All yokai

A

• Abe no Seimei安倍晴明ChronicleJapan's yokai keep meeting the same man.
• Abura-akago油赤子Edo catalogA ball of flame drifts into the house, settles by the andon lamp — and becomes a baby, lapping the lamp-oil with an infant's absorption; done, it turns back to fire and floats out.
• Abura-sumashi油すましRegionalOn the Kusazumigoe pass in Amakusa, a grandmother tells her grandchildren: "long ago, an abura-sumashi used to appear here" — and a voice answers from the empty pass: "I still do!" That perfectly timed punchline is essentially the entire attested folklore of the abura-sumashi — and it's enough: the yokai as jump-scare with impeccable comedic instincts.
• Aka Manto赤マント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.
• Akabeko赤べこRegionalThe nodding red papier-mâché cow of Aizu.
• Akaei赤ゑいの魚Edo catalogA red stingray "exceeding three ri (12 km) in body length" — so large that when sand piles on its back and it surfaces to shed the sediment, it is mistaken for an island — Ehon Hyaku Monogatari (1841).
• Akamata-Kuromataアカマタ・クロマタRegionalAt the harvest festivals (lunar May–June) of the Yaeyama Islands, the visiting deities come: Akamata (red-faced, male) and Kuromata (black-faced, female) — masked, covered entirely in vines, about 180 cm, "with distinctive eyes, teeth, and whiskers that reflect light mysteriously".
• Akaname垢嘗Edo catalogThe akaname licks the scum from your bathtub.
• Akashita赤舌Picture onlyA black cloud hangs over an irrigation sluice gate.
• Akateko赤手児Picture onlyFrom an old honey-locust tree beside an elementary school in Hachinohe (Mutsu/Aomori), disembodied red child's hands emerge.
• AkkorokamuiRegionalIn Uchiura (Funka) Bay, Hokkaidō: an octopus the size of the bay's weather — accounts run to a hectare of body, 100 meters across — so red that "the redness shines out to the skies," which is its mercy: sailors see the glow and steer away.
• Akubōzu & Agubanba灰坊主RegionalAkita's hearth-yokai: the akubōzu ("ash monk"), living in the ash of the irori in Senboku and Ogachi districts, "appear when play with the ash".
• Akugyo悪魚RegionalThe akugyo — "evil fish" (悪魚, also 悪樓) — the monster-fish of the seas off Kibi (Okayama): "large in size and known to capsize entire ships, before feasting upon the drowning sailors".
• Akurojin-no-hi悪路神の火RegionalIse Province, rainy nights, near Inokusa-ga-fuchi: a fire moving 60–90 cm above the ground, "like a lantern carried by someone" — carried by no one.
• AmabieアマビエRegionalIn 1846 a glowing something surfaced nightly off Higo Province (Kumamoto).
• AmaburakosagiアマブラコサギRegionalUwajima, Ehime: the amaburakosagi — named from amabura (Uwajima dialect for the red mottled low-temperature burns of too long an idle winter at the irori) + kosagi (to scrape).
• AmamikyuアマミキヨRegionalThe Ryukyuan creator: Amamikyu (Amamikiyo, Amamiku), who made the islands and the people "under orders from a higher god".
• Amanojaku天邪鬼ChronicleThe amanojaku is pure contrariness with a body: order it, and it does the opposite; it "reads people's hearts and plays pranks in opposition to them."
• Amanozako天逆毎Edo catalogSusanoo — the storm god whose rages fill half of Japanese myth — once let his fury build until he vomited it out, and it stood up: Amanozako, a goddess with "a beastly head with a long nose, long ears, and great fangs so strong they can chew metal blades ragged," flying a thousand li at will [wikipedia-amanozako, per the Wakan Sansai Zue; origin per the Kujiki].
• Amaterasu天照大御神ChronicleEvery darkness in this bestiary descends from one afternoon when the actual sun left.
• Amazake-babaa甘酒婆RegionalLate at night, a knock, and an old woman's voice: "Might you have any amazake?" Answer — answer at all — and sickness enters: smallpox, in the age when smallpox was the terror; a cold, in gentler tellings.
• Ame-no-Uzume天鈿女命ChronicleWhen the sun goddess sealed herself in the Heavenly Rock Cave and the world went dark, the gods didn't send a warrior — they sent a comedian.
• Amefurikozō雨降小僧Edo catalogA small boy under an oversized umbrella-hat, out in the wet dusk, lantern in hand — where he walks, rain falls.
• AmemasuアメマスRegionalThe white-spotted char, at legend-scale.
• Ameonna雨女Edo catalogWhere she walks, it rains.
• Amikiri網切Edo catalogA serpent-bird-lobster with pincer claws, drawn snipping through nets: fishing nets drying on poles, mosquito nets over sleepers, sudare blinds.
• Amorōnagu天降女子RegionalAmami Ōshima's celestial maiden: Amorōnagu — the name itself the doctrine, "girl who fell from heaven" (天降女子) — descending "to bathe in the secluded pools and waterfalls of ravines", with the hagoromo feather-mantle marking her origin.
• AnmoアンモRegionalThe Kitakami mountains' visitor: Anmo — hairy, strong-smelling, tengu-classed with a human-like face (and, oddly specific, "swollen abdomens...
• Aoandon青行燈Edo catalogThe aoandon is the ghost that ghost stories summon.
• Aobōzu青坊主RegionalThe aobōzu is one name wearing a different mask in every prefecture: a one-eyed monk by a thatched hut in Sekien; a child-snatcher in spring wheat fields; a toilet-haunting blue face in Tōhoku schools; a small mountain god demanding sumo matches in Yamaguchi.
• Aonyōbō青女房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.
• Aosaginohi青鷺火Edo catalogSome night-fires had feathers.
• Arikura-no-baba蟻鞍の婆RegionalTakayama's resident wonder-worker: Arikura-no-baba — "the ant-saddle hag" — an old woman of supernatural powers: healing, divination, weather-work.
• Ashiarai-yashiki足洗邸RegionalA hatamoto residence in Honjo: nightly, a colossal hair-covered foot crashes through the ceiling with one demand — "wash it" (arae).
• Ashimagari足まがりRegionalKagawa's night roads: something wraps around your legs as you walk — "cotton-like" to the touch, never seen, tripping travelers.
• Ashinaga-tenaga足長手長RegionalTwo peoples from the Shanhai Jing's far countries — the long-legged (chōkyaku) and long-armed (chōhi) — who fish as one composite machine: "the long-legged person carried the long-armed person on their back, with the latter catching prey" in the surf.
• AyakashiアヤカシRegionalNot a creature but a category: ayakashi is "a general term for sea yokai and strange phenomena" — the ocean's counterpart to the mountains' chimimōryō.
• Azukiarai小豆洗いRegionalBy a stream at dusk: shoki...
• Azukibabaa小豆婆RegionalFrom Miyagi down through Kantō: the sound of azuki beans being ground by a riverside at dusk, attributed to an old woman — azukibabaa, also azuki-togibabaa.
• Azukihakari小豆はかりRegionalIndoors, from the ceiling: "the sound of scattering beans" — a few at first, growing "increasingly loud, eventually resembling a whole bushel" — plus footsteps, geta-clatter, and water-splashing; invisible, harmless, Edo-attested (the classic haunt: a residence in Azabu, Tokyo).

B

• Bakekujira化鯨ChronicleOn a storm-lit night off the Izumo coast, fishermen rowed toward a great white shape and found — bones: a living whale skeleton, swimming, wreathed in strange fish and unknown birds.
• Bakeneko化け猫RegionalThe bakeneko is the house cat under suspicion: one tail (unlike the nekomata's fork), and a repertoire of unsettling domestic behaviors — licking the lamp oil, speaking, dancing with a napkin on its head.
• Bakezōri化け草履Picture onlyAt night, from the entryway, the sound of small feet — a straw sandal running the halls on legs of its own, one eye wide, chanting its nonsense anthem:
• Bakotsu馬骨RegionalFrom the Tosa Obake Zōshi scroll: a horse-demon — "a horse that became a spirit after being burned to death in a fire" — drawn confronting a toad-yokai inside a mosquito net.
• Baku獏ChronicleThe baku is the gentlest creature in the whole night parade: a chimera assembled — the legend says — from "the spare pieces that were left over when the gods finished creating all other animals," whose job is to eat nightmares.
• Basan波山RegionalIn the remote bamboo groves of Iyo lives a chicken the size of a turkey, comb blazing red, that breathes fire which is cold — a glowing spectral flame that ignites nothing.
• Bashō-no-sei芭蕉精ChronicleThe banana plant's spirit, walking as a person — Sekien, Konjaku Hyakki Shūi.
• Benzaiten弁才天RegionalFrom India's Saraswatī came Japan's goddess of "all that flows: water, music, arts, love, wisdom, wealth, fortune" — the biwa-holding lady of ponds and islands whose shrines dot every water margin in Japan.
• Betobeto-sanべとべとさんRegionalWalking a dark road, you hear footsteps behind you — beto, beto, beto — matching yours.
• Binbōgami貧乏神RegionalA shabby, emaciated old man, pallid, carrying a straw fan, who moves into your storage closet and makes your household poor.
• Biwa-bokuboku琵琶牧々ChronicleA biwa lute for a head, a fine kimono, seated in the tatami room at night "singing and plinking while lamenting the neglect of his former owner".
• Boroboroton暮露暮露団Edo catalogThe futon too old and ragged to use — but kept anyway, "for various reasons" — rises at night as the boroboroton: the tattered quilt with eyes, shambling on its own corners [ja-boroboroton, per the Daijisen Plus gloss; sekien-1784].
• Bunbuku Chagama分福茶釜RegionalThe tanuki-kettle, in its two canonical shapes:
• Burabura不落不落RegionalA lantern tied to bamboo, tilted over the road, its split seam hanging open like a mouth — Sekien, Hyakki Tsurezure Bukuro.
• Buruburu震々ChronicleThat cold ripple up the back of your neck when fear arrives — Sekien named it.
• Byōbunozoki屏風のぞきChronicleA figure leaning over the top of a folding screen to watch the people behind it — Sekien's Konjaku Hyakki Shūi (1784).

