Greetings, yokai lovers!
I’m happy to share this week’s yokai with you today: hitokai, the human shellfish!
You’ll note from her description, she is nearly identical to umidebito. They appeared in the same month of the same year in the same location, and have virtually the same story. Even the samurai who supposedly talked to each of them have oddly similar names, too.
Funnily enough, these are not the only two yokai from Fukushimagata who are so similar. There’s a whole bunch of them! And we’ll look at a few more of them, but maybe not all of them just not… since I don’t want to bore everyone with too many variant takes on the same incident.
人貝
ひとかい
Translation: human shellfish
Habitat: oceans
Appearance: Hitokai are prophetic sea creatures that have a scaly, snake-like body, the head of a human woman, long, black hair and a third eye in their forehead. They ride in a conch shell and at night they glow in five different colors.
Behavior: Hitokai appear offshore when they have an important message or prophecy to deliver to humanity.
Origin: The only known hitokai sighting is recorded as taking place in 1849, in a lagoon called Fukushimagata in Niigata Prefecture. Several other prophetic aquatic yōkai have been documented as appearing in Fukushimagata to deliver prophetic messages to the people living there. The reports of these yōkai are very similar, and some of them are considered to be different accounts of the same incident. The description of hitokai is particularly similar to that of another shellfish yōkai called umidebito who is said to have appeared around the same time.
Legends: In April of 1849, a strange five-colored light was seen night after night on the shores of Fukushimagata in Echigo Province. It didn’t harm anyone, and so a brave samurai named Shibata Chūta approached the light to investigate. He discovered the creature, who told him that there would be a coming bumper crop lasting for five years, followed by a terrible sickness which would wipe out sixty percent of the population. The creature instructed everybody to copy its likeness and hang it in their houses in order to protect themselves from the sickness. Then, the creature vanished.