Yokai Encyclopedia

A reimagining of the straw raincoat and straw sandals yokai based on Toriyama Sekien’s imagery. The straw raincoat serves as a protective emblem akin to visiting-deity garb, while the sandals take on the role of roadside boundary charms. Weathered by long use and harsh storms, they are believed to have gained spiritual potency and slipped into the human world. The act of shouldering a hoe evokes farm labor and service to local land deities, and the snowy bamboo grove setting suggests purity and deep quiet. Specific deeds go unrecorded, but it was likely feared as creaking sandal steps at midnight or a walking cloak’s silhouette in a blizzard, with little emphasis on malice. An emblematic member of the early modern tsukumogami ensemble, it reflects reverence for the lifespan and toil of tools.

When viewed as a small beast of a rainy night, the essence of the Sunekosuri lies not in being a "visible anomaly," but an "anomaly that makes you unable to walk." While many yokai frighten people with their faces, voices, enormous size, or bizarre shapes, the Sunekosuri slips right by your feet. When people lose their vision on a night road, they worry more about the ground one step ahead than terrors far away. The rain dampens the grass and soil, making hems and sandals heavy, and giving birth to a sensation akin to the touch of beast hair. The people of Okayama named that sudden contact "that which rubs the shins." Because the name itself serves as the explanation, this yokai is closer to an experience than a narrative. The folklore tied to the Iryodo shrine in Nanokaichi-cho, Ibara City shows the Sunekosuri not simply as a wild beast, but as something belonging to the memory of the road. A small hall like Iryodo is a place where village faith, memorial services for the dead, and prayers for safe journeys softly gather; at night, it also becomes a boundary with sparse foot traffic. The telling that a dog-like creature slips between one's legs there does not exaggerate the stage of the anomaly. It occurs not deep in the mountains or in a castle, but beside the road one usually walks; this is exactly why the Sunekosuri remains as a "plausible anomaly." This is also the significance of reading local cases in an overlapping manner. Even within Okayama, the Sune-kosuri, Mata-kuguri, and Sunekkorogashi seen in Ukan-cho allow us to understand the Sunekosuri not as a single fixed character, but as a swarm of anomalies that steal one's footing on a night road. Rubbing the shins, passing through the crotch, pulling and tripping. The actions differ slightly, but they all disrupt a person's walking from below. Here, what the name captures is not "who the yokai is," but "what you felt was done to you." That is why it leans toward both dogs and tanuki. Explaining it as the work of a tanuki functions less to determine its true identity, and more to place the Sunekosuri within the vocabulary of beasts in the wild that confuse humans. The Sunekosuri appearing in Kunio Yanagita's Yokai Glossary should be read not as a lengthy folk tale, but as an entry where a name and a phenomenon are briefly linked. In such glossaries, rather than lineages or monster-slaying tales, the very name used in the local area holds documentary value. There are no famous slayers like with great yokai, no shrine histories, and no magnificent illustrations. Yet the name survives because the experience of the area around one's feet on a night road is shared by many. The value of the Yokai Glossary lies in placing such small names without erasing them. Taxonomically, reading the Sunekosuri solely as a dog yokai or solely as a tanuki anomaly becomes too narrow. The dog form indicates the eyewitness shape of "some small beast slipping past the feet," while the tanuki theory indicates the explanatory model of "beasts in the wild that confuse humans." Neither is a definitive determination of its true identity, but words used to understand the contact felt on a dark road. Therefore, while being an animal transformation, the Sunekosuri is simultaneously a yokai of roads, rain, and walking. The modern image of the Sunekosuri cannot be discussed without Shigeru Mizuki's illustrations. Mizuki transformed the rustic information of "something dog-like" into an endearing, round little beast. Following that, through the movie "The Great Yokai War," anime, and games, the Sunekosuri moved away from being a troubling anomaly and closer to a soft yokai that approaches humans. What is important here is that cuteness did not erase the folklore. The actions of clinging to the feet, snuggling up, and slowing one's pace weaken the fear while simultaneously turning into charm. Precisely because the Sunekosuri is a yokai of physical contact, it opened toward both terror and intimacy. The Sunekosuri read in this form, while being a local yokai of Okayama, is also representative of modern "small yokai." It neither eats nor curses people. It simply appears at the feet of walkers and disrupts their stride for just a moment. That weak interference, ironically, makes it hard to forget. When hurrying down a night road, you feel something touch your foot. You look down, but nothing is there. Yet, for your very next step, you become just a little more cautious. The Sunekosuri is the yokai that gives a name to that one step's hesitation.