C

• Chirizuka-kaiō & Fuguruma-yōhiEdo 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.
• Chōchin-obake提灯おばけPicture onlyA paper lantern split across the middle into a mouth, tongue lolling, one eye above — the kasa-obake's inseparable partner in every haunted house.
• Chōchinbi提灯火RegionalRows of lights where no road is: in Tokushima, "dozens of lantern fires appeared simultaneously, resembling illuminated electric bulbs in a row" — read as supernatural beings out with lanterns; foxes usually blamed.

D

• DaidarabotchiだいだらぼっちChronicleThe giant so large the landscape is his biography: lakes are his footprints, hills are his discarded shell-heaps, and one clumsy afternoon of comparing mountains explains why Mount Tsukuba has a split peak.
• Danzaburou-danuki団三郎狸RegionalSado Island has tanuki lore and — famously — no fox lore, and folk tradition knows exactly whose doing that is: Danzaburou, the island's boss tanuki, who kept the kitsune out permanently by out-conning the con artists.
• Datsue-ba奪衣婆RegionalThe dead's first appointment.
• Dodomeki百々目鬼ChronicleA woman whose arms carry a hundred eyes — Sekien, Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki.
• Dōnotsura胴面Picture onlyA human body "missing everything from the neck up," its enormous face displayed on the torso.
• Dorotabō泥田坊Edo catalogFrom the mud of a neglected rice paddy, at night, rises a one-eyed, three-fingered figure, black with muck, crying "Return my field!
• Dōsojin道祖神RegionalAt village boundaries, mountain passes, and crossroads: the dōsojin — stone (occasionally wood) guardians warding epidemics and evil spirits, protecting travelers and children, and — in their most charming form — carved as male-female couples holding hands or embracing, patrons of marriage and offspring.

E

• Emperor Sutoku崇徳天皇RegionalThe angriest ghost in Japanese history was an emperor.
• En no Gyōja役小角ChronicleA 7th-century ascetic (traditional dates 634–701), exiled to Izu Ōshima in 699 for — per the official Shoku Nihongi — "bewitch the people with his words".
• Enenra煙々羅Edo catalogAbove a bonfire, the smoke stops obeying the wind: it gathers, folds, and takes human shape — a face, a reaching figure, woven of "lightweight-fabric smoke" (the name's literal reading — ra is thin silk gauze).
• Enkō猿猴RegionalThe western water-child, monkey-flavored: hairy, sized like a three-year-old, long-limbed, clawed, "slimy skin like catfish"; a captured specimen reportedly red-faced with "human-like feet and retractable hands".
• Enma Daiō閻魔大王RegionalThe underworld Izanami cursed and Buddhism systematized got a magistrate: Enma Daiō — Japan's King Yama — "the judge of the dead," presiding over hell's courts, sentencing souls by conduct.

F

• Fuguruma-yōhi文車妖妃RegionalA woman rising from the fuguruma — the document-cart of palaces and temples — Sekien, Hyakki Tsurezure Bukuro.
• Fūjin風神ChronicleThe wind as a demon-figured god with a bag — the sack over Fūjin's shoulders from which all weather pours.
• Fukuro-mujina袋狢RegionalA badger-figure — female, in the drawing — carrying a bedding-bag (shukuchoku-bukuro): Sekien, Hyakki Tsurezure Bukuro, adapting a figure from the Muromachi Hyakki Yagyō Emaki.
• Funayūrei船幽霊Edo catalogThe drowned, come back for company: funayūrei are the ghosts of shipwreck dead who surface beside boats — as ghostly crews, phantom ships, or lights in fog — and beg a ladle (hishaku).
• Furaribiふらり火Edo catalogA fire that has contents: a bird- or beast-form inside the flame — Sekien's version "a bird with features reminiscent of Garuda"; other scrolls give dog-faced birds ringed in fire (Hyakkai Zukan, Bakemono-zukushi lineage).
• Fūri風狸Edo catalogA small leopard-marked cat-thing that rides the wind between trees — "jumping very high with the wind, crossing cliffs" — the fūri (Chinese fengli, "wind leopard-cat"), documented in the 10th-century Taiping Yulan and the Bencao Gangmu, carried to Japan by the Wakan Sansai Zue and Sekien's plate.
• Furu-utsubo古空穂RegionalAn old quiver, crawling — Sekien, Hyakki Tsurezure Bukuro, adapting a bow-carrying quiver figure from the Muromachi Hyakki Yagyō scroll.
• Furusoma古杣RegionalIn most of Shikoku the phantom tree-felling (tengu-daoshi) has a culprit: the furusoma — "the old woodsman" — "the ghost of a lumberjack that died after being crushed by a felled tree," in the fuller telling while cutting illegally.
• Furutsubaki-no-rei古椿の霊RegionalThe camellia drops its flowers whole — the entire head falling at once with a soft weight, not petal by petal.
• Fusuma衾RegionalSado Island, Edo period: a large cloth "like wind-blown fabric" drops out of nowhere and wraps your head.
• Futakuchi-onna二口女RegionalA woman with a second mouth hidden under the hair at the back of her skull — a mouth that must be fed, that mutters and demands, whose hair moves like tendrils to feed it.

G

• Gagoze元興寺ChronicleAt Gangō-ji temple in Nara, in the Asuka period, attendants at the bell tower kept dying in the night.
• Gaki餓鬼ChronicleThe gaki are hunger perfected as punishment: reborn for greed into bodies with enormous bellies and needle-thin throats — appetite made infinite, satisfaction made impossible.
• Gangikozō岸涯小僧ChronicleA hair-covered child-figure squatting at the water's edge, file-like teeth bared, eating fish — Sekien, Konjaku Hyakki Shūi (1784).
• GashadokuroがしゃどくろModern inventionA skeleton ten-plus meters tall, assembled from the massed bones of the unburied — battlefield and famine dead — walking at 2 a.m., teeth clattering gachi gachi, biting the heads off travelers.
• GeGeGe no Kitarōゲゲゲの鬼太郎RegionalThe single most consequential work in modern yokai history: Mizuki's 1960 manga (anime from 1968, then roughly once a decade through 2020 — six series, each generation meeting the yokai anew).
• Gotokuneko五徳猫Edo catalogBy the hearth, a two-tailed cat — nekomata anatomy on domestic duty — wears an iron gotoku (the trivet that holds kettles over the fire) upside-down on its head like a crown, and blows the embers to life with a bamboo fire-tube.
• Gozu and Mezu牛頭馬頭ChronicleThe dead don't walk themselves to court.
• Gozu Tennō牛頭天王RegionalThe disease-spirit wing has a king: Gozu Tennō, the Ox-Headed Heavenly King — an imported Buddhist deity who is both "a cause of and protector against epidemics", merged by the Kamakura period (possibly from the 877 epidemic onward) with Susanoo himself.
• Guhin狗賓RegionalA widespread alternate name for the tengu class — written "dog-guest" (狗賓) — with the interesting material not in the being but in how people handled the word and the appetite:
• Gyūki / Ushi-oni牛鬼RegionalWestern Japan's great composite demon: ox-headed, and after that, negotiable — demon body, "bovine head with spider abdomen" in Edo scrolls, monkey-faced tiger-bodied winged forms, even serpent-headed whale-bodied sea versions.

