Aka Manto赤マント
red paper, blue paper
RegionalA masked figure in a red cloak appears in the stall and asks the trapped occupant: "Red paper, or blue paper?" Red: you're slashed and bled.
Field-guide entries
In this wing
Aonyōbō青女房
the court lady of the ruined house
Edo catalogIn the abandoned mansion of a fallen noble house sits a lady-in-waiting who never left: layered in the moth-eaten kimono of dead fashions, face painted courtier-white, eyebrows drawn high, teeth blackened — grooming herself, forever, for a caller who is not coming.
Chirizuka-kaiō & Fuguruma-yōhi
the king of the dust-heap and the book-cart's ghost-consort
Edo catalogSekien opened his tsukumogami catalog (1784) with a horned red king prying open a great chest — the Chirizuka-kaiō, "monster king of the dust-heap" — and, plates later, a courtly woman rising from a cart of books: Fuguruma-yōhi, the book-cart's ghostly consort.
Dodomeki百々目鬼
the hundred coin-eyes
ChronicleA woman whose arms carry a hundred eyes — Sekien, Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki.
Hanako-san花子さん
the girl in the third stall
Modern inventionThird floor, girls' bathroom, third stall.
Hasshaku-sama八尺様
the eight-foot woman (netlore, dated 2008)
NetloreBorn on 2channel's occult board, August 26, 2008 (the "scary stories that are no joke" thread, post #196): a woman around eight shaku — 240 cm — in white or black dress and white hat, voiced with the eerie "po po po," targeting the young and killing "within days".
Honjo Nanafushigi本所七不思議
Edo's seven wonders (nine of them)
RegionalThe "seven wonders" of Honjo (Sumida, Tokyo) — of which the record keeps nine, "eight or more episodes exist" by variant transmission: Edo's marshy east bank curating its own strange-set, polished by rakugo tellers into the city's first packaged mini-canon.
Issieイッシー
the lake with a mascot
RegionalLake Ikeda, Kagoshima — Kyūshū's largest caldera lake — and its resident unknown.
Jinmenken人面犬
the human-faced dog
RegionalA stray dog rummages garbage in a night alley; it looks up — a middle-aged human face — and mutters "leave me alone." Or: on the expressway, something overtakes your car at 100 km/h and looks back at you. The jinmenken is the modern wing's absurdist entry — equal parts horror and deadpan comedy — and it has the wing's best provenance twist: an Edo-period ancestor with a paper trail.
Kamikiri髪切り
the hair-cutter
Edo catalogYou walk home at night; nothing happens.
Kanbari-nyūdō加牟波理入道
the privy priest
ChronicleA monk-figure in the privy, spewing birds from his mouth — Sekien, Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki (1779).
Kejōrō毛倡妓
the hair courtesan
Edo catalogYoshiwara, evening.
Kerakera-onna倩兮女
the cackling woman
ChronicleOver the wall, higher than the wall, a giant woman in a kimono leans and laughs — kerakera, the cackle — at whoever passes.
Komayō駒妖
the shogi enchantress (SUSPECTED HOAX — the source list's own contamination specimen)
NetloreA beautiful enchantress in a midnight-blue kimono who appears on full-moon nights in Kansai's "chess bars and net cafés," challenging victims to a shogi-variant; losers' souls become yūrei; origins vaguely "traced to the Kamakura era, though historical sources are lacking".
Korōri虎狼狸
the tiger-wolf-tanuki that was cholera
RegionalJapan's word for its worst 19th-century plague arrived by ship: cholera → korera → korori — punning on mikka korori, "drop dead in three days".
Kotoribakoコトリバコ
the box (netlore, dated 2005; handle with care)
NetlorePosted June 6, 2005 on 2channel's occult board (the same "scary stories" thread-family that later produced Hasshaku-sama): a cursed wooden box from rural Shimane, its lore specifying construction (animal blood, then remains of children by count — one through seven named grades, the eighth, "Hakkai," taboo), graduated lethality by contents, and containment "by Shintō shrines through multi-family rotation systems".
Kuchisake-onna口裂け女
the slit-mouthed woman
Modern inventionThe masked woman who stops you on the street: "Am I pretty?" Say no and die; say yes and the mask comes off — a mouth slit ear to ear — "Even like this?" The kuchisake-onna is the yokai tradition proving itself alive in the late 20th century: a fully-formed monster with rules, weaknesses, and a documented national panic with newspaper coverage and police response.
Kunekuneくねくね
the wriggler in the fields
NetloreFar across the summer rice paddies, something tall and white wriggles — boneless, like a strip of cloth or paper in wind that isn't blowing.
Kyonshiiキョンシー
the hopping corpse's Japanese career
NetloreThe jiangshi — China's rigid corpse that hops, arms straight out, an ofuda talisman on the forehead that immobilizes it when placed — arrived in Japan not by tale-collection or catalog but by film distribution: the late-1980s Hong Kong boom, defined by the Mr.
Maneki-neko招き猫
the beckoning cat
RegionalThe upraised paw in every shop window — and behind it, three competing founding tales, each a complete theology:
Ningenニンゲン
the white giant of the whaling grounds
NetloreBorn May 2002 on 2channel's occult board: the "Ningen" — "entirely white aquatic beings measuring tens of meters long," reported from Antarctic waters; northern sightings get the name Hitogata.
Noderabō野寺坊
the monk of the abandoned temple
RegionalA figure in rotted vestments stands beside the bell of a temple no one serves anymore.
Oitekeboriおいてけ堀
the moat that demands your catch
ChronicleEdo's Honjo lowlands, Kansei era (1789–1801): fishermen with a good day's catch at the moat hear, from the water, "oiteke...
Ōkaburo大禿
the giant page-girl
Edo catalogTaller than the folding screen beside it, bald-headed, in a chrysanthemum-patterned kimono: Sekien's ōkaburo — the "great kamuro," the pleasure-quarter's child-attendant scaled to giant — with a caption invoking the Chrysanthemum Lad (Kiku Jidō), the Chinese immortal who lived forever on chrysanthemum dew.
Ōzatō大座頭
the giant blind minstrel in the storm
ChronicleA giant blind minstrel — "tattered trousers and wooden clogs, carrying a staff," "wandering the night in wind and rain," claiming he's on his way to the pleasure houses to play shamisen — Sekien, Konjaku Hyakki Shūi (1784).
Ryūgū竜宮
the palace where time runs differently
ChronicleThe dragon king's palace under the sea — the capital every sea-entry in this bestiary has been orbiting.
Shichinin Misaki七人ミサキ
the seven who take one
RegionalAlong the waters of Shikoku and Chūgoku travels a procession of exactly seven dead — disaster dead, mostly drowned.
Shinigami死神
the death god who is younger than he looks
Edo catalogThe world's most famous "ancient Japanese death god" is an Edo invention.
Takaonna高女
the tall woman
RegionalA woman whose lower body telescopes upward to bring her face level with second-story windows — specifically the second floors of brothels, where in the standard telling she peers in at "what she could never have".
Teke Tekeテケテケ
the torso that runs
Modern inventionA sound in the dark behind you: teke teke teke — elbows on pavement.
Tōfu-kozō豆腐小僧
the tofu boy
Edo catalogA small boy in a bamboo hat, holding out a tray with a single block of tofu stamped with a maple leaf.
Ushi no Kubi牛の首
the story too frightening to exist
Picture only"The Cow's Head": a kaidan of which "the title and that it was an extremely frightening tale are all that survive" — everyone who heard it died, or fell mute, or forbade retelling; therefore no one alive knows the story; therefore it cannot be checked; therefore it is the most frightening story in Japan.