Traditional Yokai Encyclopedia

This version consolidates images of the Ipetam found across Ainu traditions. The blade rings of its own accord and shows hunger by the act described as “eating” stone or leather. Once drawn it will not rest until it sees blood, and tales say it may fly on its own to cut people. Its curse threatens households and kotan, inviting disaster beyond the owner’s will, so it is contained through rites and taboos or by sinking it in water. In Asahikawa and Kamikawa, after casting it into a bottomless bog, a rock in the shape of a sword is said to appear, tying requiem to place names and landscape origins. In Saru, a wit tale survives in which imitating the sword’s sound repels bandits, showing its fearsome name worked as a deterrent. In Kiritoi, Kushiro, an alias tale engraves taboo violation and harm into the sword’s very name, marking it as a remembered calamity object. Related types include the man-eating spear Ipe-op and the self-defense knife Sōsamusipe, suggesting a systematic view of baleful blades and weapons. This reconstruction avoids creative embellishment and adheres to regional records of the cursed sword.

A portrayal of the Ippon-datara based on records from Kii and Kumano through Nara. It is said to be one-eyed and one-legged, but firsthand sightings are rare; in many regions a single large track left after snowfall is taken as proof of its presence. Its most notable trait is appearing on December 20, the “Hate-no-Hatsuka,” a day overlapping taboos of mountain deities and roads, effectively discouraging entry into the mountains. In its link to smithing, folklore explains the one-leg one-eye form as derived from the tatara blower treading the bellows with one foot and watching the furnace with one eye. In the Obagatōge lineage it is equated with the oni-god Inosasao, once a terror of the peak but sealed by a monk and released only once a year. In Kumano and Itsukushima it is said “only footprints appear, not the body,” feared yet seldom directly harmful. While stories of one-legged snow spirits (such as Yuki-nyūdō and Yukibō) have blended with it, this entry centers on the Kumano–Nara stream, emphasizing three points: the taboo day, the single track, and the blacksmith-origin theory.

Iso-onna is a female sea apparition of northwestern Kyūshū. Above the waist she looks like a young woman with long black hair soaked in seawater. Below it, her outline dissolves into mist and waves without leaving footprints, or else lengthens into a serpent's body. Seen from behind, she can be mistaken for a wet rock. In Minamishimabara, Nagasaki, she stands gazing offshore; anyone who speaks to her is answered with a piercing cry, then caught in her hair and drained of blood. Her most feared habit is boarding vessels at anchor. In Amakusa, Kumamoto, Iso-onna climbs a stern mooring line after dark and covers a sleeping person's face with her hair. Boats spending the night in an unfamiliar harbor therefore lower the anchor but leave the stern untied from shore. The very line joining boat and land becomes her path aboard. Other safeguards survive around the region. On the Shimabara Peninsula, three stems pulled from a thatched covering were laid on a person's clothing before sleep so that Iso-onna's hair could not catch them. The Sōgō Nihon Minzoku Goi, edited under the supervision of Yanagita Kunio, records this coastal female apparition under names including Iso-onna and Iso-nyōbō. Iso-onna differs from Umibōzu and Funayūrei, which more often attack in open water. Her defining territory is the rocky shore or anchorage, where land and sea touch. Many communities connect her with drowned women or with a woman who died while waiting for her husband to return. In western Japan, she may also appear beside Ushi-oni, approaching first to lower a victim's guard before the other creature attacks. Hair, blood, and the shoreline boundary form the core of her image. The story of her climbing a mooring line, and the practical customs of anchoring without tying the stern or placing three reeds on one's clothing, preserve both a fishing village's fear of the night sea and its knowledge of how to live beside it.