H

• Hakanohi墓の火ChronicleA flame blazing from a five-tiered stone pagoda carved with incomplete Sanskrit characters, in an overgrown graveyard — Sekien, Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki (1779).
• Hakuja白蛇RegionalThe white snake as institution: venerated as Benzaiten's messengers and wealth-bringers, enshrined at temples and shrines nationwide, with the standing folk terms — "killing them brings misfortune...
• Hakutaku白澤Edo catalogThe hakutaku is the patron beast of this very project: the Chinese Bai Ze, who — the legend says — met the Yellow Emperor and dictated a complete catalog of every ghost and demon in the world (the Bái Zé Tú).
• Hakuzōsu白蔵主Edo catalogAn old fox learns a hunter is setting traps — the hunter's uncle is the priest Hakuzōsu, so the fox becomes him: robes, voice, sermon and all, and visits the nephew to preach against fox-hunting.
• Hanako-san花子さんModern inventionThird floor, girls' bathroom, third stall.
• Hannya般若Edo catalogThe most famous face in the tradition is carved: hannya, the Noh mask of the jealous woman become demon — bull horns, metal eyes, the leering mouth.
• Haradashi腹出しRegionalThe haradashi — "belly-exposer" — a shapeshifter whose constant is "the large, silly-looking face which appears on the creature's enormous stomach".
• Harionago針女子RegionalOn the night roads of Ehime: a beautiful woman, hair to the ground, laughing at a young man.
• Hashihime橋姫ChronicleThe Hashihime begins as pathos — in the Kokin Wakashū (c.
• Hasshaku-sama八尺様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".
• Hatahiro機尋Edo catalogCloth off the loom become a serpent: a woman weaving while "harboring resentment toward her absent husband imbues the fabric with her malice," and the woven bolt transforms into a snake that goes searching for the husband — Sekien, Konjaku Hyakki Shūi (1784).
• Haya-tarō / Shippeitarō早太郎RegionalThe tradition's greatest dog.
• Heikegani平家蟹ChronicleAt Dan-no-ura, in 1185, the Taira clan died in the sea — the child Emperor Antoku drowned in his grandmother's arms rather than be taken.
• Heiroku幣六Edo catalogA half-naked figure clutching a gohei — the zigzag-papered ritual wand — hurrying through the dark.
• HibagonヒバゴンRegionalIn the early 1970s, around Mt.
• Hidarugamiヒダル神RegionalOn a mountain pass, a healthy traveler is struck — mid-stride — by hunger so total the legs stop working: "acute hunger, fatigue, and numbness of the limbs...
• Hiderigami魃Edo catalogThe opposite number of every rain spirit in the tradition: where the hiderigami walks, water dies.
• Hihi狒々RegionalA monstrous ape of superhuman strength that "often abduct women" — the villain behind Japan's classic human-sacrifice tale-type: the village that must yearly present a daughter to the mountain's "god," until a traveler (and, in the famous telling, the black dog Shippeitarō) exposes the god as a beast and kills it.
• Hiiragi-iwashi柊鰯RegionalAt Setsubun, a holly sprig with a roasted sardine head goes up at the doorway.
• Hikeshibaba火消婆Edo catalogAn old woman who exists to make it dark: the hikeshibaba blows out household lanterns — at gatherings, or over travelers carrying their light home.
• Himamushinyūdō火間虫入道Edo catalogFrom under the veranda, at night, an old monk-thing hauls its torso up to lick the lamp-oil of people working late — dimming and dousing the lights of the diligent.
• Hinezumi火鼠RegionalFrom Chinese marvel-texts (Shenyi Jing): a rat that lives "in the fire within an inextinguishable tree in southern mountains" — accounts run to 250 kg, with "hair resembling silk threads".
• Hitobashira人柱ChronicleWhere a dam kept failing, a bridge kept washing out, a keep kept cracking — tradition says the cure was a person, buried in the foundation as prayer made permanent: the hitobashira, "human pillar".
• Hitodama人魂ChronicleA ball of pale fire with a trailing tail, drifting from a house where someone is dying, toward the temple or toward a loved one's door.
• Hitokotonushi一言主ChronicleMount Katsuragi's god — met at the summit of his career in 460 CE, when Emperor Yūryaku, out hunting, encountered a figure dressed identically to himself.
• Hitotsume-kozō一つ目小僧ChronicleA bald little boy in monk's clothes, one big eye in the middle of his face, who exists to make you jump.
• Hitotsume-nyūdō一つ目入道ChronicleThe one-eyed boy's grown-up: a giant monk with a single eye, met on night roads — in some tellings expanding and contracting like the mikoshi-nyūdō, in Kyoto tradition actually a fox's disguise, elsewhere a tanuki's.
• Hiyoribō日和坊ChronicleA spirit of the Hitachi mountains that governs fair weather and cannot be seen on rainy days — Sekien, Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki (1779).
• Hō-ō鳳凰ChronicleThe hō-ō is the fenghuang, China's phoenix, resident in Japan since antiquity as the arrival announcement of good government: like the kirin, it appears when a sage rules — the auspicious beasts as heaven's approval ratings.
• Hōichi the Earless耳なし芳一ChronicleThe blind biwa player Hōichi performed the Tale of the Heike so movingly that "even the goblins could not refrain from tears" — and his greatest audience turned out to be the tale's own subjects: a samurai retainer led him, night after night, to recite the fall of the house of Taira before what he believed was a nobleman's court.
• Hone-onna骨女Edo catalogShe comes at night to the man she loved, beautiful as she was in life — and only others can see what he holds: bone.
• Honekarakasa骨傘Picture onlyThe catalogs' actual umbrella yokai: not the one-legged mascot, but a karakasa stripped to its bones — paper gone, ribs bare — wreathed in fire and dancing on the air.
• Honjo Nanafushigi本所七不思議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.
• Hoori and Hoderi火遠理命・火照命ChronicleThe missing span in the tradition's sea-court arc: how the imperial line got into the dragon palace.
• Hōsō-gami疱瘡神RegionalThe god of smallpox — not a metaphor for it: the visitor whose stay is the infection, managed by the era's most elaborate sickroom protocol.
• Hōsōshi方相氏RegionalThe court's exorcist at the year-end tsuina (the oni-expelling rite Setsubun descends from): a masked officer in "a four-square mask with four eyes, right hand holding a spear, left hand holding a large shield," draped in bear skin — striding through the palace driving the epidemic demons out.
• Hyakki Yagyō百鬼夜行ChronicleThe concept the whole project is named for: the Night Parade of One Hundred Demons — the yokai en masse, processing through the capital's streets on appointed nights, a thousand-year-old idiom "with no single canonical interpretation".
• Hyakki Yagyō Emaki百鬼夜行絵巻ChronicleThe Shinju-an scroll (Daitokuji, Kyoto): attributed to Tosa Mitsunobu, 16th century Muromachi, Important Cultural Property — the night parade painted: a procession of tsukumogami, with animals and plants, and famously no explanatory text — "most scrolls lack kotobagaki, making the exact meaning unclear".
• Hyakume百目Picture onlyA lump of flesh covered in a hundred blinking yellow eyes.
• Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai百物語怪談会RegionalThe tradition's own delivery mechanism, documented: a room, a hundred flames, a circle of tellers — one tale, one light out, darkness approaching arithmetically.
• HyōsubeひょうすべRegionalKyūshū's darker kappa: child-sized, cave-dwelling, covered in greasy hair, with a laugh that kills.

I

• Ibaraki-dōji茨木童子ChronicleShuten-dōji's lieutenant — and the survivor: after Mt.
• Ichiren-bozu一連坊主RegionalThe animated rosary: ichiren-bozu — "one-strand monk" — the Tsukumogami-ki scroll's own protagonist.
• Ikiryō生霊ChronicleJapan's most psychologically acute ghost: the ikiryō leaves a living body — usually on the pressure of jealousy or grievance the person may not even acknowledge — and goes where the feeling points.
• IkuchiいくちRegionalOff Hitachi's deep water, at night, something begins to cross your ship.
• Inari Ōkami稲荷大神RegionalThe most-worshipped deity in Japan — roughly 40,000 of Japan's 120,000 shrines, over a third of all, are Inari's — and the reason this bestiary's fox entries exist.
• Inō Mononoke Roku稲生物怪録RegionalMiyoshi, Hiroshima, 1749.
• Inoue Enryō井上円了RegionalThe humans wing gains its ironist.
• Inugami犬神Edo catalogThe inugami is western Japan's answer to the fox-familiar: a dog spirit created by sorcery, kept by families, transmitted through generations — and, exactly like Izumo's kitsune-mochi, the belief attached its stigma not to the spirit but to the families said to own it.
• Inugami Gyōbu隠神刑部RegionalMatsuyama Castle had a supernatural garrison: Inugami Gyōbu, the great bake-danuki of the Kumayama cave, commander of eight hundred and eight tanuki, holder of a court-style title (Gyōbu, "penal affairs") granted by the castle's own lords — the castle guardian as feudal appointee.
• Ishinagenjo石投げんじょRegionalNagasaki's Nishisonogi district, Enoshima's waters, Tosu in Saga: May, rainy-season fog, night-fishing — and suddenly "the sound of a huge rock crashing into the ocean, a tremendous splash and crack that sends the boat rocking" — with no rock to be seen, even by the break of day.
• Isonade磯撫でEdo catalogThe name is the horror: isonade, "beach-stroker" — a vast shark that approaches without a ripple and strokes the shore, its barbed tail sweeping sailors off decks and beachgoers off sand.
• IssieイッシーRegionalLake Ikeda, Kagoshima — Kyūshū's largest caldera lake — and its resident unknown.
• Issun-bōshi一寸法師ChronicleThree centimeters of samurai: born to a praying couple by grace of the Sumiyoshi gods, Issun-bōshi sails to the capital in a rice bowl with a chopstick oar, a needle for a sword, a straw for its scabbard — the tale's genius is that inventory.
• Itsumade以津真天ChronicleOver the imperial palace, in the plague year of 1334, a bird circled nightly, crying a human phrase: "itsumade, itsumade" — "until when?
• Ittan-momen一反木綿RegionalA bolt of white cotton — one tan, about 10.6 meters by 30 centimeters — fluttering through the dusk, wrapping around a face or throat.
• Iwanaga-hime石長比売ChronicleThe tradition's death-lore has a first cause, and she was jilted.
• Iyaya否哉ChronicleA beautiful woman seen from behind — and in the water at her feet, the reflection shows an old man's face — Sekien, Konjaku Hyakki Shūi (1784).
• Izanami and Yomi黄泉ChronicleBefore any yokai, this: Izanami, the mother-creator, dies birthing fire.
• Izuna-gongen & the iizuna飯縄権現ChronicleA crow-tengu with sword and rope, mounted on a white fox, serpents coiling the mount — Izuna-gongen, the deity of Mount Iizuna in Shinano (Nagano).

J

• Jakotsubaba蛇骨婆ChronicleAn old woman with a great serpent coiled around her body — Sekien, Konjaku Hyakki Shūi (1781).
• Jami邪魅Edo catalogSekien's plate carries its own definition: "Jami is a kind of chimi — surely the evil vapor of wicked spirits".
• Janjanbiじゃんじゃん火RegionalNara's fireball — named for the "jan jan" sound it makes as it comes.
• Jatai蛇帯Edo catalogA woman's obi sash, left unwound in the night, rises as a snake.
• Jikininki食人鬼RegionalThe jikininki is the corpse-eater who hates being one: "the spirits of greedy, selfish or impious individuals...
• Jinmenju人面樹ChronicleA tree whose flowers are human heads.
• Jinmenken人面犬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.
• Jizō地蔵ChronicleAt the Sai no Kawara — the stony banks of the dead's river — the children who died too soon "are condemned to stack piles of stones, in vain, since the piles are repeatedly toppled by oni" — a Sisyphus built for the smallest.
• Jorōgumo絡新婦RegionalThe jorōgumo is the tsuchigumo's seductive counterpart: a spider that at great age (folk figure: 400 years) takes the form of a beautiful woman and hunts men with intimacy instead of webs — though the webs come too.
• Jubokko樹木子Modern inventionA tree grown on an old battlefield, fed so long on the blood beneath it that it thirsts: branches seize travelers, "changing its branches into the shape of a tube," and drink.

