Category: Japanese Folklore

Myōbu (命婦 / みょうぶ)
Translation: a high ranking title for court ladies
Alternate names: byakko (white fox)
Habitat: shrines and places sacred to Inari
Diet: carnivorous

Appearance: Myōbu are celestial fox spirits with white fur and full, fluffy tails. They are holy creatures, and bring happiness and blessings to those around them.

Myōbu statues are most often found at Inari* shrines, taking the place of the koma inu which adorn other shrines. These foxes act as both guardians and symbols of good luck and blessing. People often leave offerings of holy sake, sekihan (red rice and red beans), inarizushi, and fried tofu at these shrines. These foods are all said to be foxes’ favorites.

Origin: Foxes were considered holy animals since long before recorded history began in Japan. The farmers of ancient Japan revered foxes, which preyed on the mice and rats which destroy crops. Foxes have long been associated with Inari, the god of the harvest. Inari is said to use foxes as servants and messengers, and the majority of the foxes in his employ are the holy, white-furred kind known as myōbu.

Myōbu statues are commonly found at Inari shrines. They often carry sacred objects in their mouths, such as the round jewel often carried by koma inu in other shrines. Myōbu can also be seen carrying spiral keys, sheaves of grain, and scrolls. These all carry special significance in Inari worship. The round jewel represents both the soul of Inari, and its form is a symbol of a grain storehouse. The spiral key is an archaic design of the keys used with traditional farm warehouses. The key represents the desire to unlock the storehouse; i.e. soul of Inari. The sheaves of grain represent the five grains (wheat, rice, beans, awa millet, and kibi millet) which are important in East Asian traditions. Finally, the scroll represents knowledge and wisdom.

* Inari (稲荷) is the Japanese kami of prosperity, rice, and tea, and protector of foxes. A complex deity widely worshiped throughout Japan, Inari is variously portrayed as male, female and androgynous.

Translation: oriental melon monster

Appearance: Makuwauri no bakemono is a bizarre and mysterious yokai found in the Buson yōkai emaki. It looks like an oriental melon (Cucumis melo) with the body of a samurai sprouting from it.

Origin: Buson yōkai emaki is a famous yōkai picture scroll painted by Yosa Buson, a poet and artist who lived from 1716 to 1784. He is considered one of the greatest poets of the Edo Period. In the 1750’s, while studying painting at Kenshōji in Miyazu, Kyōto, Buson painted a scroll containing eight graffiti-like doodles of bizarre yōkai. His doodles are presented as pictures with names and no stories, so the true origin of these yōkai remains a mystery. They are believed to be based upon local legends that Buson picked during on his travels.

The illustration of this yōkai in Buson’s painting notes that it comes from the river ferry in what is today Yamashiro village in Kizugawa City, Kyōto. Whatever specific connection this yōkai had with the area is unfortunately lost. The region was historically famous for it’s melons, so it is only natural that it may have had melon yōkai as well.

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Translation: old koto master

Appearance: The Koto furunushi looks like a koto—a long, harp-like instrument that is the national instrument of Japan—transformed into a wild beast.

Behavior: A koto which was once played frequently but later forgotten about and stored away can transform into the koto furunushi. These yōkai may look like wild beasts, but they remember every song that was ever played on them. Koto furunushi play when no one is around, causing everyone to wonder where the music is coming from. They prefer to play old, forgotten tunes that have fallen out of style and vanished from people’s memory.

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Kappa (河童 / かっぱ)

Translation: river child

Habitat: rivers, lakes, ponds, waterways, cisterns, wells; found throughout Japan

Diet: omnivorous; prefers cucumbers and human entrails

Distinctive Features: Beak-like mouth; Tortoise-like shell on back; Frog-like, removable skin; Water-filled depression on top of head; Three anuses and strong “fishy” odor”

Details: Kappa are aquatic, reptilian humanoids who inhabit the rivers and streams flowing over Japan. They are at home in the water, thriving during the warm months. Kappa are the size and shape of a human child. Kappa bodies are built for swimming; they have webbed, thumbless hands and feet, a turtle-like beak and shell, and an elastic, waterproof skin that reeks of fish and is said to be removable.

