Yokai Encyclopedia

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.

A representative form from the Tokaido’s Sayo no Nakayama. The spirit of a pregnant woman murdered on her journey is said to have possessed a stone and cried each night for her unborn child. People performed memorial rites, and in time the spirit was soothed. Folklorically, it is tied to roadside memorials, Koyasu child-protection faith, and the erection of stone steles, reflecting an older belief that spirits dwell within stones.

This version turns to how the Yako was spoken of in the Buddhist world, and in Zen in particular. Zen has the term yako-zen, "wild-fox Zen." It is a word of admonition for a half-finished state in which one has not truly attained enlightenment yet believes oneself enlightened. Its source is the famous tale "Hyakujō and the Wild Fox," recorded in the Song-dynasty Zen collection of dialogues, the Mumonkan. An old man came to listen each time the Tang Zen master Baizhang Huaihai (Hyakujō Ekai) preached. One day the old man revealed his story. Long ago, when he had been abbot of this very temple, he was asked whether one who has attained enlightenment still falls subject to cause and effect (karmic retribution), and he answered, "He does not fall (into cause and effect)." For that single mistaken word he had been cast into the body of a wild fox through five hundred rebirths. The old man begged Hyakujō for the correct answer. When Hyakujō rephrased it as "He does not obscure cause and effect," the old man was freed of his delusion on the spot, shed the wild-fox body, and attained buddhahood. Here the wild fox becomes a symbol of admonition—the form into which one who has fallen into half-baked enlightenment is transformed. Quite apart from the village field fox that deceives people, the Yako has lived on at length within the language of Zen as well, as "where shallow cleverness ends up."

This version builds on a record narrative centering on the Miyoshi anomalies of Kan’en 2. The chieftain declares himself in samurai guise at the close of the thirty days of hauntings, mentioning a wager with Kamino Akugorō. He states he is neither tengu nor fox spirit, yet some paintings depict him as a three-eyed crow-tengu, revealing a gap between text and image. Across manuscripts his name varies—Yamamoto Gorōzaemon, Yaman-moto Gorōzaemon, Yamamoto Tarōzaemon—and in alternate strands he bestows different gifts, such as a mallet or a scroll of rites. Around Miyoshi, multiple “trial of the brave” tales persist, sharing a sequence of fixed-term hauntings, the master of the house remaining unshaken, the leader’s appearance and words of praise, and a token left upon departure. His concrete nature and origin remain unsettled, while his role as a demon-king-like commander is emphasized. Given differences among early modern essays and picture scrolls, proper names and details should be treated as variant by text.

Based on the Snow Child figure from Echigo Province. It appears as a small child on snowy days, visiting from the doorway on blizzard nights to warm itself by the hearth. When cared for, it comforts the household and may help with chores, yet with the first signs of spring it loses strength and fades. It shows no malice and instead bears the character of a guest deity, a seasonal visitor heralding winter’s presence. Its visits recur but never last, and finally cease, reflecting the impermanence of snow. It is also called “Yuki-warashi” or “Yukiko,” names that all link snow with a childlike form.