K

• Kage-onna影女Edo catalogIn a haunted house, on a moonlit night, the paper screen shows the silhouette of a woman who isn't there — cast by moonlight, with no one standing in it.
• Kakurezato隠れ里ChronicleDeep in the mountains, past a cave or a wrong turn no map repeats, a hunter stumbles into a village at peace: warm climate, no strife, kind hosts, comfortable days.
• Kamaitachi鎌鼬Edo catalogThe kamaitachi is a yokai that explains a wound: you're walking in winter wind, something knocks you down, and your leg opens in a clean, deep, painless cut that barely bleeds.
• Kameosa瓶長RegionalA great jar with eyes, nose, and mouth — and Sekien's caption makes it the catalog's one blessing: "waters pour without end, drinks remain unchanged — an auspicious omen".
• Kamikakushi神隠しRegionalThe doctrine behind half the tradition's abductions: kamikakushi — "hidden by the kami" — the reading of an unexplained disappearance as taken, by gods, tengu, or foxes.
• Kamikiri髪切りEdo catalogYou walk home at night; nothing happens.
• Kamiumi & Kuniumi神産み・国産みChronicleThe two-stage founding: kuniumi — Izanagi and Izanami stir and birth the islands; kamiumi — they populate them with "natural deities (wind, wood, mountains, ocean gods)" — until the last birth: Kagutsuchi, fire, whose delivery burns Izanami to death.
• Kaname-ishi要石RegionalAt Kashima Shrine (Ibaraki) and Katori Shrine (Chiba), two stones show only their tips above ground.
• Kanashibari金縛りRegionalYou wake and cannot move — conscious, pinned, a weight on your chest, often a presence.
• Kanbari-nyūdō加牟波理入道ChronicleA monk-figure in the privy, spewing birds from his mouth — Sekien, Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki (1779).
• Kanedama金霊RegionalGold arriving as a spirit: Sekien's plate shows the kanedama visiting a virtuous household, filling the storehouse with coins — "heaven bestows fortune upon those performing good deeds".
• Kangiten歓喜天RegionalGanesha in Japan: elephant-headed, human-bodied — and in his defining Japanese form, two figures embracing, male and female, "typically kept as a secret icon hidden from public view".
• Kappa河童ChronicleThere is no one kappa — and that is the first thing to know about it.
• Karura迦楼羅RegionalGaruda in Japanese vestments: the bird-headed protector, "golden-winged" — wingspan given at a preposterous 3,360,000 ri — who "consumes dragons and snakes regularly", counted in the Eight Legions and the Thirty-three Kannon's Twenty-eight Attendants.
• Kasa-obake傘おばけPicture onlyOne eye, one leg, a lolling tongue, a paper umbrella come alive — arguably the most recognizable yokai in the world, mascot of every haunted house in Japan.
• Kasane累Edo catalogKasane was a disfigured woman married for her money by a man named Yoemon, who — revulsion curdling into greed — killed her with a sickle at the edge of the Kinugawa river.
• Kasha火車RegionalThe kasha comes to funerals.
• Katawaguruma片輪車RegionalA single ox-cart wheel wrapped in flame, rolling the night streets with a passenger — a beautiful woman, or a terrible man — cursing those who look.
• Katsura-otoko桂男ChronicleThe man in the moon — and if you stare at the moon too long on the wrong nights, he beckons, and those he beckons have their lifespans shortened — Ehon Hyaku Monogatari (1841).
• Kawaakago川赤子Edo catalogA baby-shaped thing, upper body only, among the reeds of a riverbank — Sekien, Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki (1779).
• Kawahime川姫RegionalA beautiful woman by the water — and the young man who looks too long pays in vitality: "men's spirits are quickly drained".
• Kawauso獺RegionalThe forgotten third trickster.
• Kazenbō火前坊Edo catalogToribeyama — Kyoto's great funeral ground, where emperors and nobles were burned for a millennium — has its own flame.
• Kechibiけち火RegionalKōchi's fireball — "the vengeful spirit of a deceased person transformed into flame," with the family's signature: a human face reportedly appears within the flames.
• Kejōrō毛倡妓Edo catalogYoshiwara, evening.
• KenashikorunarpeケナシコルウナルペRegional"The old woman who owns the wooded plain" — also rendered "swamp aunt": a wild-haired demonic woman of tree hollows and riverbank willow groves.
• Keneō懸衣翁RegionalAt the Sanzu River's far bank: Keneō — "the clothes-hanging old man" — the datsue-ba's partner.
• KenmunケンムンRegionalAmami's spirit-child: child-sized, thin elongated limbs with club-like tips, a monkey-hairy body (red or black), sharp red eyes, pointed mouth, "a yam-like odor" — and a plate on its head containing mystical water or oil.
• Kerakera-onna倩兮女ChronicleOver the wall, higher than the wall, a giant woman in a kimono leans and laughs — kerakera, the cackle — at whoever passes.
• Kesaran-pasaranケサランパサランRegionalA thumb-sized ball of white down — dandelion-weightless, rabbit- tail soft — drifting on no wind in particular.
• Keukegen毛羽毛現Edo catalogA small dog made entirely of long hair — no visible face, just hair — living in the damp dark under floors and in wet corners, bringing sickness to the household above.
• Kidōmaru鬼童丸Edo catalogThe demon boy of the Raikō cycle — the tradition's most cinematic assassination attempt.
• KijimunaRegionalIn the aerial roots of Okinawa's gajumaru banyans live red-haired children — three or four years old forever — who love fishing, hate octopus, and eat only the left eye of every fish they catch.
• Kijo鬼女RegionalThe class page for the tradition's transformation-women: kijo — "demon women," those "who transformed into oni through karma and resentment".
• Kinoko木の子RegionalThe Kinki mountains' resident children: kinoko — "the children of the trees" — told in Nara's Yoshino and in Hyōgo: figures "as children from two to four years of age," dressed "in clothes made of leaves, or blue," classed among the yamawaro mountain-child family.
• Kintarō金太郎RegionalA red-skinned super-child on Mt.
• Kirin麒麟RegionalThe kirin is the anti-yokai: where the parade's creatures mark disorder, the kirin appears only at moments of perfect order — "with the imminent arrival or death of a sage or illustrious ruler".
• Kitsune狐ChronicleThe fox is the most literarily documented of all Japanese supernatural creatures — Hearn wrote in 1894 that "vast is the literature of the subject of foxes...
• Kitsune no Yomeiri狐の嫁入りRegionalTwo of the tradition's gentlest mysteries share one name.
• Kitsunetsuki狐憑きChronicleThe fox-possession dossier, promoted to its own entry because it has what almost nothing else in the tradition has: a complete arc from 9th-century scripture to 19th-century psychiatry to living memory.
• Kiyohime清姫ChronicleThe traveling monk Anchin promised the young woman he'd return; he lied, and fled.
• Kobutori JiisanこぶとりじいさんChronicleThe tradition's gentlest oni story.
• Kodama木霊ChronicleThe kodama is the spirit in the old tree — and the voice that answers you in the mountains.
• Kōjin荒神RegionalThe kitchen's resident: Kōjin — "the rough god" — enshrined at the hearth, in his sanbō-kōjin form three-faced and six-armed, "displaying wrathful compassion similar to Fudō Myōō".
• Kokakuchō姑獲鳥RegionalThe other half of the ubume dossier: in China, the guhuoniao — a bird that is the spirit of a woman dead in childbirth, shedding feathers to walk as a woman, keeping breasts even in bird form, stealing infants to raise as her own.
• Kokuribaba古庫裏婆Edo catalogAn old woman spinning thread beside a resting cat, in a temple's kuri — the kitchen/storage quarters — Sekien, Konjaku Hyakki Shūi (1784).
• Komainu狛犬RegionalAt every shrine gate in Japan, two beasts: one mouth open — "a", the first sound, the beginning — one mouth closed — "un", the last, the end.
• Komayō駒妖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".
• Konaki-jiji子泣き爺RegionalA baby crying alone in mountain wilderness.
• Konjaku Monogatarishū今昔物語集ChronicleWhere the tradition goes when it needs a tale's oldest telling: the Konjaku Monogatarishū — "over one thousand tales," early 12th century, anonymous, 28 of 31 volumes surviving — organized as Buddhism's eastward journey: India, China, Japan.
• Konohanasakuya-hime木花咲耶姫ChronicleThe sister Ninigi chose.
• Koromodako衣蛸RegionalA small octopus of the Tango coast (Sodeshi, the Yosa district — Japan Sea/Wakasa Bay) that "spreads its body like clothing" — unfolding to some six tatami mats — to envelop ships and drag them under.
• KoropokkuruコロポックルRegionalBefore the Ainu, say the Ainu, there were others: small people living in pit-dwellings underground, skilled fishers and hunters who traded in the dark — leaving "deer, fish, and other game" at night, preferring never to be seen.
• Korōri虎狼狸RegionalJapan's word for its worst 19th-century plague arrived by ship: cholera → korera → korori — punning on mikka korori, "drop dead in three days".
• Kosenjōbi古戦場火Edo catalogOver the old battlefields: "countless gathering spirits" that "flutter and wander through the air" — the unquiet dead of combat, soldiers and animals, as flame.
• Kosodate-yūrei子育て幽霊RegionalA candy shop, night after night: a pale young woman buys ame with a single coin.
• Kosode-no-te小袖の手Edo catalogA fine kosode kimono — donated to a temple after its owner's death, per the shinigawa custom of offering the dead's clothes — hangs in the hall.
• Koto-furunushi琴古主Edo catalogA broken koto sprouts eyes and a mouth, its snapped strings hanging like unbound hair.
• Kotoribakoコトリバコ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".
• Kubikajiri首かじりModern inventionThe circulating lore: a person who starved to death while others withheld food becomes a spirit that visits the graves of those who refused it, digs up their corpses, and gnaws the heads.
• Kubikire-uma首切れ馬RegionalThe horse without a head, walking anyway.
• Kuchisake-onna口裂け女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.
• Kuda-gitsune管狐RegionalA fox small enough to live in a bamboo tube — accounts give 36–39 cm bodies, weasel/squirrel comparisons, one description of "a cat-like face, otter-like body, grayish fur, and a thick tail".
• Kudan件RegionalA calf is born with a human face.
• Kūkai / Kōbō Daishi空海RegionalKūkai (774–835): founder of Shingon esoteric Buddhism, student of Huiguo in Tang China, builder of Kōyasan and Tōji, calligrapher-poet-engineer — "among Japan's most accomplished individuals" by any accounting.
• Kunekuneくねくね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.
• Kuni-yuzuri国譲りChronicleBefore the descent, the eviction: heaven wants the middle land (Ashihara-no-Nakatsukuni), and the campaign to make Ōkuninushi cede it runs through three envoys:
• Kuraokami闇龗ChronicleWhen Izanagi cut down the fire-god Kagutsuchi — the birth that had killed Izanami — the blood from his sword's hilt ran down his fingers and became gods: among them Kuraokami, "darkness" + "dragon-of-water," the rain-and-snow dragon of the dark valleys [wikipedia-kuraokami, per Kojiki].
• Kurozuka黒塚RegionalOn the Adachigahara moor (Fukushima) stood a lone hut, an old woman, and a room she forbade her guests to open.
• Kuzunoha葛の葉Edo catalogThe fox-wife tale-type's crowning version.
• Kuzuryū九頭竜RegionalNine heads, three addresses, one arc — the dragon subdued into office:
• Kyōkotsu狂骨ChronicleA white-haired skeleton in white grave-clothes rising out of a well on the bucket-rope — Sekien's Konjaku Hyakki Shūi (1781).
• Kyonshiiキョンシー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.
• Kyōrinrin経凛々Edo catalogSekien's most bookish invention: discarded sutra scrolls risen as a dragon-crested figure of unrolling paper — the loser's scriptures, armored.
• Kyūsenbō九千坊RegionalThe kappa as organization: Kyūsenbō, "a legendary kappa boss" commanding nine thousand subordinates, "controls the kappa throughout the western provinces from bases in the Kuma River and Chikugo River".
• Kyūso旧鼠Edo catalogA rat aged past a century into yokai-hood — the rodent entry in the tradition's universal rule that anything old enough turns.

