-oni*) and spirits (*warei*) are inextricably linked in Uwajima's festivals.

A traditional reading grounded in the side-by-side entries of the Testament Ghost and the Water-Begging Ghost in Ehon Hyaku Monogatari. The spirits of those who died with last words unspoken or burdened by thirst appear at night to plead for water. Individual names and deeds are seldom told; instead they serve as moral parables urging memorial offerings. When monks chant sutras, perform memorial services, feed hungry ghosts, or make alms to the dead, their thirst is said to be soothed with the symbolic “sweet dew” described in scripture. Told in both towns and villages, they appear where people and water meet—by wells, bridges, graves, and roadsides. They stir pity more than terror, and tales warn that rough treatment brings a curse, while respectful rites lay them to rest.

An image based on the “Yūrei” in Toriyama Sekien’s Gazu Hyakki Yagyō, published around 1776 (An’ei 5). In a nighttime graveyard a woman’s ghost appears between drooping willows, wearing a white burial robe and a forehead cap, raising her arms as if to halt a passerby. It is a transitional depiction from before footless forms and the triangular headcloth became fixed conventions, emphasizing the lifelike force of the arms and the willow and gravestones as symbols of place. Sekien’s plates organized contemporary strange tales, Buddhist views, and funeral customs, profoundly shaping the visual codification of yūrei. While indicating gender and costume, the image leaves the source of attachment unspecified, inviting the viewer to imagine the relationship.