The mythical creatures of Japanese folklore

A goat-shaped thing that darts onto the night road on Yoron Island. Stay silent when you see it — speak, or mention goats, and misfortune follows.

A giant boar shot on Mount Obagamine came back as a one-legged ghost. It was sealed away, but on one day a year, December 20, it walks again.

A strange light that rises from the sea, often settling in a shrine pine or cedar on a set date.

A giant ape of the deep mountains, said to carry off women and laugh until its own lips cover its eyes.

A sage beast, pictured with nine eyes and ox horns in one Edo print, that once dictated a catalogue of every spirit on earth.

A shapeshifting badger blamed for roadside tricks nationwide, though the same name has also meant the tanuki or the civet depending on where and when you ask.

A shark-shaped sea monster whose spine-covered tail pulls sailors under in near silence.

The beast that rides the lightning down — in some tellings tearing apart the tree it lands in.

A centipede wound seven and a half times around Mount Mikami, killed by an arrow the archer had spat on.

A grudge that outlives the person who held it, and keeps settling the account.

A short, thick snake shaped like a wooden mallet. Japanese towns have offered reward money for one since 1989.

A white puff that drifts through the air. Keep it in a paulownia box and feed it face powder, and it brings luck.

A carp in a temple pond whose markings looked like a human face, and the 1990 media storm that made it famous.

Hear her story and she visits in a dream or by phone, asking riddles. Answer wrong and she takes a part of your body.

A tall woman in a tattered white kimono who drags children away on rainy days, said to have once been a bullied girl herself.

A boy you summon by calling your own phone from a payphone. He calls back within a day and creeps closer each time, until he says he is right behind you.

A horse that burned to death in a fire and turned into a yokai, sitting face to face with a toad inside a mosquito net.

A man with two faces, four arms and four legs, who drew a bow with every hand at once.

The hour-of-the-ox curse: white robes, an iron crown of candles, and a straw doll nailed to a sacred tree.

The cuckoo that crosses the mountain of death and comes back calling — which is why its cry was never just a bird's.

A tool thrown out after a hundred years of service comes back with a face on it, furious at being thrown out.

A stone at the edge of the village, given offerings at New Year, standing where the road stops being yours.

The Emishi chief of Mount Iwate, remembered on one side as a leader and on the other as an oni.

The judge at the end of the road, who reads out what you did from a mirror that does not take your word for it.

It starts as a small shadow, and the harder you look the further it rises over the roof.

An animal that has lived far too long and has stopped being an animal.

It lives in the storehouse rather than the parlour, and guards what is kept there.

It lives in the hearth ash. Poke the ash and it comes out — which was the point of saying so.

A dugong-like fish of Okinawa and the Amami islands, cast as a mermaid in a tale that warns fishermen of a tsunami.

Fireballs seen all year, but the ones around the tenth of the eighth month get their own name.

A rice paddle thrown out after long service, which gets up at night and makes trouble.

A fire that stays fixed in one place, while other ghost-lights wander.

She waits at the children's graves and nurses the ones buried there.

The Ryukyuan word for all of them at once. Let one crawl between your legs and you die.

A red-haired baby that slips into old houses at night to flip sleepers' pillows and press down on their chests.

The tanuki whose quarrel with Rokuemon became a war, and then a kōdan performance, and then a film.

A red-haired child that lives in an old tree, most often a banyan. It brings endless fish to people who befriend it, but kills livestock or drowns those who harm its tree.

The same growing giant that other regions call taka-nyūdō, but a bōzu here.

A bobbed Japanese doll at a Hokkaido temple whose short hair is said to have grown down to its shoulders after the little girl who loved it died.

Hair kept in a hemp tub as a shrine's sacred object, which grows long and binds intruders when the enshrined kami's mood turns unsettled.

It stands in the road and keeps getting taller as long as you keep looking up.

A red-haired child yokai that moves into houses, sometimes called kin to the zashiki-warashi.

It slips into a cattle shed at night, leaves a tiny wound, and the animal is dead by morning.

The ghost of a woman cut in two by a train, who drags herself on her arms with a 'teke teke' sound.

A small wooden box from a 2005 forum story, said to be a curse. Researchers find no such tradition in Shimane.

Fingers on a coin, a sheet of yes and no, and a fox, a dog, and a tanuki written over a foreign game.

A train ride, told live on a forum in 2004, ends at a station that is not on any timetable.

A dog with a man's face that outruns cars on the highway and tells people to leave it alone.

A beautiful girl at a spinning wheel by the road. Stop to watch and she turns white-haired and laughs.

Hide-and-seek played alone, with a stuffed doll, from a set of instructions posted in 2007.

An oni riding a headless horse, abroad on setsubun night and the year's turn.

A shapeshifting tanuki that holds out a giant tobacco pipe and demands a toll from river boats.