L

• Lafcadio Hearn / Koizumi Yakumo小泉八雲ChronicleSix of the primary texts archived for this bestiary come from one man: a Greek-Irish wanderer, blind in one eye, abandoned serially in childhood, who arrived in Cincinnati at 19 with "$5 in his pocket," became a crime reporter, was fired for his interracial marriage, documented Creole New Orleans — and landed in Japan in 1890, where he became Koizumi Yakumo, married Koizumi Setsu of a Matsue samurai family, taught school, and wrote the books that carried Japan's ghosts into English.

M

• Maikubi舞首RegionalThree severed heads fighting each other in the sea off Manazuru (Kanagawa), forever — Ehon Hyaku Monogatari (1841).
• MajimunマジムンRegionalThe collective name for Okinawa and Amami's evil spirits — a class, with one shared attack and a membership list.
• Makuragaeshi枕返しEdo catalogYou wake and your pillow is on the wrong side — or you are.
• Mamedanuki豆狸RegionalThe small tanuki of western Japan — and the sake industry's resident spirit.
• Maneki-neko招き猫RegionalThe upraised paw in every shop window — and behind it, three competing founding tales, each a complete theology:
• Mekurabe目競ChronicleOne morning at his new capital of Fukuhara, Taira no Kiyomori — the man whose clan's rise filled Japan's graveyards — looked into his courtyard and found it full of skulls, rolling and turning, left and right, up and down.
• Menreiki面霊気Edo catalogA being made of theatrical masks — the accumulated spirit of gigaku masks, the oldest masked dance-drama tradition in Japan.
• Miage-nyūdō見上入道RegionalSado Island's version of the growing priest: a small monk-figure on the night road that grows taller as you look up at it — until the watcher topples over backward.
• Mikoshi-nyūdō見越し入道Edo catalogOn a night road a monk stands ahead of you — and the higher you look, the taller he grows, until you topple backward, and "one's windpipe would get gnawed at".
• Minamoto no Yorimitsu / Raikō源頼光RegionalThe humans wing has diviners, cataloguers, and transmitters; here is its department of enforcement.
• Minobi蓑火Edo catalogCrossing near Lake Biwa on a rainy night, fireballs bloom on your straw raincoat "like firefly light" — cold, sparkling "like twinkling stars," and — the signature — multiplying when brushed at.
• MintuchiミントゥチRegionalThe Ainu water-being: child-sized (3–12 years in appearance), haired, no kappa dish; "skin like sea turtle, purplish or reddish," bird- or sickle-shaped feet — and the anatomical signature: both arms connect internally, so pulling one shortens the other, or detaches both (the same sliding-arm anatomy Wajin folklore gives the kappa, kept, while the dish is dropped).
• MisakiミサキRegionalThe word is the doctrine: mi + saki — "the god's forerunner".
• Mizuchi蛟ChronicleBefore the kappa had a dish or a cucumber, the rivers had the mizuchi: mi-tsu-chi, "spirit of the water" — the -chi suffix marking raw spiritual potency (the same syllable in Orochi).
• Mizuki Shigeru水木しげるModern inventionEvery yokai a modern person recognizes was carried to them by one man.
• Mokumokuren目目連Edo catalogEvery hole in a torn shōji screen fills with an eye.
• Momiji紅葉RegionalAutumn, Mt.
• Momonjii百々爺ChronicleAn old man with a heavy staff, met on desolate roads and crossroads in harsh weather; the encounter itself causes illness — Sekien, Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki (1779).
• Momotarō桃太郎RegionalThe most famous departure in Japanese storytelling: a boy born of a peach, armed with kibi dango, recruiting a dog, a monkey, and a pheasant into service — one dumpling each — for the conquest of Onigashima, the demons' island.
• Morinji-no-kama茂林寺釜Edo catalogThe kindest famous story in the tradition.
• Mōryō魍魎RegionalFrom the Chinese classics: a water-born spirit "resembling a three-year-old child, red-black in color, with red eyes, long ears, and beautiful hair" (Huainanzi) whose appetite is exact — it "delights in eating the livers of the dead" (Bencao Gangmu).
• Mujina貉RegionalThe mujina is the yokai whose central mystery is what animal it even is: badger in one province, tanuki in the next, sometimes a palm civet — the word slides regionally across species, and that slippage reached Japan's Supreme Court.
• Myōken妙見菩薩RegionalThe North Star / Big Dipper as a bodhisattva: Myōken — "excellent sight" — the Indian bodhisattva current merged with Chinese pole-star Daoism, worshipped for military protection and the healing of vision, "capable of perceiving truth and righteousness across all realms".

N

• NamahageなまはげRegionalNew Year's Eve, Oga Peninsula, Akita: masked figures in straw coats storm the houses shouting "泣ぐ子は居ねがー" — "Any crybabies here?" — hunting the lazy and the whining, scolding children, driving out misfortune.
• Namazu鯰RegionalUnder the islands of Japan, in the mud, lies a catfish the size of the country's misfortune.
• Narigama鳴釜Edo catalogA hairy little figure wearing an iron kettle for a head, ema-plaque in hand — Sekien's narigama (1784).
• Ne-no-kuni根の国ChronicleThe "root land" — the otherworld where Susanoo rules after his descent.
• Nebutori寝肥RegionalA woman who swells gigantically in her sleep — until "she no longer fits in her room, emitting thunderous snoring sounds" — Ehon Hyaku Monogatari (1841).
• Nekomata猫又ChronicleThe nekomata is the older and darker of Japan's two great cat yokai: first recorded not as superstition but as news — a beast killing people near Nara in 1233 — and later as the fate awaiting any house cat kept too long, its tail splitting in two as it learns to walk upright, speak, and dance with the dead.
• Nihon Ryōiki日本霊異記ChronicleIf the tradition has a birth certificate, it is this book.
• Nikujin肉人RegionalApril 4, 1609, Sunpu Castle — the retired shōgun Tokugawa Ieyasu's own grounds: a humanoid "lump of meat, with four limbs but no fingers," standing and pointing to the heavens with its arms.
• Ningenニンゲン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.
• Ningyo人魚ChronicleThe ningyo is Japan's "mermaid" only by loose translation: an often monkey-mouthed, fish-bodied thing whose arrival is an ill omen, whose flesh grants catastrophic longevity, and whose mummified "specimens" sit in real temples.
• Nobusuma野衾RegionalSomething soft, furred, and winged slaps over your face on a night road — blinding you, gagging you, sipping at your lamp oil or your blood, then gone into the dark.
• Nodeppō野鉄砲Edo catalogA tanuki- or flying-squirrel-like beast of the northern mountain valleys that attacks at dusk to drink blood — and its method is the tradition's strangest weapon: it obscures the victim's sight by "releasing bat-like creatures from its mouth to cover the person's face" — Ehon Hyaku Monogatari (1841).
• Noderabō野寺坊RegionalA figure in rotted vestments stands beside the bell of a temple no one serves anymore.
• Noppera-bōのっぺらぼうRegionalA person like any other — until they turn, or wipe a hand across their face, and there is nothing there: "no eyes or nose or mouth," an egg of skin.
• Nozuchi & Tsuchinoko野槌ChronicleA snake shaped like a hammer-head or mallet: thick in the middle, blunt, mouth where a face should be, rolling downhill at travelers.
• Nue鵺ChronicleMonkey's head, tanuki's body, tiger's limbs, a snake for a tail, and a voice like a bird crying in the dark — the nue is Japan's chimera, and its most famous appearance is precisely dated: 1153, over the imperial palace.
• NuppeppōぬっぺっぽうPicture onlyA wandering lump of flesh, face suggested only "in the folds of fat," trailing a smell rivaling decomposition through night graveyards and abandoned temples.
• NurarihyonぬらりひょんRegionalThe nurarihyon is the clearest case study in fake folklore anywhere in this bestiary: an elongated-headed old man painted in the Edo catalogs with no story attached, who in the 20th century acquired — out of thin air — the title "supreme commander of the yokai."
• Nure-onna濡女RegionalAt the water's edge: a woman's head on a serpent's body, hair always dripping.
• Nuribotoke塗仏Edo catalogLeave the household butsudan (Buddhist altar) open overnight, and something may climb out of it: a black-lacquered corpse-priest, bulbous-bellied, its eyeballs dangling from their sockets, sometimes trailing a catfish tail.
• Nurikabe塗り壁RegionalYou're walking a familiar road at night, and the road stops being there: an invisible wall — too tall to climb, too wide to round — where your path was.
• Nyūnaisuzume入内雀Edo catalogThe poet Fujiwara no Sanekata insulted a rival at court and was "promoted" to distant Mutsu — exile with a paper smile.