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.

This interpretation remains most faithful to Toriyama Sekien's commentary, transforming the inkstone—a static piece of stationery—into a "screen of phantoms" that projects the dynamism and tragedy of history. This yokai never threatens or curses its owner. It quietly reveals its form only when the owner possesses deep cultivation and a strong empathic connection to history. In a study enveloped in midnight silence, one pours cold water and gently begins to rub the inkstick. The phenomenon occurs when the flickering candlelight illuminates the surface of the black, glistening liquid ink (the sea of the inkstone). Suddenly, mingled with the rich fragrance of the freshly ground ink, the faint "scent of the sea breeze" and "scent of blood" begin to drift through the air. Then, within the mere few centimeters of the ink sea in the inkstone, pure white crests of waves rise, miniature warships crowd together, and Minamoto and Heike warriors—no larger than grains of rice—appear. They cross swords, loose arrows, and fall into the waves one after another, recreating the decisive Battle of Dan-no-ura. If you listen closely, angry shouts, the sound of crashing waves, and the screams of the court ladies of the Heike echo like a distant auditory hallucination. This is a physical vision manifested through the resonance between the "kotodama" (spirit of language) in *The Tale of the Heike* read by the literatus and the hundreds of years of sorrowful memories held by the "Akama stone," which was quarried from the very sea where the Heike perished. The Spirit of the Inkstone is a "spirit of literature" of unparalleled beauty, poetry, and bottomless melancholy, proving how the act of reading is a mystical ritual that transcends time and space to converse with the dead.

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.

An interpretive version based on Toriyama Sekien’s Hyakki Tsurezurebukuro image and notes. It bears a raptor’s body wreathed in ghostly flame, tongues of fire trailing from beak and talons. Its glow is not a guiding light but a will-o’-the-wisp that scrambles sight and sense of direction. Sekien links it to the glow of “tengu pebbles,” weaving puzzling mountain lights into tengu lore. Said to break the chanting and meditation of yamabushi and devotees, it was feared less for wounds than for unsettling the mind and leading feet astray. Though local oral traditions are scarce, it is understood in line with common notions of phantom fires and tengu fire.

Taira no Koremochi is an entity of the 'demon-slaying hero' archetype who stands not on the side of *yokai*, but on the side that strikes them down. Just as Sakanoue no Tamuramaro subdued Suzuka Gozen and Otakemaru, and Minamoto no Yorimitsu subdued Shuten-doji, Koremochi carved his name in lore as the one who vanquished the demoness Momiji of Togakushi. What makes him a hero is not pure military force, but the fact that the story weaves in 'the limits of human power'—he is initially defeated by Momiji's dark arts and can only conquer the demon after praying to buddhas and deities. The fascination of Koremochi's figure lies in the flexibility with which his protector swaps depending on the medium of the legend. In Noh it is Hachiman, in Bessho-lineage accounts it is Kitamuki Kannon—the same warlord is protected by different divinities depending on local faith and theatrical convenience. This implies that Koremochi is not an entity rigidly tied to a specific god, but rather a vessel carrying the archetype itself of 'the warrior who slays demons with divine protection'. While Kinasa reveres Momiji as a noblewoman, Koremochi is strictly a subjugator executing the orders of the center, and only by combining both does the dual nature of good and evil in the Momiji legend emerge. In this encyclopedia where *yokai* are the main characters, Koremochi is a rare subjugator included as a 'counterpart existence that makes the demon possible'.

A form based on Toriyama Sekien’s illustration and accounts in war chronicles. It bears the will to hinder the Buddhist Law, pecking at temple timbers late at night as an omen of ill fortune. Tradition ties its origin to the vengeful spirit of Mononobe no Moriya, though its shape follows that of a woodpecker. In strange tales the sound comes first, a shadow is seen, and its true body is rarely caught. Folklorically it fuses bird-borne calamity lore with etiologies for temple damage.

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.

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.

Umi-zatō survives only as a figure in Edo-period picture scrolls and yokai paintings. No accompanying story explains his nature or actions. The composition centers on a zatō standing upright among the waves, with his biwa and walking staff made unmistakable. The impossible posture—feet planted on a surface that will not stay still—is what makes the image so uncanny. Yokai researcher Kenji Murakami calls Umi-zatō a yokai that exists only in paintings and notes that its imagery may overlap with Umibōzu. Beyond that, the sources do not say whether it brings harm or benefit, nor do they preserve any rite or means of driving it away. Only the visual details are secure; what it does, and how anyone should respond, remain unanswered.