A woman who licks. Her famous story calls her a cat girl; the kanji we spell her name with today is a modern choice.

A possessing spirit neighbours blame when a household grows rich fast — and fear once that household's luck turns.

A one-legged old woman in the snow. You can follow her prints, and there is only ever one line.

A stone by the road that asks to be carried, and gets heavier with every step you take.

A white glow that rises from the sea and stalls a boat until someone drives it off.

Her hair is always wet. Smile back at her, and she stays with you for life.

Someone beats a mat somewhere nearby, over and over. Nobody is there, and there is no mat.

A cry or a sudden heavy leg on a night road, said in some villages to be a child who died too soon.

A floating ball of fire with a human face in it, lured closer by slapping a straw sandal three times.

A tree comes down in the night with the axe strokes and the crash, and in the morning nothing is felled.

Stones fall from the sky with no thrower ever seen, blamed on a tengu.

A child walks past the edge of the village and does not come back, and the search party knows which word to use for it.

A booming, thunder-like sound over Urado Bay, counted as one of the three wonders of Tosa.

A goddess born from Susanoo's spat-out rage: high-nosed, fanged, and contrary to everything.

A three-eyed, eight-faced man-eater that preyed on travelers from a Kōchi mountain, until it was burned alive.

A kappa covered in hair like a monkey, which pulls swimmers under and takes the liver.

A small, hairy river creature of Kōchi and Tokushima that challenges people to sumo, and in some tellings swells in size as it loses.

A voice in the school toilet offers red paper or blue paper, and in the typical version both answers kill.

An old woman who runs alongside speeding cars on all fours, a paper reading 'Turbo' taped to her back.

A woman about eight feet tall stands on the other side of the hedge, and the sound she makes is po, po, po.

Seven dead who travel together, mostly by the sea and rivers. They take one living person, and the one they take joins them.

Knock three times on the third stall of the third floor, ask for her by name, and a small voice answers yes.

Enter the mountain on the 1st, 9th or 17th and a young woman points at you and laughs; you come down half dead.

A two-legged figure whose red hair shines like the sun, too bright to look at twice; its feet stay hidden in the grass.

A small snake kept in a jar by a household, which brings wealth and cannot be got rid of.

A fox that takes the shape of a beautiful woman and goes after men who are already spoken for.

A weasel-shaped thing that goes for cattle and horses, listed among the beasts in an Edo encyclopedia.

A human shape standing on a road. It grows taller each time you look up at it, and shrinks when you look down.

Two fires that rise side by side off the Mitsugi coast on summer and autumn nights.

The rival demon king of the same wager, who is named in the story but barely appears in it.

A demon king who spent thirty nights trying to frighten one sixteen-year-old, and lost the wager.

A tanuki enshrined as a guardian of cattle and horses—worshipped, not hunted.

The red-bearded giant of Kibi whose defeat by Kibitsuhiko is often called the root of Momotaro.

A demon chief who held Mount Yuga above the Inland Sea until the general Sakanoue no Tamuramaro brought him down.

Something else moves into a body already dead, and the corpse sits up.

A fox that served Tottori castle as a courier, and ran the road faster than any man.

The sea beast the hare of Inaba tricked—read as crocodile by some scholars and as shark by others.

Not a fox that haunts a house but one a household is said to keep, passed down the family line.

A great serpent on the sea floor that demanded a girl every year.

A woman whose body or neck runs out to seven fathoms—about 12.6 metres—before she looks down at you.

A sea woman who comes ashore for the night's catch, close kin to the iso-onna of the western coasts.

A one-eyed yokai that appears without warning before someone walking alone on a night road, attacks them and eats them.

Something that cries 'chi, chi, chi' like a sparrow and follows you, front and behind, on a mountain road at night.

A one-eyed man-eater from the Izumo gazetteer, often called the oldest oni in any surviving Japanese text.

A white thing writhing far out in the rice field on a windless day; look at it long enough to understand what it is and you stop being able to think.

A red-robed monk who turns up in three unrelated stories — a stolen temple bell, a court omen, and a lantern on the shore.

A dog that walks the mountain path behind you: stay on your feet and it sees you home, stumble and it is on you.

A one-eyed, three-fingered shape rising from a flooded paddy, crying 'Give back my field!'

A toad about 2.4 meters long in the Suō hills that does not chase its prey — it simply breathes it in.

Something small and dog-shaped that winds between your shins as you walk a wet Okayama road at night.

The hag of Adachigahara, who offered travellers a bed and kept a room they must not open.

The widow in a mountain temple's back rooms, who digs up the graveyard's dead and strips their skin.

The tanuki who commanded eight hundred and eight others guarding Matsuyama castle, until a retainers' quarrel ended with the whole clan sealed in a cave.

The spirit of a banana plant that takes a woman's shape at night and speaks to whoever answers.