This traditional image is constructed centering around the "Ōmagatoki" entry in Toriyama Sekien's *Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki* (Illustrated Hundred Demons from the Present and Past, Continued), published in the 8th year of An'ei (1779). Ōmagatoki is not a single yōkai, but the temporal condition under which yōkai begin to appear. Therefore, rather than endowing it with a personality and having it attack people, it is treated as the twilight itself—when brightness is lost and the identities of familiar landscapes and people suddenly become uncertain. Though brief, Sekien's explanation seamlessly links the definition, the uncanny, and a taboo. He first defines the time: "It means twilight. It is the time when the hundred specters arise," and immediately follows with the consequence: "In the world, it is forbidden to let children go outside." The practical warning to bring children home because it is evening and the supernatural explanation that the hundred specters arise form a mutually reinforcing structure. However, this is an explanation of "worldly custom" recorded by Sekien in the late 18th century, and it cannot be definitively said that this exact same prohibition was observed in homes nationwide since ancient times. In the lower half of the picture, a quiet, unpeopled row of houses and a pagoda resembling a temple stand still, while a large sun is setting on the far left. In the upper half, faces with horns, beast-like faces, and faces that cannot be firmly identified as human or demon peer out one after another from a cloud-like mass. The "hundred specters" (*hyakumi*) do not appear as a roster tallying exactly one hundred entities, but rather as a collective term for numerous uncanny beings whose names and forms remain unfixed. Sekien does not place a single monster in the center; instead, he transforms the entire boundary between the sky and the town into a scene of yōkai manifestation. The latter half of the text brings up the variant spelling "Hour of Wang Mang" (王莽時). In a theory recorded by Hayashi Razan before Sekien, the day corresponds to the Former Han, the night to the Later Han, and the twilight between them to Wang Mang's Xin dynasty. Sekien retold this older theory, overlaying the historical transition—where Wang Mang usurped the Former Han but his dynasty ended briefly before shifting to the Later Han—onto the boundary between day and night. This does not mean that Wang Mang himself appears as a yōkai; rather, it is an intellectual analogy decoding the sound *ōmagatoki* through the boundary of dynasties in Chinese history. The fact that dictionaries list Ōmagatoki alongside Ōmagatoki (Hour of Great Calamity), Ōmaji (Hour of the Great Demon), and Ōmōji (Hour of Wang Mang) also indicates that this word has been enveloped in multiple associations: disaster, encounters with demons, and historical intervals. The terror of Ōmagatoki lies not in the darkness itself, but in the fact that one can still see, yet cannot identify correctly. In complete night, one would prepare a lantern; but at twilight, the sensation of day lingers, and a silhouette thought to be an acquaintance might actually be a stranger. In "Kawataredoki," Yanagita Kunio surmised that in an era when it was difficult to distinguish a person from the outline of their clothing, people probably could not confirm an individual's identity until they heard footsteps and exchanged greetings. The phrases *taso kare* ("Who goes there?") and *kare wa tare* ("Who is that?") crystallize this uncertainty directly into a question. In the regional examples Yanagita compiled in *Yōkai Dangi*, voice serves to gauge the boundary between human and non-human. In Saga, a single "Moshi" (Hello) invites suspicion of being a fox; in Okinawa, one does not reply until called three times. The *Game* of Kaga, the river otter of Noto, and the tanuki of Mino and Tosa, even when disguised as humans, cannot correctly pronounce the local dialect, and their true identities are exposed through discrepancies in their responses. However, as Hirota Ryūhei cautions, Yanagita did not clearly indicate the sources for these individual examples, and one cannot conclude that they were all identical Ōmagatoki customs. Here, they are positioned as Yanagita's comparative interpretation linking twilight and the stranger. There is no fixed value on a modern clock for this hour. Even under the variable hour system of the Edo period, dawn and dusk served as the demarcations between day and night, and their positions shifted with the seasons. The time and duration of twilight differ between summer and winter, north and south, mountains and plains. Charts converting the Hour of the Rooster (kure-mutsu) to exactly 18:00 or 17:00–19:00 today are merely approximations; the essence of Ōmagatoki is not a number on a clock, but the brief transition where daytime visibility and social security begin to unravel. Therefore, one cannot "defeat" Ōmagatoki. Behaviors such as returning home before sunset, exchanging greetings with companions, and identifying others with a lantern are not magic to erase time, but practical wisdom to reduce uncertainty. When the sun sets and complete night falls, even if the world of the hundred specters continues, Ōmagatoki as the "gap between day and night" comes to an end. The core connecting Sekien's hundred specters, Yanagita's stranger, and the modern fictional use of the hour as a signal for monsters to appear lies in that single point: the unsettling wavering of classification at the boundary where things can be seen but not easily defined.

