Mokumokuren
Mokumokuren is the many-eyed yōkai of damaged shōji screens, created or crystallized by Toriyama Sekien’s eighteenth-century imagination. It turns neglect…
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Culture or Region: Japanese traditions
Mujina
Mujina is a historically unstable name applied to badgers, raccoon dogs and shape-shifting animal beings. Internationally it became famous through…
Read entryRokurokubi
Rokurokubi are long-necked or head-separating beings whose ordinary daytime appearance conceals nocturnal transformation. The tradition joins moral curse, involuntary condition,…
Read entryTsukumogami
Tsukumogami are old tools and household objects that acquire spirit, agency and often resentment after long service. Medieval picture scrolls…
Read entryIttan-momen
Ittan-momen is a long white strip of cloth said to fly through the night and coil around the head or…
Read entryKamaitachi
Kamaitachi are cutting-wind yōkai associated with sudden painless wounds received in snow country and mountain passes. Edo scholars and artists…
Read entryMikoshi-nyūdō
Mikoshi-nyūdō is the road yōkai that appears first as a monk or shadow and grows taller the more a traveler…
Read entryNurarihyon
Nurarihyon is the elusive elderly yōkai who enters a busy household, drinks tea and behaves with such effortless authority that…
Read entryUmi-nyōbō
Umi-nyōbō is the sea wife or sea lady, a regional coastal yōkai described as a powerful female figure who comes…
Read entryUmibōzu
Umibōzu is the vast dark sea-monk apparition that rises beside ships, overturns vessels or demands a barrel with which to…
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