O

• ObariyonおばりよんRegionalNight, a thicket path near Sanjō (Niigata): something small leaps onto your back shouting its own name, and starts getting heavier.
• Obo / UbuオボRegionalA name covering the northern mountains' infant-dread, in escalating registers:
• Obonお盆RegionalFor a few days each summer, Japan's dead are supposed to be here: welcomed by mukaebi fires, housed at the butsudan, danced for, and sent back by okuribi — Kyoto's mountainsides burning with the great Daimonji characters to light the way home.
• Oboroguruma朧車Edo catalogA hazy night on Kamo's great road; "the sound of a creaking carriage," and then the strange form: a semi-transparent ox-cart whose front panel is one giant face — Sekien, Konjaku Hyakki Shūi.
• Ofuda御札ChronicleThe tradition's monsters have one standard-issue countermeasure: a slip of paper.
• Ōgama大蝦蟇Edo catalogA toad some eight feet long in Iwakuni Mountain, Suō (Yamaguchi), that "exhaled rainbow-like vapor to inhale birds and insects" — recorded in Ehon Hyaku Monogatari and Hokuetsu Kitan.
• Ohaguro-bettari歯黒べったりEdo catalogAt dusk, near a shrine, a woman in bridal white stands with her back to you — lovely figure, fine kimono.
• Oitekeboriおいてけ堀ChronicleEdo's Honjo lowlands, Kansei era (1789–1801): fishermen with a good day's catch at the moat hear, from the water, "oiteke...
• Oiwaお岩RegionalJapan's most famous ghost.
• Ōkaburo大禿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.
• Okikuお菊Edo catalogFrom the bottom of a well, every night, a woman's voice counts: one...
• OkkeruipeオッケルイペRegionalThe name translates, with dignity intact, as "a monster that breaks wind".
• Ōkubi大首Picture onlyA face — only a face — vast as weather: a married woman's head with blackened teeth (ohaguro) filling the sky, or an old woman's face crammed into a storeroom, sticky to the touch.
• Ōkuninushi大国主ChronicleThe kind youngest brother of the Inaba hare tale pays for the princess's choice with two murders — his own: the brothers roll a red-hot boulder down a mountain disguised as a boar (he catches it; he burns to death) and later snap him inside a wedged log.
• Okuri-inu送り犬RegionalOn a mountain road after dark, a dog (or wolf) falls in behind you and keeps pace, exactly, all the way.
• Ōmagatoki逢魔時Edo catalogNot a creature: a time.
• Ōmononushi大物主ChronicleThe god of Mount Miwa — worshipped, uniquely, as the mountain: Ōmiwa Shrine has no honden; "the mountain itself serves as the sacred space".
• Ōmukade大百足ChronicleA centipede vast enough to circle a mountain — Mt.
• Oni鬼ChronicleIf the kitsune is the great shapeshifter of Japanese folklore, the oni is its great embodiment of brute otherness: horned, huge, iron-clubbed, standing at the gate between this world and punishment.
• Onibi鬼火RegionalThe umbrella term for Japan's demon-lights: fires "born from the corpses of humans and animals," or from "resentful people that have become fire".
• Onihitokuchi鬼一口Edo catalogNot a creature but a fate: to be eaten by an oni in a single mouthful — completely, instantly, silently.
• Onikuma鬼熊Edo catalogAn ancient bear of the Kiso Valley turned yokai: it comes down from the mountains at night, "walks upright like a human," and carries off cattle and horses "back to the mountains for consumption" — Ehon Hyaku Monogatari (1841).
• Onmoraki陰摩羅鬼ChronicleA crane-shaped demon in black plumage, eyes "luminous like firelight," shrieking and beating its wings — Sekien, Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki (1779).
• Onmyōdō陰陽道RegionalThe tradition's monsters had a government agency.
• Onryō怨霊ChronicleThe class page for the tradition's angriest wing.
• Ōnyūdō大入道RegionalThe parent class of the tradition's monk-shaped giants: the ōnyūdō — "big monk" — a shadow or towering figure met at night, from two meters tall to "as large as mountains".
• Orikuchi Shinobu折口信夫Regional1887–1953. Folklorist, literary scholar, and poet — publishing verse under the pen name Shaku Chōkū (釈迢空).
• Osakabehime刑部姫RegionalAt the top of Himeji Castle's great keep lives a lady who does not receive visitors.
• OsakiオサキRegionalThe fox-spirit of Kantō's mountain villages — Chichibu (Saitama), Okutama, Gunma, Tochigi, Ibaraki, into Nagano's Saku district.
• Oshira-samaおしら様RegionalTōhoku's household god comes in pairs: two wooden dolls — mulberry wood, 30 cm — one male or horse-faced, one female, wrapped in layer upon layer of cloth garments, kept in the alcove.
• Oshiroibaba白粉婆Picture onlyA heavily stooped old woman under "a large torn umbrella, holding a walking stick in one hand and a sake bottle in the other" — Sekien, Konjaku Hyakki Shūi (1784).
• Osorezan恐山RegionalThe tradition's doctrines have one place where you can walk into them: Osorezan — Mt.
• Ōtakemaru大嶽丸ChronicleThe third seat of medieval Japan's "three great evil yokai" (with Shuten-dōji and Tamamo-no-Mae — the grouping noted via Komatsu in our shuten-dōji entry): Ōtakemaru, the storm-wielding oni of the Suzuka Mountains, who robbed imperial tribute on the pass between capital and east — the one place all wealth had to walk.
• Otora-gitsuneおとら狐RegionalA servant fox of the Inari shrine at Nagashino Castle (Aichi).
• OtoroshiおとろしPicture onlyA hunched mass of long hair with claws and tusks, crouched on top of a shrine gate.
• Ouni苧うにPicture onlyA woman demon-mouthed to the ears, her whole body shagged in what looks like heaped hemp fiber — the o of her name is the bast-fiber itself; "the yokai's hair and body fur resembled piled-up fiber bundles".
• Ōyamatsumi大山祇神ChronicleThe great mountain god — father of the tradition's most consequential wedding offer.
• Ōzatō大座頭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).

P

• PaantuパーントゥRegionalOn Miyako, masked deities come smeared in mud and smear everyone in their path — people, houses, cars — to drive out evil spirits.

R

• Raijin雷神ChronicleThe thunderer behind Sōtatsu's other panel: drums arranged in a ring, struck as he rides — an iconography with a pedigree back to 6th-century Mogao cave murals — with ox horns, tiger-skin loincloth, and the temperament to match: the deity "embodies demonic characteristics...
• Raijū雷獣RegionalWhen lightning strikes, something falls with it: a blue-white beast — puppy-sized, wolf-shaped, or tanuki-, rabbit-, boar-, squirrel-shaped, depending on the account — that tears up the ground and claws the trees.
• Rashōmon羅城門ChronicleThe capital's front door became its most haunted address.
• Rōjinbi老人火Edo catalogDeep mountains, rainy nights, on the Shinano–Tōtōmi border: the rōjinbi — "old-person fire" — a flame that "appear along with an elderly person" — Ehon Hyaku Monogatari.
• Rokurokubiろくろ首Edo catalogBy day an ordinary woman — usually unaware of her own condition; by night a neck that stretches like a pulley-rope toward the lamp oil, or in the older form, a head that detaches entirely and flies.
• Ryūgū竜宮ChronicleThe dragon king's palace under the sea — the capital every sea-entry in this bestiary has been orbiting.
• Ryūjin龍神RegionalBeneath the sea, in Ryūgū-jō — a palace of red and white coral — rules the dragon god: master of medicine, rain, and thunder, commander of the tide jewels (kanju the ebb-jewel, manju the flow-jewel), attended by a court of turtles, fish, and jellyfish.

