Today’s yokai is Hyosube. This nasty fellow is a cousin of the much-beloved Kappa, a slightly mischievous river spirit, however, Hyosube is much crueler. Those who cross one of these foul little wretches often find themselves sorry for it. Like the kappa,  he lives in rivers most of the time; but he likes to venture in to towns to, among other things, take baths in people’s houses. His body is covered in thick hair, which invariably gets left all over the bathroom, in the tub, and every he’s been. If you’re hairy like me, you know this problem only too well — we Meyers are a hairy bunch — (thankfully my wife likes hyosubes so she doesn’t seem to care).

There are a few stories of people who had unfortunate run-ins with a hyosube. In one story, a woman caught a hyosube who was trashing her eggplant garden. The hyosube got angry and destroyed all of the eggplants, and afterwards the woman turned purple and soon died. In another story, a man who went to take a morning bath found hairs and a horrible smell all over his bathroom, so he made sure to empty all the hot water after his bath that night. In retaliation, the hyosube killed his horse. In a third story, another man found his bathroom befouled by a hyosube and threw the dirty hairs and water out the window. Some of the hairs landed on his horse, which promptly died. (These stories were translated from the Japanese Wikipedia page on hyosube, as the English page just redirects to the page for kappa.)

Hyosube

I really love how this monster as well as yesterday’s monster both sound like stories someone made up to explain away a nasty relative. “Grampa Jim always drinks our beer and smokes all our cigarettes and acts like he owns this place!” could easily be a nurarihyon, while “Uncle Carl is so rude, he stinks, and he leaves his hair all over our bathroom whenever he bathes!” could easily be the origin for a hyosube.