A feared variant along Amakusa and the Shimabara Peninsula, named for slipping aboard by following the aft mooring rope. She appears as the upper body of a young woman scented with the sea, while her lower half is hazy and shifting like wave-shadows. Her long wet black hair constantly streams from her chest to the floor, branching into fine threads that cling to human skin. When a hush falls over the harbor at midnight, she stands in the lee of the shore or at a stern’s tip staring seaward, and will either echo the name of anyone who calls to her or answer with a piercing scream. At that cry she reaches a white hand to the aft rope, crosses soundlessly onto the boat, shrouds a sleeper’s face with her hair, and twists up blood strand by strand. By morning only a tide stain and a thin ring of hair remain at the pillow. Said to be the shape taken by the regrets of the drowned or a love unfulfilled by one who waited at the harbor, she is known as an isonna and also as nure-onna. The practice of avoiding the aft rope comes from this variant’s habit of treating ropes as roads. So long as she touches a line she can climb anywhere, but she does not swim about recklessly and prefers calm surfaces. On thin-moon nights some have seen her walk the water from shore, but only when the harbor tide lies asleep. She is weakened by light and prayer, so fishermen in unfamiliar ports avoid taking the aft rope, drop only the anchor, and keep the gunwale light burning. In Shimabara it is said that placing three dry thatch reeds from a roof upon one’s kimono while sleeping prevents tangling and wards her off. Those who touch her hair are seized by chill and lethargy, and the roar of the sea lingers in their ears for days. She is merciless toward mockery and rudeness, targeting first those who call her name without honorifics or taunt her with whistles. Conversely, she is said to avoid boats whose crews offer prayers for the lost at sea. Some tales claim that if you move behind her she resembles a rock shadow, and under moonlight her back becomes the outline of a wet reefs tone to let waves pass. The Isonna of the Aft-Rope Crossing is a grudge born at the liminal space of the harbor, hard to approach for those who keep the code and unforgiving toward arrogance, dropping her hair without mercy.

Edo-period strange tales and works of natural history describe Isonade as a sea monster that approaches without disturbing the surface. A crew may notice only a change in the water's color or the wind before the danger is already beside the ship. Its body resembles a shark, with coarse projections and needlelike growths extending from the back toward the tail. Isonade is most often associated with cold, cutting winds, and days of strong northerlies were treated with particular caution. Sailors avoided noisy work, put nets and ropes in order, and kept away from the rail. Such practical rules became part of the story's warning. Names and details differ from place to place, but the core remains the same: Isonade arrives invisibly, and by the time it is seen, a sweep of its barbed tail has already pulled someone overboard.

This interpretation shatters the illusion of the "innocent and brave little person" sanitized by later children's literature, restoring his true nature as the "extremely ambitious and cunning trickster" depicted in the original Muromachi *Otogizoushi*. This version of Issun-boshi carves out his destiny not through martial force, but through advanced psychological manipulation (off-board tactics) and amoral scheming. His greatest defining trait is his abnormal "upward mobility." Burdened with the supreme handicap in human society—a height of merely one sun (about 3 cm)—he never abandons his ambition to take a powerful man's daughter as his wife and achieve worldly success. His method of framing the princess using the "rice grain scheme," having her disowned by her father to socially isolate her, and creating a state of complete dependence on him, displays a cold-blooded Machiavellianism that puts modern psychopaths and con artists to shame. Even in his battle with the oni, he does not fight fair and square. He turns the desperate situation of being swallowed whole to his advantage, executing a gruesome internal destruction (assassination technique) by continuously stabbing the oni's internal organs from the safety of its body (stomach and eyeballs) with his needle-sword. Finally, he robs the oni of its treasure, the "Miracle Mallet," using it to rapidly grow his body and ultimately obtain the ultimate social status of a "perfect human man." He represents the darkest and most realistic rags-to-riches hero in Japanese literary history, overturning his inherent, irrational handicaps entirely through intellect, lies, and the plunder of otherworldly power (the oni's treasure).

Drawing on the Konjaku Monogatari-shū, later scholarship calls it “Ita-oni” (Board Ogre). The entity is either a board itself or a phenomenon dwelling in a board, taking a plank-like form that juts from roof beams or lattices. Its motive and will are unstated, but its core act is crushing sleepers to death. In Heian court and aristocratic residences, night watch and gate duty were crucial, and tales of the uncanny often served to reinforce discipline. Here too, it bypasses two armed men and strikes a defenseless sleeping place, embodying the ethic that negligence invites death. While it aligns with the idea of spirits inhabiting objects, it lacks tales of aging into autonomy or growth, and is told as a transient manifestation of a specific board appearing to suit the scene. There are no records of pursuit or capture, and it appears and vanishes swiftly without leaving traces.

