One popular request I’ve been getting since Night Parade came out is “more tsukumogami!” For those who do not know, a tsukumogami is a kind of yokai born from common household things. The name means “99-year god,” and the idea is that an object which has been in use for 99 years (or else a very very long time) grows a soul and takes on a life of its own. Also, an item which has long stopped being used may sometimes grow sad or resentful that it is collecting dust in some closet somewhere, and develop a soul of its own.

This folk belief has led to all kinds of neat yokai based on shoes, broken umbrellas, kimonos, broken dishes, dirty kitchen rags, antique instruments, and just about anything else you can think of. They are often silly and cute, and sometimes can be scary too. Today, let’s take a look at a tsukumogami:

Shōgorō (鉦五郎, しょうごろう)

Shōgorō is an animated shōgo (鉦吾), a kind of miniature gong which is used in Buddhist services. If you’ve ever visited a temple in Japan, you have no doubt heard their distinctive ring. They are also sometimes called kane, as we will see later in our story.

A shōgo gets a lot of use, being used multiple times every day. They are made of metal, and so can last a long time. And they belong to temples, so there is a likely chance they will stay with the temple for many years. It is pretty easy to see that shōgo are ideal candidates for turning into tsukumogami. Perhaps a gong has long worn out and stopped playing its note pleasantly, and gets put into storage until it is forgotten… or perhaps one is the witness to some horrible crime, and that awakens it into a yokai.

There is a famous story of a shōgo turning into a shōgorō in Osaka in the early 18th century. Back then, there was a merchant family known as the Yodoya living in Osaka. For many generations, they were the kings of the rice trade, and raked in unbelievable amounts of cash. In fact, the 5th generation boss, Yodoya Tatsugorō,  had so much money that his wealth attracted the attention of the bakufu (the regional shogunate officials, something like military police).

The bakufu decided that the Yodoya family had accumulated enough wealth — too much wealth in fact. They were only a merchant family, after all, and it was improper for them to hold so much wealth. It was above their station in life. And so, the bakufu stripped Yodoya Tatsugorō of everything he had: his rice, his business, his house, his every last rich possession. The Yodoya family fell into ruin, and Tatsugorō became destitute. The straw that broke the camels back, so to speak, was the loss of his favorite possession: an unbelievably rich and indescribably splendid golden chicken called Kogane no Niwatori (金の鶏, literally “golden chicken”). The loss of his precious golden chicken caused Tatsugorō so much grief that he died, and because of the unhappy circumstances of his death, his ghost lingered on.

Normally, when a ghost lingers like this, it attaches itself to the object of its desire — whether it be a person, a place, or (in this case) a thing. Tatsugorō’s soul was meant to attach itself to his precious kogane no niwatori. But as I said earlier, a shōgo is also called a kane, and because the words kane 鉦 and kogane 金 can both be written with the kanji for metal, 金, poor Tatsugorō’s ghost must have gotten confused, and it attached itself to a nearby shōgo instead, turning the instrument into an animated yokai.

From that day on, the shōgo was called Shogorō — a kind of portmanteau of shōgo and Tatsugorō. (The name can also be read as a portmanteau of shōgo and goryō, 御霊, which is the ghost of a high social rank or very rich person. Goryō play a large part in other ghost stories, such as the Tale of the Heike and Lafcadio Hearn’s famous Miminashi Hoichi.) Toriyama Sekien really loves his puns and wordplay!

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There are lots of different animal-type yokai, and a great deal more bestial yokai that resemble animals in some way or another. Out of these, though, there don’t seem to be all that many bird yokai. As a bird lover, I thought I’d even the scales a bit today by introducing a bird yokai, specifically a great spotted woodpecker yokai. It comes with a free history lesson too. Enjoy!

Tera-tsutsuki (寺つつき, てらつつき)

Long long ago, back when Japanese historical records blur with legends and mythology, there was a man named Mononobe no Moriya. He lived in the 500’s CE, back when Japan was still called Yamato, and the capital was located in what is today Nara. Mononobe no Moriya was the leader of the a Mononobe clan and a Muraji, one of the two most high-ranking hereditary titles of nobility in old Japan. The Mononobe clan, along with a few other clans, had held their nobility since time immemorial, and were said to be descended from the gods. As a result, they were chief keepers of the old ways and supported Shinto when it was challenged by Buddhism, newly brought over from China in the 6 century CE. Buddhism was supported by the clans descended from the imperial line (and opposed by the clans descended from the gods). The leaders of these clans were called Omi — the other highest-ranking noble rank — and frequently came into conflict with the clans led by Muraji.

Mononobe no Moriya, the Ō-Muraji (great Muraji) of the Mononobe clan, had a powerful rival in Soga no Umako, the Ō-Omi (great Omi) of the Soga clan. These two nobles held considerable power in the imperial court. During the reign of Emperor Bidatsu (572-585), Mononobe no Moriya held higher favor with the emperor, who supported Shinto. When Emperor Yōmei took power in 585, Moriya’s favor fell and Soga no Umako’s rose, as the new emperor supported Buddhism over Shinto.

Whem Emperor Yōmei died in 587, the two rivals each tried their best to influence the succession of the imperial title. The two clans went to war with each other, and Mononobe no Moriya set out to purge Buddhism from Japan, setting fire to temples and throwing the very first statues of the Buddha brought to the country into the canals of Naniwa. The two clans finally met on the battlefields in Kawachi, at Mount Shigi. There, at the Battle of Mount Shigi, Soga no Umako and Prince Shōtoku killed Mononobe no Moriya, and nearly exterminated the entire Mononobe clan. Afterwards, the Soga clan rose to even higher prominence, and Prince Shōtoku, a devout Buddhist, began the construction many new Buddhist temples in Japan.