When reading the Yamachichi, the most important thing is not to overinflate this yokai as a "well-known local legend." The core material is the "Ehon Hyaku Monogatari", which tells of its transformation from an old bat to a Nobusuma and then to a Yamachichi, alongside the strange effect of sucking sleeping breath. Precisely because it is a yokai with scarce materials, accurately placing its appearance, actions, and conditions makes its outline clearer. The appearance of the Yamachichi is a mountain beast resembling a monkey with a pointed snout. It does not shapeshift into a human like a fox or a tanuki, nor does it lure people with human speech like a Yama-uba. It remains a beast, drawing near to the breathing of a sleeping human. Breathing is the entering and exiting of life, and sleeping breath is the sound of defenseless life. Because the Yamachichi sucks that sound, its terror lies not in claws or fangs, but in the sensation of life being drained in the vulnerable gap of sleep. However, the tale of the Yamachichi is not a simple blood or spirit-sucking story. If someone is watching, the person whose breath is sucked gains a long life. If no one watches, they die the next day. This condition is mysterious; the eyes of a third party determine whether the anomaly harms or saves the human. The structure where the monster's power is reversed by being seen is also the charm of Hyaku Monogatari (Hundred Tales) style storytelling. The triangular relationship of the person in the bedroom, the sleeper, and the watcher establishes the small narrative of the Yamachichi. Its location is said to be Oshu, but Oshu here is a broad regional name and should not be shrunk down to a single modern point. Using Mutsu Province as a receptacle for the ancient place name is to indicate the scope of Oshu found in literature, not to assert it as solely a yokai of Fukushima Prefecture. Rather than a precise point on a map, the Yamachichi is a yokai spoken of within the sense of distance of "the mountains of Tohoku." If connections are to be drawn, it is closest to the Nobusuma and the Satori. The Nobusuma appears in the text as the preceding stage of the Yamachichi, supporting the Yamachichi's position as an aged form. The Satori shares an interpretive intersection, as the text states, "Deep in the mountains, this is called satori-kai," but the mind-reading Satori and the breath-sucking Yamachichi are not identical. By lining them up while maintaining this difference, we can see the subtle divergence concerning breathing, thinking, and sleeping among the beast yokai of the mountains and fields.

When viewed as a hag extending her tongue in a ruined shack in the wilderness, the terror of the Shitanaga-uba lies less in the monster's appearance itself and more in the moment hospitality flips into predation. The travelers, conditioned by nightfall, getting lost, and fatigue, search for a house and believe they are saved by the old woman's invitation. However, the night's lodging is not a safe zone of the human community, but a trap waiting in a closed room for them to fall asleep. In the scene where the tongue extends to the sleeper, the everyday and soft action of "licking"—rather than the use of blades or claws—transforms into the violence of obliterating the flesh, producing a tactile terror much closer than the red face of Shu-no-banbo. This hag monster's outline becomes clearest when working as a pair with Shu-no-banbo. In the setting of the journey from Echigo to Edo, the Shitanaga-uba is placed inside the house, while Shu-no-banbo acts as a voice from the outside. It is the Shitanaga-uba whose name is called first, and Shu-no-banbo appears saying, "Shall I help?" In other words, the Shitanaga-uba is not a mere servant, but one of the principal culprits moving in front of the prey. If Shu-no-banbo is a yokai of sight, the Shitanaga-uba is a yokai of touch, and the two terrors mesh seamlessly within the same night. While the story connects Echigo Province and Edo on the map, pinning the Shitanaga-uba down solely as a "yokai of Niigata Prefecture" misses the core of the tale. What is important is that an unnamed wasteland opens its jaws halfway between a known land and a known city. The ending, where the house vanishes, suggests the possibility that the anomaly's dwelling was not permanently there, but rose up for just one night to absorb the travelers. Thus, on this page, Echigo Province is listed as the story's starting point, Edo as the destination, and "Unknown" side-by-side as the limit of her origin. In later yokai culture, while Shu-no-banbo stands out by gaining the iconography of a red face and large mouth, the Shitanaga-uba is easily compressed into the short name "the old woman with the long tongue." Yet, that very compression is the strength of this yokai. The moment you hear her name, you know her shape, and the moment you know her shape, you know what she will do. She is not a flashy protagonist, but an anomaly that lingers in the reader's bodily senses through the minimal elements of an inn, sleep, and a tongue.