This version, 'The Death Herald Crying Itsumade (Until When) / Itsumaden', goes beyond being a mere physical monstrous bird, highlighting its aspect as an 'ominous bird of prophecy' that embodies the anxiety of its era's society. In the *Taiheiki*, the appearance of this monstrous bird coincides with the political upheaval of the Kenmu Restoration (1334). The bird's cry of 'Itsumade (Until when?)' superficially incites the fear of death from plagues. However, in a literary and historical context, it acts as a political allegory, representing the agonizing cries of the common people exhausted under Emperor Go-Daigo's direct rule: 'Until when will this war and suffering continue?' In medieval literature, a monster appearing on the roof of the Emperor's palace (Shishinden) signified a warning from heaven (heavenly punishment) against the instability of royal authority and a lack of virtue. Furthermore, the sequence of exterminating this monstrous bird strongly mirrors the 'template' of Minamoto no Yorimasa's 'Nue extermination' in *The Tale of the Heike*. The structure—an unidentified chimera appearing at the night palace, its subjugation by a master archer, and the subsequent reward from the Emperor—served as an epic device to heroicize Oki Jirozaemon Hiroari as a 'new Yorimasa', thereby decorating the authority of the Kenmu government that commanded him. However, while the Nue cried with a voice 'like a bulbul', this bird uttered the clear, human-like words 'Itsumade', imbuing it with a much more direct curse upon its era. During the Edo period, when Toriyama Sekien drew it in his *Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki*, he added the depiction of it breathing terrifying flames from its mouth. The original text of the *Taiheiki* contains absolutely no mention of it breathing fire. This is thought to be the result of overlaying the imagery of mysterious lights flying in the night sky and the 'Kasha' (fire chariot) that carries the resentment of the dead. The visual impact of this 'flame' and 'nocturnal monstrous bird' decisively shifted its interpretation in the later Showa period toward a vengeful spirit, described as 'a monster born from the resentment emitted by abandoned corpses.' In this version, Itsumaden is not merely a bird of prey that attacks people; it is closer to an 'arbiter' that manifests using the resentment of those who died with no one to mourn them and the distortions of society as its energy. Therefore, its cry functions as a cold herald of death, striking directly at the listener's mind more than any physical attack could, questioning: 'Until when will your fate (or your sins) hold out?'

Ittan-Momen is a cloth-like being recorded as fluttering through the night in the Ōsumi Takayama region and attacking people. A 1942 dialect collection describes “Ittan-Monmen” as something like a length of cotton cloth about one tan long. Later local accounts tell of it winding around heads and necks, while Shigeru Mizuki’s design gave it a form known across Japan.

Based on Edo-period records and regional folktales. An aged char trout appears in the guise of a Buddhist monk and speaks to anglers. It often urges moderation, citing the temple’s domain or the pool’s lord, and departs quietly if given alms. Later it may be caught as a great char, where rice or rice cakes given as alms are found in its belly, revealing its identity. The motif reflects reverence for river and pool guardians and ideas akin to eel and other water deities. Depending on region, it appears as a harmless, didactic type, a warning type bearing deadly poison, or a salvific type that sacrifices itself to stop a levee breach, yet all embody folk norms that safeguard the boundary between waters and livelihoods.

Adheres strictly to Toriyama Sekien’s image and notes, avoiding later embellishments. The yokai is shown as the back view of a young woman standing by water, while the surface reflects the visage of an old man. The name draws on Dongfang Shuo’s “kaizai” expressions of wonder, suggesting Sekien likely fashioned an allegory. Youth and age, beauty and ugliness, front and back are opposed within a single frame, read as a design warning against being deceived by appearances. Firm oral traditions are scarce, so its character is defined largely through image interpretation. The readings iyaya or iyami vary by source, possibly evoking refusal or repulsion akin to “no,” but the literature offers no certainty.

Izutamahiko no Mikoto is a rare deity whose existence traces three stages of elevation: originally a real high-ranking monk, Kongobo Yusei (the fourth head of Konkoin, died 1613), who became a tengu and guardian spirit after death, and was finally redefined as a Shinto deity during the Meiji era's separation of Shinto and Buddhism. While the principal deity Konpira (Omononushi) originates from a foreign water god (Kumbhira) and presides over "maritime protection," Izutamahiko no Mikoto embodies the lineage of "mountain asceticism and tengu worship." The dual structure of the Mount Zozu faith—where a god of the sea and a tengu of the mountain reside together—is demonstrated through the relationship between the principal deity and the deity of the Okusha (Inner Shrine), making this deity highly significant in religious history. The Okusha, Izutama Shrine, sits at an altitude of 421 meters, 1,368 steps away from the main shrine, and is considered the second holiest site of Kotohira-gu.