An eight-headed serpent that took a daughter a year from one family until a god got it drunk on eight vats of sake.

The tanuki of Yashima, who would replay the Heike's last battle in the air for anyone who fed him well.

A house deep in the mountains with the kettle still boiling and nobody in it; take one bowl home and your family never wants again.

A whale of bare bones surfacing off Shimane in the rain, followed by fish and birds nobody can put a name to.

The temple tea kettle that sprouted a tanuki's head, tail and legs—and would not stop boiling.

A mountain spirit that appears only on clear days and simply cannot be seen when it rains.

A river boy covered in hair, with teeth like a file, catching fish at the water's edge.

A monk who burned himself alive on Toribeyama, still wrapped in his own flames.

The classic Japanese ghost: white burial robe, black hair unbound, no feet below the knee.

Okiku's ghost rising from the well, counting nine plates and never once reaching ten.

Sparks that cling to a traveler's straw cape on rainy nights—and multiply if you try to brush them off.

A night heron whose feathers glow blue-white as it passes overhead—a real bird, and a real light.

Flames that rise from old battlefields at night, where the dead were never buried.

An old woman who blows out the lantern in your hand and leaves you standing in the dark.

A baby-shaped thing in the river reeds—follow its cry and you end up in the water.

A ball of flame with an old woman's face, born from a woman who stole lamp oil from a shrine.

An infant that licks the oil from lamps—perhaps, Sekien wondered, the reborn ghost of an oil thief.

A blind, biwa-carrying giant who wades the open sea, drawn by Sekien with no word of explanation.

A giant, tattered zatō who roams the main roads on stormy nights, always bound for the brothels to play his shamisen.

A black, Buddha-like figure climbing out of a family altar, its eyes dangling on their stalks.

The ghost monk of a ruined temple, still ringing an evening bell that no one comes to hear.

A clawed thing that peers down through the skylight on the one night you are required to stay awake.

A shrimp-like thing with scissor claws that snips mosquito nets and fishing nets with equal joy.

A hairy hag from a 1776 picture, later linked to a mountain woman who spins hemp at superhuman speed.

The idler's yokai: a man who did nothing with his life, reborn as a thing that licks lamp oil and does nothing still.

A shrine bell grown into a dancing woman—the sound of kagura, finally given a face.

A monk who peers up through the privy floor on New Year's Eve—unless you say his name first.

A cart of old love letters, and the woman shaped from the longing that was never sent.

The king of the dust heap — to Sekien, chief of the mountain hags born from piled-up dust.

The cauldron at Kibitsu Shrine whose hum answers yes or no—and whose silence is the worst answer.

A stack of retired Noh masks that begins, at night, to work through its whole repertoire.

A crooked old woman tied to white face powder, with a sake jug, a stick and a broken umbrella for a hat.

A water jar with a face that never runs dry—the rare tsukumogami that signals good luck instead of punishing anyone.

An old woman with a great snake wrapped around her body, said to be the wife of Jagoemon of the snake mound.

Smoke that gathers into a human shape—seen, modern retellings say, only by the pure of heart.

A giant woman's laughter rolling down over a fence, and never stopping.

A two-tailed cat wearing a hearth trivet as a crown, puffing the embers back to life.

A century-old mirror that stops reflecting the room and starts showing whatever it pleases.

An old kitchen cloth that has turned into a ragged, dragon-like spirit.

A worn-out futon that has grown eyes, with scraps of cloth for arms and legs.

Ogre-masked visiting deities who storm into homes at New Year roaring 'Any crybabies here?'

A masked woman who asks 'Am I pretty?'—then removes the mask to reveal a mouth slit ear to ear.

A one-eyed, hairy mountain child—the kappa's mountain form—that helps loggers in exchange for food.

Cold blue 'demon-fires' that flicker in graveyards and wetlands, said to be born of the dead.

A bald figure on a Kyoto road with a single shining eye where its anus should be.

Pale floating orbs of soul-fire that drift from the newly dead near graveyards and rooftops.

A monstrous head that plummets from treetops to snatch anyone passing beneath at night.

A horse's head that dangles from an old hackberry tree, neighing to frighten passersby.

A scaled water-tiger relative of the kappa that bites children who tease it.

One of the oldest recorded oni, a temple demon subdued by a superhuman young acolyte.

The vengeful monk Raigo reborn as a swarm of iron-toothed rats that devour scriptures.

A hairy, grinning river yokai—cousin of the kappa—that loves eggplants and startles bathers.

A monkey-shaped creature with a pointed mouth that sucks a sleeper's breath. If someone else sees it, the sleeper lives long; if not, they die the next day.

A ghostly court lady in a ruined palace, teeth blackened, watching for anyone who comes by.

A woman stretched impossibly tall beside a brothel. Modern writers made her an envious peeper.