S

• Sa Gojō沙悟浄RegionalSha Wujing — the sand-river ogre of the Journey to the West, third disciple, azure-faced and fearsome — arrived in Japan and became a kappa.
• SagariさがりRegionalA horse's head — only the head — hanging from an old roadside hackberry (enoki) in Okayama's Oku district; persimmon or enoki in Kumamoto.
• Sakabashira逆柱Edo catalogInstall a pillar upside-down — against the direction the tree grew — and the house never forgives it: groaning beams at night, creaks with no cause, fires, ruin.
• Samebito鮫人RegionalA shark-man — "inky black skin, emerald green eyes, a face like a demon's, and a beard like a dragon's" — banished from the dragon king's palace, weeping in a garden pond.
• San'yūtei Enchō三遊亭圓朝RegionalThe tradition's tales were painted (Sekien), novelized (Akinari), translated (Hearn) — and spoken.
• Sankai産怪RegionalThe class of beings "born instead of healthy infants...
• Sansei山精Edo catalogA knee-high to waist-high mountain imp on one leg — with the heel mounted backwards, toes pointing behind [ja-sansei, per the Wakan Sansai Zue citing the Baopuzi].
• Sarakazoe皿数えEdo catalogSekien's contribution to the Okiku legend: the sarakazoe — "plate-counting" — depicts "the spirit of Okiku from the well appear as a yin fire, and the sound of plate-counting is heard".
• Sarugami猿神ChronicleOne name, two careers, and the whole doctrine between them:
• Sarutahiko Ōkami猿田彦大神ChronicleWhen the heavenly grandson Ninigi descended to rule the earth, one being stood waiting at the crossroads of heaven and earth: a towering figure, ruddy-faced, bearded, jeweled spear in hand — and with the long nose that would echo down Japanese iconography for a millennium.
• Satori覚Edo catalogYou're at your mountain campfire and an ape-thing sits down across from you — and speaks your thoughts a beat before you finish thinking them.
• Sazae-oni栄螺鬼Edo catalogA turban snail that reaches thirty years and turns demon — a spiral shell unfurling into a woman when it needs one.
• Senbiki-ōkami千匹狼RegionalNight.
• Setodaishō瀬戸大将RegionalA little general armored head to foot in assembled crockery — teapot helm, plate pauldrons, a sake-flask somewhere in the cuirass: the Setodaishō, "General of Seto ware."
• Setsubun節分RegionalAround February 3rd, the whole country performs the tradition's oldest program: mamemaki — roasted soybeans hurled at the year's demons to the formula "Oni wa soto!
• Shachihoko鯱RegionalThe composite beast on Japan's castle roofs: fish body, dragon (earlier tiger) head, upright tail, spiked back — and one job.
• Shamichōrō三味長老Edo catalogThe third chair of Sekien's string section: a master's shamisen, discarded after its player's day, risen as the "shamisen elder" — "the spirit of the instrument of one who led this art," per his caption [ja-shamichoro, per Inada/Tanaka 1992].
• Shibaemon-tanuki芝右衛門狸Edo catalogThe third of the three famous tanuki, and the tradition's most touching death.
• Shichifukujin七福神RegionalThe seven-god board of fortune: Ebisu (the one native Japanese member), Daikokuten, Bishamonten, Benzaiten (the Hindu-Buddhist arrivals), Fukurokuju, Jurōjin (the Daoist stars), Hotei (the Chan monk) — an intentionally international committee: six imports and one local, assembled by Edo popular religion into Japan's most beloved divine unit.
• Shichinin Misaki七人ミサキRegionalAlong the waters of Shikoku and Chūgoku travels a procession of exactly seven dead — disaster dead, mostly drowned.
• Shidaidaka次第高RegionalWestern Japan's growing roadman: meet it at night and it gains height as your gaze rises; the escape is optical — "the creature grows taller as you look up, but becomes smaller when you look down," shrinking to nothing as you lower your eyes; some tellings prescribe looking at it between your own legs.
• Shijin四神RegionalFour beasts, four directions, four seasons, four colors: Seiryū the azure dragon (east), Suzaku the vermilion bird (south), Byakko the white tiger (west), Genbu the black tortoise-snake (north).
• Shikigami式神RegionalThe onmyōji's workforce: shikigami — conjured spirits, "some sort of kami, represented by a small ghost" (Inoue Nobutaka's gloss) — invisible servants running espionage, errands, and enforcement on their master's spiritual power, made visible when bound into folded and cut paper effigies.
• Shimenawa注連縄RegionalThe tradition keeps insisting on boundaries: the sealed pass of Yomi, the kimon corner, the birth-hut door.
• Shinigami死神Edo catalogThe world's most famous "ancient Japanese death god" is an Edo invention.
• Shio-no-Chōji塩の長司Edo catalogA wealthy Kaga merchant, master of 300 horses, who developed a taste for horse flesh — dead horses prepared "as miso and salt-pickled dishes," eaten regularly.
• Shiranui不知火ChronicleOn the calm nights around the late-seventh-month dark moon, in the shallow seas of Yatsushiro and Ariake (Kyūshū), a flame appears far out on the water — the oyabi, parent fire — then splits, and splits, until hundreds to thousands of flames stand in a line four to eight kilometers long. You cannot see them from a boat on the water; climb ten meters and they appear.
• Shirime尻目RegionalA figure on a night road near Kyoto drops its clothes, bends over, and reveals a single eye shining from its buttocks — "lightning-like."
• Shirouneri白溶裔Edo catalogAn old kitchen dishcloth, gone gray with use, rises as a small ragged dragon of cloth — undulating ("yōei," the caption's word, means the way things billow in wind) through the house.
• ShisaシーサーRegionalOn nearly every roof and gatepost in Okinawa sits a pair of lion-dogs: one mouth open — "traditionally wards off evil spirits" — one mouth closed — "keeps good spirits in".
• Shishimai獅子舞RegionalThe danced lion: performers in the great lacquered head and body-cloth, visiting door to door at New Year and festival — Japan's "most numerous folk performing art," with roughly 8,000 documented traditions (Toyama alone maintaining 1,170 active sites).
• Shōjō猩々RegionalRed face, red hair, red robes, rising from the sea with one interest: sake.
• ShōkeraしょうけらPicture onlySekien draws it clinging to a roof, peering down through the skylight — muscular, clawed, watching you.
• Shussebora出世螺RegionalA conch shell that serves a nine-thousand-year apprenticeship: "3,000 years in mountains, 3,000 in villages, and 3,000 in the sea," then transforms into a dragon — Ehon Hyaku Monogatari (1841).
• Shuten-dōji酒呑童子RegionalThe single greatest yokai narrative in the canon: an oni king on Mt.
• Sodehiki-kozō袖引き小僧RegionalDusk, Saitama, a hurrying traveler: a tug at the sleeve.
• Sōgenbi叢原火Picture onlyA ball of fire drifting the night streets of Kyoto — and inside the flame, "the anguishing face of the priest would float": a monk who stole from the Jizō hall of Mibu-dera and burns as karmic punishment.
• Sōjōbō僧正坊ChronicleThe tengu's roster has a crown, and it sits on Mt.
• Sorei祖霊RegionalThe system the whole ghost-tradition presumes: the dead undergo "successive rituals, eventually becoming ancestor spirits through an enshrinement ceremony conducted 33 years post-death" — after which they "lose individual identity and merge with the ancestral collective".
• Sugawara no Michizane菅原道真RegionalThe gentlest man in the tradition and its most feared ghost.
• Suijin水神RegionalThe class-term for freshwater divinity: suijin — the wells, springs, channels, and paddies each with their station-god.
• Suiko水虎Edo catalogThe suiko is the kappa's fiercer Chinese cousin: the shuihu ("water tiger") of Hubei's rivers — child-sized, tiger-headed, armored in pangolin-like scales — imported through Japan's encyclopedias until the name blurred into the kappa complex and, in Aomori, onto a shrine.
• Sunakake-babaa砂かけ婆RegionalPassing under the trees by a lonely shrine, sand showers down on you.
• SunekosuriすねこすりRegionalOn rainy Okayama nights, something soft and dog-like presses through a walker's legs — brushing the shins, tangling the stride — and does nothing else [wikipedia-sunekosuri, per a 1935 yōkai dictionary].
• Susanoo須佐之男命ChronicleCount the threads: the tradition's founding monster-slaying, its founding performance, its rage-genealogy, its plague-sovereign, its ordeal-master, and its greatest festival all converge on one god.
• Suzuhikohime鈴彦姫Edo catalogA woman whose face is a bell, crowned with the kagura-suzu — the tiered ritual bell-cluster shaken in shrine dance.
• Suzuka Gozen鈴鹿御前ChronicleThe Suzuka pass had two powers: the storm-oni Ōtakemaru, and her — Suzuka Gozen, described across the sources as "a female thief, a celestial maiden (天女), or even a female oni".
• Suzuri-no-tamashii硯の魂ChronicleA reader falls asleep over the Heike Monogatari.

T

• Ta-no-kami田の神ChronicleThe yama-no-kami's downhill season, with dates: in Niigata's records the god arrives March 16 and departs October 16, returning heavenward November 16 — a deity with a train schedule, welcomed and seen off annually by the villages that host the growing season.
• Taira no Masakado平将門RegionalIn 940 the rebel Taira no Masakado — the eastern warlord who crowned himself "New Emperor" — was killed, beheaded, and displayed in Kyoto.
• Takaonna高女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".
• Takirei-ō滝霊王Edo catalogThe tradition's mildest possible ending to a milestone: Sekien's Takirei-ō (1781) is Fudō Myōō appearing in a waterfall — said to "emerge from waterfall basins in every province," his caption citing the sutra-commentary line that this power "subdues all demons and obstructions".
• Tamamo-no-Mae玉藻前ChronicleThe kitsune legend at imperial scale: a peerless courtesan at the Heian court who is in truth a golden nine-tailed fox on her third civilization.
• Tanuki / Bake-danuki狸ChronicleThe kitsune's comic rival.
• Tatarigami祟り神RegionalThe widest category in the tradition's wrath taxonomy: tatarigami — "a category of wrathful or inimical spirit" spanning Shinto, Buddhist, and syncretic practice, "rang from primordial deities like Yamata-no-Orochi to the restless dead seeking retribution".
• Tearai-oni手洗鬼RegionalA giant straddling the mountains of Sanuki — feet three ri (7 miles) apart — bent over the Seto Inland Sea, washing his hands in "the bay extending from Takamatsu to Marugame" — Ehon Hyaku Monogatari (1841).
• Teke TekeテケテケModern inventionA sound in the dark behind you: teke teke teke — elbows on pavement.
• Tengu天狗ChronicleThe tengu is Japan's mountain lord: a Chinese "celestial dog" that arrived as a comet omen, grew wings and a beak, made war on Buddhism, then rose — by way of the mountain-ascetic imagination — into a red-faced, long-nosed demigod who teaches swordsmanship, punishes arrogance, and owns the peaks.
• Tengu-daoshi天狗倒しRegionalNight in the mountains: axe-strokes, the creak, the thunderous crash of a great tree coming down — and in the morning, no stump, no trunk, nothing felled.
• Tengutsubute天狗礫Edo catalogStones fall out of a clear sky — as if thrown, from nowhere findable.
• Tenjōkudari天井下りChronicleAn ugly old woman, long hair wild, hanging upside down out of the ceiling — Sekien, Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki (1779).
• Tenjōname天井嘗Edo catalogThose brown stains high on an old ceiling — too high for any hand — have an author: the tenjōname, a tall yokai with an enormous tongue, licking the rafters by night, "particularly in the cold months when light cannot reach all the way to ceiling and casts weird shadows".
• Tennin / Tennyo天人RegionalThe tale-type the census files under Tennin: a heavenly maiden descends to bathe; a man hides her feather-robe (hagoromo); grounded, she marries him; years later she finds the robe — and ascends.
• Tenome手の目Edo catalogAn old blind man reaches toward you — and opens his hands: an eye stares from each palm.
• Tenson Kōrin天孫降臨ChronicleThe founding descent: Ninigi — Amaterasu's grandson — comes down from the Plain of High Heaven to govern the land, "carr the three sacred regalia and...
• Teratsutsuki寺つつきEdo catalogWhen Buddhism won its war in Japan, the losing side got a yokai.
• Tesso鉄鼠ChronicleThe priest Raigō of Mii-dera prayed an heir into existence for Emperor Shirakawa — and was cheated of his promised reward by temple politics.
• The Spirit GlossaryRegionalThis bestiary's roster (built from a Wikipedia list that swept in vocabulary alongside creatures) carries a block of concept-words — terms, not beings.
• The Tsurezure Bukuro Remainder百器徒然袋RegionalSekien's fourth catalog runs 50 plates; the tradition has drafted its stars individually.
• The White Hare of Inaba因幡の白兎ChronicleThe Kojiki's beloved beast-fable, and the tradition's cleanest trickster-morality tale.
• Tōfu-kozō豆腐小僧Edo catalogA small boy in a bamboo hat, holding out a tray with a single block of tofu stamped with a maple leaf.
• Tokoyo-no-kuni常世の国ChronicleBefore Ryūgū: Tokoyo-no-kuni, "an otherworldly realm beyond the sea" — eternal, unaging, reached across the waves.
• Toriyama Sekien鳥山石燕Edo catalogThe single most consequential person in yokai history was a frustrated Kanō-school painter who turned to woodblock.
• Toshigami / Toshitokujin歳徳神RegionalThe deity "presid over the year's fortune and virtue" — a god with a term of office (one year) and a compass bearing: the direction it occupies is the ehō, the lucky heading, rotating annually by the year's heavenly stem — "the direction determines fortune for all matters" (2026: south-southeast).
• Toyotama-hime豊玉姫ChronicleThe gaze taboo that runs the whole tradition — don't look at the yuki-onna's secret, don't peek at Kurozuka's room, don't watch the wanyūdō pass — has a founding text, and it's imperial: Toyotama-hime, daughter of the sea king, asked her husband one thing as she entered the birth hut: don't watch. He watched.
• Tsuchigumo土蜘蛛ChronicleThe tsuchigumo is a yokai with a paper trail into real history: before it was a giant spider, "earth spider" was the court's slur for defiant local clans — people who "hide in the ground."
• Tsukumogami付喪神RegionalThe doctrine behind an entire tier of the tradition: tools, sufficiently old and used, gain spirits. The umbrella term is tsukumogami, and Sekien's entire fourth catalog (1784) is a parade of them — the lute that plays itself, the mirror that shows other things, the mask with a soul.
• Tsukumogami-ki付喪神絵巻RegionalThe tsukumogami doctrine's actual scripture: a Muromachi sermon-scroll narrating the revolt of the discarded.
• Tsukuyomi月読命ChronicleThe tradition's whole territory — the night — has a warden it almost never mentions.
• Tsurara-onnaつらら女RegionalA man alone in the deep-snow country looks at the icicles hanging bright from his eaves and says aloud: I wish for a wife as beautiful as these. That night, a beautiful woman comes asking to marry him.
• Tsuru Nyōbō鶴女房ChronicleA man frees a crane from a snare.
• Tsurube-otoshi釣瓶落としRegionalWalk under the wrong ancient tree at dusk and something drops — fast as a well bucket let go: a severed head, a bucket, a ball of fire, laughing as it hauls back up.