Other inhuman traits include three anuses that allow them to pass three times as much gas as humans, and forearms attached to one another inside of their shells—pulling on one arm lengthens it while the other arm contracts. Their most distinguishing characteristic is a dish-like depression that lies on top of their skulls. This dish is the source of a kappa’s power and must be kept filled with water at all times. Should the water be spilled and the dish dry up, the kappa will be unable to move. It may even die.

While younger kappa are frequently found in family groups, adult kappa live solitary lives. It is common for kappa to befriend other yōkai and sometimes even people. Possessed of a keen intelligence, kappa are one of the few yōkai able to learn human languages. They are highly knowledgeable about medicine and the art of setting bones. According to legend, friendly kappa taught these skills to humans. For fun, they love causing mischief, practicing martial arts like sumo wrestling, and playing games of skill. Kappa are proud and stubborn, but also fiercely honorable; they never break a promise. Kappa will eat almost anything, but they are particularly fond of two foods: cucumbers and raw innards—particularly human anuses.

Kappa are revered in Shinto as a kind of water god. It is not uncommon to see offerings of cucumbers made at riverbanks by humans. In return, kappa help people by irrigating fields, befriending lonely children, or competing with adults in sports and games.

Kappa can also be crass and dangerous. Lakes and rivers where they live are often marked with warning signs. Kappa particularly despise cows and horses, and will attack the animals for no reason. A kappa’s preferred method of attack is to drown its victims, or bite them to death under water. Kappa also devour humans alive. Usually they go for the rear end to get at the shirikodama, a mythical ball of flesh located just inside the anus.

Kappa Cuisine: The popular sushi dish kappa maki (cucumber roll) takes its name from this yōkai.

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Translation: “until when?”
Alternate names: itsumaden
Diet: the lamentation of the dead

Appearance: Itsumade are kaichō, or strange birds. They have the face of a human with a pointed beak, and the body of a snake with wings, and terrible claws. Their wingspan is 4.8 meters.

Behavior: Itsumade appear in the night sky during times of trouble—such as plagues and disasters, or flying over battlegrounds where many have died. In particular, they fly over places where there is suffering or death, yet little has been done to alleviate the pain of the living or pacify the spirits of the dead. The strange birds fly about in circles all night long, crying out in a terrible voice.

Origin: Itsumade make their first recorded appearance in the Taiheiki, a fictional history of Japan written in the 14th century. According to the Taiheiki, a terrible plague spread during the fall of 1334. The suffering of the plague victims is what summoned the itsumade.

Itsumade’s name is not written in the Taiheiki; it was added later by Toriyama Sekien. He named this yōkai for its horrible cry of “Itsumademo?” which means, “Until when?” The birds appear to be asking those below how long will this suffering go unnoticed. It is thought that the spirits of the dead and suffering form into onryō which take the shape of these birds. They demand recognition of their suffering and torment.

Legends: One night during the fall of 1334, the itsumade suddenly appeared above the hall for state ceremonies, crying out, “Itsumademo? Itsumademo?” Panic erupted amongst the people of the capital. The same creature came back the next night, and every night thereafter. Finally, the imperial court decided that something had to be done. They recalled Minamoto no Yorimasa’s triumph against the nue many years earlier, and decided to summon the warrior Oki no Jirouzaemon Hiroari. Hiroari was an expert archer. He used a signal arrow that let off a loud whistle as it flew, and shot the monster out of the sky. Afterwards, Hiroari was given the name Mayumi, meaning true bow.

Mayumi Hiroari went on to become a famous warrior, and settled down in what is now Mayumi, Miyama City, Fukuoka Prefecture, where his grave still stands. The area was renamed in his honor after he died.

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Translation: bone woman
Habitat: dark streets, alleys, graveyards
Diet: none; though has a large sexual appetite

Appearance: Not all who die turn into vengeful beings of grudge and jealousy. Hone onna retain an undying love that persists long after their flesh has rotted away. This allows them to continue to be with the object of their affection despite having died. These ghosts appear as they did in life—young, beautiful women in their prime. Only those unclouded by love or with strong religious faith are able to penetrate their disguise and see their true form: a rotting, fetid, skeletal corpse returned from the grave.