This version organizes the image of the Jami as an example of Sekien aligning a Chinese-origin demonic concept within Japan’s yokai system. Its original sense is “pernicious enchantment,” classed among chimi, a noxious presence born from the gloom of mountains and wastelands that harms body and mind. Its form is not fixed in classical texts, and images function more as visualizations of an idea. The effects fall between illness and invisible curse—fever, hallucination, frenzy—sometimes triggered by contact with resentment or defilement. Countermeasures include bans, talismans, and wards; traditions speak of drawing a prison on the ground to summon and seal, binding it by asking its name, or transferring it into a vessel. In Japan it rarely became an object of distinct cult, often treated as a generic term alongside more-ryo. In folk terms it is distinguished from miasma, mononoke, and tsukumogami, a high-abstraction yokai appearing where the chill of wild places intersects with human grudge.

This form is based on the block-printed wording copied into Katō Eibian's Waga Koromo. Jinja-hime has a human face, two horns, a crimson belly, and a tail ending in three swordlike points. It appears on the shore as a messenger from the Dragon Palace and announces that abundant harvests will be followed by epidemic disease. Printed notices claimed that pasting Jinja-hime's likeness at a doorway, or viewing the image with devotion, could avert calamity and prolong life. As woodblock prints and hand copies circulated, the figure travelled far beyond the place of its reported appearance. Hirado's Himeuo and related prophetic mermaids from Echigo have similar pictures and captions, showing how popular responses to epidemic disease could spread through the publishing and peddling networks of the late Edo period. Attempts have been made to identify Jinja-hime with a real marine animal, but no such identification is supported by conclusive evidence. In folklore, it is better understood beside Amabie and Amabiko: a creature that comes from the sea, predicts harvest and illness, and leaves human beings an image to use as a charm. Its importance lies less in zoological identity than in the meeting of prophecy, print culture, and the wish to survive an epidemic.

Even among early modern ghost fire tales, the Jiosenbi is a rare example where "who, where, and why" are told in concrete detail. The victim is not a nameless monster, but a peddler selling a real-life sweet called Jiosen, and the scene is the Hizagashira Pine at Izuminawate near the Tokaido's Minakuchi post town—a large tree whose location people could identify. The conditions for the fire's occurrence are also restricted to "rainy nights." It is thought that the experience of seeing will-o'-the-wisps or fox fires on humid nights became intertwined with memories of murders along the highway, solidifying into a single ghost story. The fire as a symbol of obsession with money connects to the lineage of grudge tales born from the monetary economy of early modern cities. As an apparition rooted in the land of Minakuchi, Koka District, it holds value in being passed down alongside other local entities like the Katawa-guruma and Koka Saburo.

The jorōgumo is a composite yokai shaped by the name of a living spider species, early modern ghost stories of shapeshifting women, Toriyama Sekien’s depiction of a woman's body overlaid with spider legs, and regional legends of spider-haunted pools. In Tonoigusa, a visiting mother and child dissolve into a monstrous attic spider, while in Taihei Hyaku Monogatari, a maiden pleading for marriage proves to be an illusion cast by a tiny spider beneath the eaves. In waterside lore, it casts fine silk onto a person's foot—threads capable of dragging a huge log into the depths once transferred. The popular modern image of a lute-playing seductress who devours men does not appear in any single verified classical text.

Early modern Japanese accounts of Kaijin drew on two streams of information: reports imported from overseas and descriptions in domestic natural histories. The traditions eventually overlapped. Kaijin is broadly human in shape, but webbing between the digits and loose skin over the entire body set it apart. The skin gathers in folds at the waist and looks almost like a wide pair of hakama. Whether it understands language is uncertain. Most sources say it neither comprehends human speech nor answers, although a variant claims that one survived on land for an extended period. Its diet is equally unclear because many accounts emphasize its refusal of food offered by people. When a captured Kaijin is kept away from the water, it weakens quickly and may die within days. Some have suggested that observers mistook a sea lion or seal for a human figure. Another explanation treats the apparent clothing or folds as seaweed clinging to the body. Neither has been proven. Part of the tradition came through Nagasaki in reports carried by ship, and part came from sightings along the Japanese coast; names and dates differ from source to source, so the material cannot be reduced to one clearly defined animal. Kaijin is best understood as a representative early modern account of an uncanny creature captured at the edge of the sea.