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 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.

A reconstruction based on imagery from picture scrolls. It kneels low to the ground, the body slack, skin ashen-brown mottled with pale spots. The face is indistinct, the line between mouth and nose blurred, with a damp sheen. In keeping with rare records that preserve little more than its name, no guiding motive is assigned. Said to be seen as a crouching lump by mountain paths or along thickets, it inspires awe and a sense of distance. If approached, it withdraws before its form can be fixed, making pursuit difficult. No confirmed harm is attributed to it, and encounter tales remain general.

A reconstruction guided by Sekien Toriyama’s image and notes. The head resembles a grater, its surface studs likened to porcupine quills. Though written as “Yamaoroshi,” its nature is not a mountain wind itself but an abstract monster born from combining a utensil (grater) with a bestial image. Daikon radishes and mortars placed nearby signal a tsukumogami-style scene, with no specific harm or blessing described. Rooted in Edo-period paintings, it lacks regional oral lore or cult, and later handbooks often present it as an example of utensil transformation and wordplay.

While the *Yamawaro* is a mountain monster unique to the mountainous regions of Kyushu, its greatest originality lies in the fact that it forms two aspects of a single body with the *kappa*. The fact that Terajima Ryoan noted the habitation of *Yamawaro* in Chikuzen and Goto in *Wakan Sansai Zue* is evidence that early modern intellectuals incorporated the folklore of grotesque beings from the western mountains into the framework of natural history, showing that the Goto Islands were designated early on as a land of *Yamawaro* traditions. In the migration belief, it is said that the *kappa* of the river and the *Yamawaro* of the mountain switch places at the boundary of the spring and autumn equinoxes, which is thought to be a crystallization of the agricultural calendar, water god worship, and mountain god worship into a single existential image. Its assistance to woodcutters and the reward of rice balls, its love of sumo, its dietary preference for salt and crabs, and its grotesque form with dog ears, red hair, and a single eye are all supported by the *Wakan Sansai Zue* and the oral traditions of various parts of Kyushu. Amidst life in the Goto Islands, surrounded by sea and mountains, the *Yamawaro* has become inextricably linked to the *kappa* (*gataro*), becoming an entity that embodies the local spirituality penetrating both the waterside and the mountains.

Yao-bikuni is recorded in a 1449 diary as a long-lived nun who came from Wakasa to Kyoto; in the early modern period, she became linked to a story of a girl who ate mermaid flesh. More than two hundred years old in *Yasuyoshi-ki*, eight hundred years old in *Gaun Nikkenroku*, and more than four hundred years old in *Honchō Jinja Kō*, the shifting numbers trace the legend’s long development.

A type of tsukumogami typical of early modern yokai art. The hair-spear used both as a practical weapon and as a symbol in processions was thought to accrue spiritual potency through associations with masters and tales of valor. In Hyakki Tsurezure Bukuro, Sekien depicted it wielding a wooden mallet, assigning it a specific object-name while drawing on older iconographic bones. The name Yarigechō likely arose where Night Parade motifs from the Muromachi era, Edo antiquarian taste, and the culture of famed implements converged. Modern print editions and nishiki-e varied the image, sometimes stressing the spear’s decorative plumes, yet it lacks distinctive oral lore and is known mainly through pictures and bibliographic notes.

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.

The *Yukijoro* is a highly unique snow woman nurtured by Yamagata, one of Japan's premier heavy snowfall regions. While snow women nationwide are told of as cruel monsters who freeze travelers to death, Yamagata's *Yukijoro* strongly retains "gratitude-type" tales where she rewards human compassion with blessings. In the Oguni region, her true identity is said to be a princess who descended from the moon world with the snow, losing her way back and appearing on nights lit by the snow's glow—a rare archetype blending East Asian moon worship with the snow woman. In folktales, a house that coldly rejects the white-robed woman begging for lodging falls into ruin, while a house that welcomes her warmly is left with the blessing of a lump of gold. The *Yukijoro*'s body melts upon touching human warmth, leaving grace in the wake of her melting. Furthermore, in the Mogami region, there are tales of an *Ubume*-like snow woman trying to hand over a child, or a snow woman leading a cow, showing that the *Yukijoro* does not fit into a single mold. The terror of the freezing winter, and the emotion of a snow country where one cannot survive without nevertheless cherishing the snow, are superimposed on this multifaceted snow woman.