U

• Ubagabi姥ヶ火Edo catalogA fireball, about thirty centimeters, flying the rainy nights of Kawachi (Osaka) — the burning soul of an old woman who stole lamp oil from Hiraoka Shrine.
• Ubasute姥捨てRegionalThe darkest theory in the tradition — that the yamauba is the memory of old women abandoned in the mountains — rests on ubasute, and the scholarship's finding must lead the entry: ubasute "is the subject of legend, but...
• Ubume産女ChronicleThe ubume is grief folklore at its most direct: the ghost of a woman who died in childbirth, standing at a river crossing or crossroads at night, begging a stranger to hold her baby — a baby that grows heavier and heavier and turns out to be a stone or a bundle of leaves.
• Ueda Akinari上田秋成RegionalIn 1776 — the very year Sekien published his first catalog — another Osaka man perfected the yokai's literary form.
• Uji Shūi Monogatari宇治拾遺物語ChronicleThe setsuwa trilogy's third and warmest shelf: the Uji Shūi Monogatari — "gleanings of Uji" — early 13th century, anonymous, 197 tales in 15 volumes, "from nobles to commoners," from the mundane to the fantastical, and — distinctively — light on sermon: the collection that let its tales be funny.
• Ukanomitama宇迦之御魂神RegionalThe name says it: "the mysterious spirit dwelling in rice" — uka, grain; mitama, spirit — "food's life force".
• Ukemochi保食神ChronicleThe Nihon Shoki's founding meal: the food goddess Ukemochi produces a banquet from her own mouth — "spitting" the dishes forth — and her guest, the moon god Tsukuyomi, revolted by food thus made, kills her.
• Uma-no-ashi馬の足ChronicleAt night, from a tree branch — or from the wooden slats of a fence or hedge — hangs a horse's leg.
• Umi-nyōbō海女房RegionalIzumo coast, Shimane.
• Umi-zatō海座頭Edo catalogA blind minstrel standing on the open sea, biwa in hand, staff planted on the water — Sekien's Gazu Hyakki Yagyō (1776) and the Matsui Library's Hyakki Yagyō Emaki.
• Umibōzu海坊主Edo catalogThe umibōzu is the open ocean's own yokai: a calm sea surges and an enormous black bald head rises beside the ship — meters to tens of meters tall — and destroys it, unless the crew knows the trick.
• Ungaikyō雲外鏡Edo catalogA possessed mirror on a stand, tongue out, showing you what isn't there — or turning your reflection monstrous.
• Urashima Tarō浦島太郎ChronicleJapan's best-known story and the tradition's oldest continuously documented one: a fisherman spares a turtle and is taken to the sea palace; three days (or years) of hospitality with the princess; the gifted tamatebako — never to be opened; homecoming to a village where centuries have passed and everyone he loved is generations dead; and the box, opened in despair — "a cloud of white smoke bursts forth.
• Ushi no Kubi牛の首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.
• Ushi no Toki Mairi丑の時参りEdo catalogBetween 1 and 3 a.m.
• Ushi-oni牛鬼RegionalAn ox's horned head on — depending on the region — a spider's body, an oni's frame, or (in one Izumo tradition) a shining white butterfly.
• Ushirogami後神ChronicleA female ghost-figure with a single eye atop the head, materializing behind you to tug your back hair — Sekien, Konjaku Hyakki Shūi (1784).
• UwanうわんEdo catalogIn an old house or ruin, out of nowhere: "UWAN!" — a shout with no shouter.

W

• WairaわいらPicture onlyA massive bovine-bodied croucher with a single sharp curved claw on each forefoot — Sawaki Sūshi's Hyakkai Zukan (1737), Sekien's Gazu Hyakki Yagyō (1776).
• Wani和邇ChronicleThe sea-beast of the founding myths, and nobody can say what animal it was.
• Wanyūdō輪入道RegionalAn ox-cart wheel in flames, a man's shaved head at the hub, rolling the night roads between hell and here.
• Warai-onna笑い女RegionalTosa's laughing woman, from the Edo–Meiji Tosa Bakemono Ehon: she appears on the 1st, 9th, and 17th of each month, and "encounters left people half-dead".

Y

• Yadōkai夜道怪RegionalIn Chichibu and Hiki (Saitama), when a child went missing, the established phrase was ready: "taken by the yadōkai" — or "led away by the hidden zatō" [ja-yadokai, per Murakami 2005, citing Yanagita].
• Yagyō-san夜行さんRegionalAwa's one-eyed giant demon on a headless horse, abroad only on the yagyō days: New Year's Eve, Setsubun, kōshin nights, and the almanac's danger dates — "specific occasions when people were warned to avoid nighttime travel".
• Yako / Nogitsune野狐RegionalThe wild fox — yako, nogitsune — as distinct from the shrine fox.
• Yama-no-kami山の神RegionalThe deity behind the tradition's whole mountain wing — with a commute: in spring the mountain god descends to become the field god (ta-no-kami), returning uphill in autumn — one deity, two seasonal job titles, the agricultural year as her itinerary.
• Yama-otoko山男RegionalA huge, hairy, half-naked man of the deep mountains who — this is the tradition's signature — works: carrying loads, stripping bark, helping with farm labor, "in exchange for tobacco or food rather than money".
• Yamabiko山彦Edo catalogShout into a valley and something shouts back.
• Yamachichi山地乳Edo catalogThe bat's final form.
• Yamajijii山爺RegionalA gray-furred old man of the Shikoku mountains, hip-high, on one leg — with a voice that can "shake the sky and earth, make leaves fall, and make the nearby trees and rocks move"; accounts claim burst eardrums and deaths by shout alone.
• Yamaoroshi山颪RegionalA humanoid whose head bristles with spikes — a daikon grater walking — from Sekien's Hyakki Tsurezure Bukuro.
• Yamata no Orochi八岐大蛇ChronicleThe founding monster of Japanese myth: eight heads, eight tails, a body spanning eight valleys and hills, moss and cypress growing on its back, belly ever bloody — devouring one daughter of Izumo per year until only Kushinadahime remained.
• Yamauba山姥RegionalThe yamauba is the mountain's old woman: golden-white unkempt hair, filthy tattered kimono, and — in the darker tellings — a second mouth hidden under the hair on top of her head.
• Yamawaro山童Edo catalogThe kappa entry's flagship claim — one being, river in summer, mountain in winter — gets its mountain half.
• Yanagi-onna柳女Edo catalogA woman holding a child beneath a willow — Ehon Hyaku Monogatari (1841).
• Yanagita Kunio柳田國男RegionalEvery serious claim this bestiary makes eventually routes through one man: Yanagita Kunio (1875–1962), agriculture-ministry bureaucrat turned founder of minzokugaku — Japanese folklore studies — whose 1910 Tōno Monogatari is this bestiary's primary anchor for the zashiki-warashi and the red-faced kappa, and whose theories (the one-eyed fallen gods, the giants as demoted deities, the mujina etymologies) recur through our entries as the standard scholarly layer.
• Yanari家鳴Edo catalogAt night the house shakes — beams tick, walls knock, furniture trembles — and no one is doing it.
• Yao Bikuni八百比丘尼RegionalIn Wakasa, a fisherman brought home a strange catch and served a feast; his eighteen-year-old daughter — in most tellings the only one who ate — had taken ningyo flesh, and stopped aging [search-2026-07-25, the standard tale; Tokyo Weekender / the folktale corpus].
• Yaroka-mizuヤロカ水RegionalThe Kiso River in storm.
• Yashima no Hage-tanuki屋島の禿狸ChronicleThe third famous tanuki completes the set — and joins the tradition's deepest current.
• Yatagarasu八咫烏RegionalThe three-legged crow sent by Takamimusubi to guide Emperor Jinmu's eastern campaign through the Kumano mountains to Yamato — the founding navigation of the founding dynasty, outsourced to a bird.
• Yato-no-kami夜刀神ChronicleFrom the Hitachi Fudoki (8th century): the yato-no-kami — horned snake-deities of the marshlands — with the tradition's harshest look-tariff: "witnessing these creatures would destroy one's entire household lineage".
• Yofune-nushi夜船主RegionalA sea serpent off the Oki Islands demanding one girl a year — under fifteen, delivered by ceremony on a fixed night (the accounts specify mid-June, evening) — with storms and drowned fishermen as the price of default [smith-1918/en-oki].
• Yōkai妖怪RegionalTwo kanji, each meaning "suspicious, doubtful" — from Chinese yāoguài, but grown into meanings the Chinese word never held.
• Yonaki-ishi夜泣き石RegionalJapan's crying stones split into two working categories:
• Yorishiro依り代RegionalThe occupancy law under the whole tradition: yorishiro — objects "where Shinto deities temporarily descend and manifest".
• Yosuzume夜雀RegionalOn a mountain path after dark: chi, chi, chi — a sparrow's chirp where no sparrow should be awake, keeping pace with you.
• Yuki-onna雪女RegionalThe yuki-onna is winter given a face: a tall pale woman in white who appears in snowstorms, floats without footprints, and freezes the unwary with her breath.
• Yūrei幽霊Edo catalogThe general theory of Japanese ghosts, carried as a doctrine page so the many yūrei entries share one theology.

Z

• Zashiki-warashi座敷童子RegionalThe luck of a Tōhoku household, embodied as a child no visitor quite sees: a red-faced, bob-haired boy or girl of three to fifteen who leaves small footprints in ash, turns pillows over, and makes phantom spinning-wheel sounds.
• Zennyo Ryūō善女龍王Regional824 CE, Emperor Junna's reign, drought.