Interactions: At night, a hone onna rises from the grave and wanders to the house of her former lover. Her appearance shocks those who believed her to be dead. This shock quickly turns into a joy that blinds the hone onna’s lover to any clues that something might be wrong. Even the hone onna herself may not know of her condition. She is driven only by love. She exists as a ghost only to continue the love she had in life. The hone onna spends the night and leaves in the morning. This unholy coupling can continue for days, or even weeks, without being noticed. However, there is a price to be paid. Each night she drains some of her lover’s life force, and he grows ever sicker and weaker. Without intervention, he will eventually die, joining his lover forever in death’s embrace.

In most cases, a friend or a servant of her lover will see through the hone onna’s illusion and alert someone to her true identity. Though her human lover may be repulsed by her when the truth is revealed to him, the ghost may not realizes her condition and continue to visit every night. A home can be warded with prayers and magic charms against entry by ghosts, but they only work as long as the master of the house wills them to. As the hone onna’s body decays further, her enchanting allure only increases. Eventually most men succumb and let her into their homes one last time, sacrificing their own lives to the ghost of the woman they loved.

Legends: Perhaps the most famous hone onna is Otsuyu from Botan dōrō, or The Tale of the Peony Lantern. Botan dōrō was introduced to Japan in the 17th century from an old Chinese ghost story. Over the centuries, it has been adapted into puppet shows, kabuki plays, rakugo, and films, and remains an influential ghost story today.

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Translation: drought spirit
Alternate names: batsu, kanbo (“drought mother”), shinchi
Habitat: mountains
Diet: moisture

Appearance: Hiderigami is a grotesque, hairy humanoid which stands between two and three feet tall. It has a single eye on the top of its head. It only has a single arm and a single leg, although it can run as fast as the wind. All hiderigami are female.

Behavior: Hiderigami are rarely encountered by humans. They live deep in the mountains and only rarely travel out into human-inhabited lands, but when they do their presence can be strongly felt over a wide area. A hiderigami’s body exerts such a strong heat that everywhere it goes the ground dries up, clouds fail to form, and rain cannot fall. Despite the incredible danger that they pose, it is said that throwing a hiderigami into a toilet will kill it.

Origin: Hiderigami originated in southern China, and come from a goddess. Their origin is recorded in some of the oldest ancient Chinese records. When the legendary Yellow Emperor of China fought the warlord Chi You, he summon a powerful goddess named Batsu to aid him in battle. Batsu contained an supernatural heat inside of her, and when she released her power, the battle was quickly and decisively won in the emperor’s favor; however, she had used so much of her power up that she was unable to return to Heaven or contain her heat. While Batsu was nearby, the waters all dried up and rain would not fall, and so her presence became a terrible problem for the emperor. Unable to kill her or to send her back to heaven, the emperor exiled the goddess to a far-away mountain and forbade her to return. Whether Batsu became the mother of the hiderigami or became corrupted and transformed into this yokai herself is unknown.

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Translation: lady of the bridge
Habitat: very old, very long bridges
Diet: none

Appearance: Hashihime are intensely jealous goddesses who inhabit bridges — in particular, very old and very long bridges. As goddesses, hashihime may take different forms depending on occasion, however they are commonly depicted wearing white robes, white face-paint, an iron trivet, and carrying five candles. This is a ceremonial outfit used to perform curses.

Interactions: Hashihime ferociously guard the bridges they inhabit. As with most gods connected to a location, they are very competitive and jealous. If one praises or speaks positively about another bridge while on top of a hashihime’s bridge, or if one recites lines from certain Noh plays that feature a woman’s wrath as the main theme, something terrible is likely to happen to that person.

Despite their fearsome nature, they are highly honored by the people who live nearby, and shrines are established in their honor near the bridges they inhabit. In times of war, residents will beseech their local hashihime to guard the bridge against invaders. In times of peace, hashihime are goddess of separation and severing, and are asked to aid people in things such as break-ups, divorce, and severing bad luck. So strong is their power of severing that it is considered taboo for lovers to pass in front of a hashihime shrine together, or for wedding processions to pass in front of one. If newlyweds need to cross a bridge inhabited by a hashihime, they will instead pass underneath it on a boat rather than risk cursing their marriage.

Surviving an Encounter: The Hashihime is particularly fond of targeting happy couples. If you encounter one, your only chance to avoid a painful death is to swear to break up with your significant other.

The Hashime Shrine: There is a shrine to the Hashihime in the city of Uji, which is often visited by those who wish to cut ties with someone in their lives.