Based on examples by Toriyama Sekien, this image depicts an aged tea kettle manifesting with spiritual authority. Its posture and arrangement inherit compositional methods akin to the Night Parade of One Hundred Demons scrolls, often shown marching alongside Torakakushi and Yarinaga. The name plays on the kinship between chanoyu and Zen, hinting at a caricature of a Buddhist priest. By the logic of mononari, tools long used or neglected accrue ki, appear before people, and inspire awe. Meiji painters continued this iconographic lineage, and yokai catalogues and dictionaries classify it as a type of tsukumogami, though specific local legends are scant. Later commentaries add anecdotes of startling humans, but early records offer little confirmation, so it is understood chiefly through its iconographic tradition.

Read as a glowing single eye on a buttock on a night road, the Shirime touches upon the core of yokai expression despite being an extremely short tale. Appearance, disrobing, exposure, luminescence, and flight. If one extracts only the plot, it ends in a few lines. Yet within those few lines, the fundamental human recognitions of looking at another person, looking at a face, and looking at eyes are sequentially betrayed. The scene where a samurai is hailed on a night road to Kyoto and shown a strong light from a single eye on a buttock is not a tale of combat, but a ghost story that uses the gaze itself as a weapon. The first trick is the lack of a face. Yokai of the Noppera-bo lineage erase the face, the center of humanity. Without a face, one cannot read the other's emotions, the intent behind their words, or the presence of hostility. The Shirime builds upon this unease of facelessness and shifts the eye to yet another location. This is why it is explained as a variant of the Noppera-bo: the eyes that should be on the face are lost and placed on the buttocks, the most defenseless and laughter-inducing part of the body. Here, terror and comedy become inseparable. The second trick is the destruction of etiquette. Being called out to by a stranger on a dark road is unsettling enough, but when the other party suddenly strips off their kimono, the scene drops from the tension of the warrior class to an obscene farce. However, in the very next instant, that farce reverses into the bizarre through the glowing eye. The Shirime is not interesting because it is vulgar. It is terrifying because it transforms a vulgar gesture into an "eye" that stares back at the human. Not only are you shown something you shouldn't see, but you are stared back at from that very spot. This reversal constitutes the Shirime's decisive strike. The third trick is its brevity. The Shirime has almost no birth tales, no extermination tales, and no long curses. It is not weak because of this; rather, it is perfectly suited for a single illustration. Small yokai preserved in picture scroll materials are remembered not for the depth of their narrative, but for their visual iconography, where meaning arises the moment they are seen. The Shirime is typical of this; before hearing an explanation, the mere composition of an eye on a buttock captures the reader. This yokai clearly demonstrates that yokai iconography sometimes travels faster than the narrative. The setting of the night road heading to Kyoto also supports the Shirime's function. The entrances and crossroads of a city are boundaries where the known and the unknown, the order of day and the anxiety of night switch places. When called out to there, a person first searches for the other's face. The very act of searching for the face becomes the Shirime's trap. The moment one understands that there is no face and no gaze, the eye returns from an entirely different place. Therefore, while being a yokai of Kyoto, the Shirime is remembered not for the historical pedigree of famous places, but as a sudden ambush in the middle of the road. The reason the Shirime became well-known again in yokai introductions after Mizuki Shigeru is also because the speed of its imagery aligns well with modern media. Yokai encyclopedias like Mizuki Shigeru's "Illustrated Encyclopedia of Japanese Yokai" transposed fragments of regional folklore and classical picture scrolls into a format where modern readers can search, compare, and remember them as pictures. The Shirime carries no moral lesson, speaks no ethics, and survives solely through a single bizarre bodily arrangement. Precisely because of this, it is easily transplanted into overseas yokai introductions and gaming reception. Fearing the Shirime does not mean fearing that something will attack. It means fearing that the arrangement of the world will instantly become wrong. A face has no face, a buttock has an eye, and that eye glows. The samurai flees not because he is a coward, but because the opponent he should cut down with his sword is not there. The Shirime appears not as an enemy, but as an accident of perception. In the darkness of the night road, the order of the body is turned inside out. Just through that comical and cruel instant, the Shirime is sufficiently a yokai. In that sense, the Shirime does not end as a vulgar whimsical fantasy. It is a yokai that bends human confidence in seeing the world correctly at the shortest possible distance. The speed of that distortion is precisely the power of this small yokai.