Kainan Hōshi is inseparable from the taboos observed in the Izu Islands on the twenty-fourth day of the first lunar month. It is described as the vengeful dead of maritime disasters. Some origin stories point to a hated island official; others tell of a group of young people killed together in a storm. The resentful spirits cross from offshore in washbasins or small boats, and anyone who sees them may suffer calamity. That night, households cover their entrances with baskets, place branches of holly and tobira—Japanese cheesewood—in the storm shutters, close themselves indoors, and avoid even outdoor trips to the privy. The next day, the tobira is burned and the crop forecast from its cracking sounds and the way the branches swell. Customs differ considerably from island to island. At Senzu on Izu Ōshima, the visitor is called Hiimi-sama and remains the object of shrine rites; one account assigns a particular family to wait beside the shore through the night. On Kōzushima, shrine priests preserve a solemn nocturnal reception that gives the vengeful spirit the character of a visiting deity. On Miyakejima, plates and earthenware are placed at doorways and small children are put to bed early. Over time, these practices became a shared rule for guarding the boundary between sea and community. Stories warn that anyone who mocks Kainan Hōshi or breaks the taboo may encounter strange events or fall ill. Researchers have also noted that related traditions are scarce in the southern islands, so the distribution is uneven. Kainan Hōshi is not a general name for every maritime ghost. It belongs to the calendar, ritual life, and one recurring night of the Izu Islands.

Kama-itachi is a name for a wind-borne anomaly found in Edo-period art, essays, and oral lore, referring both to the phenomenon and its alleged agent. It is tied to whirlwinds and chill gusts in northern and mountainous regions, noted for razor-like lacerations when one stumbles on the road, delayed pain or bleeding, and frequent injuries to the legs. Its true nature varies across sources: invisible minor spirits, beasts riding the wind, or acts of deities coexist as explanations. In Shin’etsu it is said to strike those who break calendrical taboos, and in Hida a three-stage action is told. In parts of Chubu and Kinki, the whirlwind itself is called kama-itachi, while Edo essays report beast tracks left after a dust devil. Under regional aliases like Tosa’s “Field Sickle,” funerary tools turned uncanny are blamed for similar wounds. In haiku it settled as a winter season word and a sign of wind-borne calamity. This version limits itself to attested sources, avoids overlinking to specific places or persons, and presents regional types side by side.

An interpretation based on Toriyama Sekien’s Hyakki Tsurezurebukuro image and inscription. The water jar faces forward, its rim becomes the mouth, and patterns on the body are read as eyes and nose. The inscription pivots on the phrase “calamity turns to good fortune,” entrusting the vessel with the idea that blessings fill after adversity. Placed at the end of the volume to serve a congratulatory cadence, its nature is read as leaning more toward good than ill. Though grouped with tsukumogami familiar to early modern life, independent oral lore or怪談 are scarce. Later retellings expand the “inexhaustible when drawn” motif into control over water’s increase, decrease, and measured pouring, but the original is a symbolic painting with verse, and narrative deeds are limited.

Rooted in the Treasure Compendium account and given concrete form in the Otogizōshi Tamura tales, this type portrays the yokai as a shape-shifting brigand haunting the strategic pass at Narazaka, preying on travelers and tribute. The monk guise, gigantic body, and golden sling-stones became fixed traits. The golden stones are ranked as Tarō, Jirō, and Saburō, each escalating in power and boasted to shatter mountains and armor. The usual slayer is Inase Gorō Sakanoue no Toshimune, who leads troops, blunts the stones with traps and quick wits, and relentlessly pursues the creature with secret whistling arrows. The tale ends in surrender and execution, restoring safety to a key route. It is understood as a specter embodying the dangers and brigandage of local slopes and passes, emphasizing metallic gleam and the terror of flying stones.

Reconstructed after the iconography seen in the Matsui Library Hyakki Yagyō handscroll and other monster scrolls held by institutions such as the National Museum of Japanese History: a bird-faced figure brandishing a raised hammer. Following the sources, its name is noted as Kanezuchibō, with a comment on its affinity to the cognate form Daichiuchi; its deeds and origins remain unknown. While the hammer suggests a tool-turned-tsukumogami reading, no explicit statement in the sources confirms this. It is most often depicted as a member of a procession, one of the recurring motifs in Hyakki Yagyō imagery. Later metaphorical readings (e.g., caution or self-effacement) are treated as secondary interpretations and not conflated with the original tradition.