The Hashime Library: Hashihime is the title of one of the chapters of the Tale of Genji, the world’s first novel, written circa the year 1000 by a courtesan named Murasaki Shikibu.

The most famous hashihime story comes from Tsurugi no Maki, in The Tale of the Heike, and is retold in the noh play Kanawa.

A woman visited the the Kifune-jinja in Kyoto at the hour of the ox (roughly 2 am), filled with rage and jealousy towards her ex-husband who had thrown her away for another woman. Night after night she visited the shrine, praying to the gods enshrined there to turn her into a powerful demon. The woman wanted nothing else other than to see her ex-husband destroyed, even at the cost of her own life. After seven nights of pilgrimage, her prayers were answered: the gods told her that if she immersed herself in the Uji river for twenty-one nights, she would become a living demon.

The woman did as she was bid. She donned a white robe and tied her hair up into five horns. She painted her face and covered her body in crimson dye. She placed an upturned trivet on her head and attached torches to each foot. She lit a torch on both ends and placed it in her mouth. She immersed herself in the Uji river and for twenty-one days she kindled the hatred in her heart. Then, just as the gods told her, after twenty-one days she transformed into a terrible kijo with supreme power. She had become the hashihime of Uji.

That night, her husband awoke from a horrible dream with a premonition of danger. He quickly sought out the famous onmyōji, Abe-no-Seimei. Seimei recognized the dream as a sign that the man’s former wife would come and destroy the couple that very night, and promised to save them. He went to their house, recited magical prayers, and crafted two katashiro — magical paper doll representations of the man and his wife, meant to be used as substitutionary targets for the kijo’s rage. That night, as Seimei had predicted, the demon appeared. She attacked the two katashiro instead of the real couple, and Seimei’s magic worked: her power was reflected back upon her and she was driven away. The demon woman, realizing that she could not overcome Abe-no-Seimei’s magic, vanished, threatening that she would come back another time.

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Translation: wisdom; specifically the Buddhist concept of Perfect Wisdom

Appearance: Hannya refers to demons or oni; more specifically to female demons called kijo—even more specifically to those kijo which appear in noh theater. They were once human women who were consumed by jealousy and transformed into demonesses. The name hannya also refers to a specific type of demon mask used in noh theater.

There are three grades of hannya: namanari, chūnari, and honnari. Namanari hannya are kijo that still resemble human women. They have small horns and use dark magic to perform their evil deeds, such as summoning ikiryō to attack their enemies. They are not completely evil; there remains a chance for these beginner demons to return to humanity. Chūnari hannya are mid-level demons. They have long, sharp horns, tusk-like fangs, and more powerful magic. However, they are still vulnerable to Buddhist prayers. Honnari hannya are true demons and the most powerful of the three. They have serpentine bodies and breathe fire. Honnari hannya have embraced their jealousy so deeply that there is no calming their fury.

Origin: Hannya originate from the Sanskrit term for wisdom—specifically Prajñāpāramitā, the highest form of Buddhist wisdom which leads to enlightenment. The juxtaposition of the highest form of wisdom and creatures who represent direct opposition to that wisdom comes from the use of the hannya mask in noh. In the play Aoi no Ue, a shugenja (an ascetic mystic) exorcises the spirit of the hannya Lady Rokujō from Lady Aoi. As it is driven away, the evil spirit cries out, “Oh, how horrible! The voice of wisdom is like a demon!” Since then, demon masks and wisdom have been associated with each other.

The three most famous hannya from Japanese literature are Lady Rokujō from Aoi no Ue, Kurozuka from Kurozuka, and Kiyo-hime from Dōjō-ji.

Haka No Hi (墓の火 / はかのき)

Translation: grave fire
Habitat: tombs, graveyards, and burial grounds

Appearance: Haka no hi are mysterious, supernatural fires, or kaika. They spout forth from the base of graves.

This creature is described as a strange type of fire spirit (like a human soul) which can be seen lingering around a small five storied pagoda which you can see in graveyards.

Origin: The cause of haka no hi is unknown. It is commonly believed to be a result of failure on the part of the grave’s owner to reach enlightenment and pass on to Nirvana. The flames are thought to be residual energy from worldly attachments, or else feelings of grudge or resentment, coming from the remains interred in the grave.