A flaming one-wheeled cart carrying a woman or a fearsome man; to glimpse it is to invite doom.

A ghostly ox-carriage bearing a huge, glaring face that drifts through misty nights.

A thick, mallet-shaped snake with a gaping mouth that rolls down slopes at travelers.

A voice that suddenly bellows 'Uwan!' from an empty, dilapidated house—and nothing more.

A creature covered in hair all over, like the hairy immortal woman of Chinese legend; its name can also be written to mean 'seen only rarely.'

A forgotten koto that grows a face to show its grudge at being forgotten.

Footsteps with no body that follow a person walking a dark road at night. Step to the side, let it go first, and it leaves.

A little general armored in cast-off cups and plates who marshals the household crockery.

An old biwa lute turned spirit, drawn as a blind biwa priest with the lute for a head.

Countless eyes that appear on the paper sliding screens (shoji) of a ruined house.

A blue-lit specter that appears when the hundredth ghost story is told by lantern light.

A spurned woman whose rage transforms her into a fire-breathing serpent to hunt down a fleeing monk.

A giant skeleton that modern yokai books say is made from the bones of the unburied dead.

A human-faced calf that is born, speaks a true prophecy of coming disaster, then dies.

The horned, grimacing visage of a woman consumed by jealousy and turned into a demon.

A Japanese merfolk—part human, part fish—whose flesh grants immortality to whoever eats it.

A chimeric, tapir-like beast that devours nightmares when called upon after a bad dream.

A dog-spirit familiar that serves a family but can be sent to curse their enemies.

A three-legged, beaked mermaid-like being that rises from the sea to foretell and ward off epidemics.

A colossal giant whose footsteps shaped Japan's lakes, hills, and valleys.

A ghostly fire-breathing chicken whose cold flames give no heat.

A harmless boy yokai who trots through the rain carrying a block of tofu.

Ghosts of the drowned who beg for a ladle, then use it to swamp and sink your boat.

A savage ox-headed monster that haunts coasts and preys on humans.

The spirit that dwells in an old tree; felling its host brings misfortune.

A small mountain spirit blamed for the echoes that answer you in the hills.

A river otter that shapeshifts and plays tricks, a smaller cousin of the kappa.

A hairy beast drawn on a shrine gate, later said to punish the irreverent.

A courtesan whose face and body are entirely hidden by cascading hair.

A turban-snail that lives long enough to become a shapeshifting sea demon.

A giant spider that takes the form of a seductive woman to ensnare men.

A skeletal woman who, seen as beautiful only by her lover, visits him each night.

A thieving woman whose arms sprout countless bird-eyes as punishment for stealing coins.

A flaming ox-cart wheel bearing the face of a tormented monk that rolls down roads.

A fiery cat-beast that descends at funerals to snatch away the corpses of the dead.

A long-tongued yokai that licks ceilings; later books blame it for the dark stains overhead.

A small yokai that creeps into dirty bathhouses at night to lick up the grime.

Whirlwind weasels that slash a traveler's legs with sickle-like claws, leaving painless wounds.

An unseen presence heard washing red beans by the river at night.

A childlike house spirit whose presence brings a family fortune.

A small contrarian demon that provokes people into doing the opposite of their intent.

The ghost of a woman who died in childbirth, begging you to hold her baby.

A split-mouthed paper lantern spirit with a lolling tongue.

A one-eyed, one-legged umbrella come to life—an icon of tool-spirits.

A woman with a second, ravenous mouth hidden at the back of her head.

A huge black sea spirit that rises to capsize ships in calm waters.

A serpent-bodied woman by the water who lures victims to their doom.

A mountain crone who shelters travelers—then may devour them.

A nine-tailed fox disguised as a beautiful court lady who bewitches an emperor.

A giant earth spider that ensnares heroes in monstrous webs.

The sake-loving oni king of Mt. Oe, slain by Minamoto no Yorimitsu.

A chimeric night beast: monkey's face, tiger's limbs, snake for a tail.

A towering bald monk that grows taller the more you look up at it.

A gourd-headed old yokai who slips into homes and acts like the master.

A childlike, one-eyed monk yokai that startles people on lonely roads.

A woman whose neck stretches to impossible lengths at night.

An old cat whose tail splits in two as it becomes a powerful yokai.

A jolly shapeshifting raccoon dog, rival prankster to the fox.

Mysterious floating fox-fires that lead travelers astray at night.

A shapeshifting fox spirit that gains tails and wisdom with age.

A cat that gains supernatural powers with age and walks on two legs.

A pale, beautiful woman of the snowstorm who freezes travelers to death.

A proud mountain spirit with a red face and long nose, master of martial arts.

Horned, fanged ogres of immense strength, often red or blue.

A mischievous, turtle-like river imp with a water-filled dish on its head.