"Kappa" is not, in truth, the name of any single creature. It is a collective term—the word by which the whole of Japan, each region in its own dialect, has called the water spirits that dwell in rivers and ponds. In southern Kyushu it is the Garappa; in Tōhoku, the Medochi; in Shikoku, the Enko; in Chūbu, the Kawaranbe; in Kinki, the Gataro; in Kyushu again, the Hyosube. From place to place the name and the form shift a little, and the total is said to exceed eighty. Some are close to monkeys, some shaggy with fur, some moving in troops. Yet all share a common core: they live by the water, hold water in the dish on their heads, and drag away people and horses. The kappa, in other words, is the shared name of a vast clan into which all the water spirits of the land have gathered. It is the reading of folklore studies that binds these many variants into one. Yanagita Kunio and Orikuchi Shinobu held that the kappa was originally a god who governed water—a water deity—who declined into a yokai as belief in it faded. The fact that in the komahiki legends the kappa always tries to pull a horse or ox into the water may itself be a memory of festivals in which horses and oxen were offered to a water deity in prayer for a good harvest. In Kappa Komahiki Kō (1948), Ishida Eiichirō compared this bond between horse and water deity with myths from across Eurasia. Precisely because it is a god of water, the kappa draws water to the fields, grants fish, and even hands down bone-setting remedies—while also drowning people and pulling out their shirikodama. Its twin aspects, blessing and curse, are the two sides of a fallen water deity. Traces of the water deity show even in the turning of the seasons. Across western Japan it is widely told that at the autumn equinox the kappa goes up into the mountains to become a yamawaro, and at the spring equinox comes down again to the river to return to being a kappa. The field god who descends from the mountains to the villages in spring, the mountain god who returns to the peaks in autumn—that idea of coming and going maps exactly onto the exchange between kappa and yamawaro. In this way the clan’s variants, too, are bound to one another as a single continuous terrain. The clan even has its legend of a chieftain. On the Kuma River in Kyushu the tale survives of Kusenbō, a kappa general who crossed over from the continent at the head of nine thousand kindred. Having drawn the wrath of Katō Kiyomasa, he was driven from the region, moved to the Chikugo River, and became one of the retainers of the Suitengū shrine in Kurume. That a kappa was imagined not as a lone monster but as a clan linked from river to river is plainly expressed in this tale of a boss. Places tied to the kappa are found all over the country. At Tōno in Iwate there is a "Kappa Pool" (Kappa-buchi) where kappa are said to appear, and at Jōken-ji temple, in honor of a kappa that put out a fire with the water from its head-dish, stand "kappa guardian lions" whose heads are shaped like a dish. At Lake Ushiku in Ibaraki the painter Ogawa Usen, who depicted kappa all his life, was called "Usen of the Kappa," and Tanushimaru in Fukuoka styles itself "the birthplace of the kappa clan." In the Kappabashi district of Tokyo a legend tells of Sumida River kappa who came each night to help a merchant pressing ahead with flood-control works. To this day kappa festivals are held in many places, and the kappa lends its name to sake brands and town mascots alike—remaining the most beloved of all Japan’s water yokai.

This is an interpretation of the one-eyed, one-legged paper umbrella monster, typified by post-Edo period kusazoushi (illustrated entertainment books) and performing arts. In this version, Karakasa-kozou is not a terrifying vengeful spirit that takes human lives, but exhibits an extremely comical and mischievous nature, lurking in the dark to surprise passersby and enjoying their reactions. Although its iconographic roots trace back to the Muromachi period's *Hyakki Yagyo Emaki*, the widely recognized form of "the umbrella handle becoming one leg, with a single eye and long tongue sticking out from the umbrella's fabric" is the result of repetitive production in late Edo "monster playing cards," sideshows, and kabuki trick props. Lined up with visually impactful yokai like the Rokurokubi and Mitsume-kozou, it became a staple star of "toy prints" for children due to the amusement of its design. It appears in alleyways and under eaves at night, hopping on one leg while rustling its frame, causing visual and onomatopoeic strange phenomena, such as licking human faces with its long tongue, but it causes no essential harm. Because it lacks region-specific legends, its haunts and activities are freely adapted depending on the medium, which ironically made it easy to adapt to modern movies and animation. In a sense, it is the ultimate form of Edo townspeople culture completely deodorizing the primal fear of "tsukumogami"—the idea that old objects possess souls—into a "character (toy)" and sublimating it into entertainment.