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.
Character Profile
This section is our own creative profile for storytelling. It is not historical fact or scholarship.
Yokai Type - Traditional Yokai
Category - Ghosts & Spirits
Rarity - Rare
Personality - taciturn, stoic, long-suffering
Compatibility - solitary by nature, responsive to filial piety
Abilities - prolonged tolerance to fire and heat, silent communication through writing and poetry, maintaining a steady light in darkness
Weaknesses - loss of voice makes communication difficult, vulnerable to exhaustion and long confinement, flame is extinguished by water and strong wind
Habitat - Tang-style mansions and gardens, banquet halls and great rooms, unknown
🔮Yokai Compatibility Test
For more detailed information and diagnosis results about Setuwa Iconography Edition, after Sekien Toriyama, please click here.