The story doesn’t end there. The spirit of defeated Mononobe no Moriya, as he lay dying in hatred and resent, transformed into an onryō. His ghost took the form of a woodpecker, and could later be seen at Hōryū-ji and Shitennō-ji temples in Osaka, pecking furiously at the buildings constructed by Prince Shōtoku, still trying to destroy the heretical faith even in death. Prince Shōtoku was finally able to defeat the tera-tsutsuki (“temple-pecker“) by magically transforming into a hawk and attacking it. After that, the tera-tsutsuki was never seen again.

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Today’s yokai is something you may recognize from the movie Pan’s Labyrinth. I love this yokai so much, not just because it’s creepy enough to give me the shivers, but also because it is such a perfect example of yokai master Toriyama Sekien’s art for irony and symbolism. This is a pretty long explanation, but I really think it is worth going in to. Enjoy!

Pan’s Labyrinth’s Pale Man: A Te-no-me?

Te-no-me (手の目, てのめ)

Te-no-me first appears in Toriyama Sekien’s Gazu Hyakki Yagyo. Unfortunately, this is another yokai for which Sekien didn’t even write a single sentence about — just an illustration — and so his original intent is lost to the mists of time. However, other older stories exist which describe monsters fitting te-no-me’s description, and perhaps it was these stories which Sekien based his yokai on.

Te-no-me takes the appearance of a zato, a blind man. Back in the Edo period, it would have been very difficult for a blind person to find work if not for the shogun-designated guilds. The guild system formed a sort of social security system, and it restricted certain professions to certain groups of people. The guild for blind people held a monopoly on the professions of massage, accupuncture, and biwa (lute) practice. Therefore zato is often synonymous with “blind masseur” or “blind biwa tutor.” A number of zato yokai exist, and you may have heard of the legend of Zatoichi, the blind swordsman? Yep, same zato.

Anyway, as I was saying, te-no-me takes the appearance of a zato, except for one crucial difference: his eyes are located on the palms of his hands instead of in his skull. In the Shokoku Hyakumonogatari (100 Stories from Various Countries, a yokai volume written in 1677), one story tells of such a creature, although the name te-no-me is not used. Instead, the word bakemono, or “monster,” is used. The title of that story is “The Story of the Man Who Had His Bones Sucked Out by a Monster.” Spoiler alert, amiright?

This story takes place in Shichi-jo, Kyoto, in a graveyard by the riverbank. A young man entered the graveyard, taunted by his friends to prove his courage by visiting a graveyard at night. Out of the darkness, an old man who appeared to be in his 80’s approached the young man. When the elderly figure got close enough to see in detail, the young man realized that it was actually a bakemono with eyeballs on the palms of his hands, and it was coming to get him!

The man ran as fast as he could to a nearby temple, and he begged the priest for sanctuary. The priest helped the man to hide inside of a long chest, and then hid from the monster himself.

Shortly afterwards, the bakemono entered the temple and hunted around for the young man. The noises got closer and closer to his hiding place, until they stopped right next to the chest he was hiding in. Then, there was a strange slurping sound, like the sound of a dog slurping and sucking on a dinner bone. A little while later, the slurping sound vanished, and all was quiet. Later, when the priest opened the chest to let the young man out, all that was left was the limp skin of the young man. His bones had been completely sucked out of his body.

I love that story… I don’t know why but it really chills my spine like few other yokai stories do!

A similar legend goes into a little more detail about where these yokai come from. In this story, a man is attacked by a bakemono with eyes on its palms in a field, and he flees to a nearby inn for shelter. He tells the innkeeper about the monster he saw, and the innkeeper replies that a few days ago, a blind man was attacked and robbed out in that field. As the man lay dying in the grass, he cried out, “If only I could have had once glace at their faces! My eyes do not see, but even if only I had eyes on the palms of my hands…” The old blind man’s resent-filled death is what caused him to be reborn as a yokai — with eyes on the palms of its hands just as he wished.

It doesn’t seem like this yokai became known as te-no-me until Toriyama Sekien dubbed it thusly in his encyclopedia. However, while te-no-me (literally, “eyes on hands”) seems like a painfully obvious name, Sekien had other reasons for attaching this name. They have to deal with Sekien’s unique sense of humor and his love of wordplay, and are rather difficult to translate into English, but let’s see what we can do:

We have to start with a few idioms in Japanese. “Bake no kawa ga hageru” (lit. “transformed skin falls off” or “one’s disguise comes off”) is roughly equivalent to the English concept of the “wolf in sheep’s clothing” being revealed. That same word “hageru” can also be used to mean “to shaves one’s head;” and shaving one’s head can also be expressed by the idiom “bouzu ni naru,” (lit. “to become a priest,” as priests customarily shaved their heads). However, the phrase “bouzu ni naru,” is not actually used literally used to mean that someone will join the priesthood, but it is used when someone loses big time, at gambling or games or some other vice. The idea is “I lost so bad that I will shave my head and join the priesthood.” Now — hold that thought…

There is another phrase “te me o ageru” (lit. “raise the eye hands”) which means to expose someone’s trickery, particularly if they were cheating at something like gambling. If you are gambling and you catch someone at cheating (“te me o ageru“), they will be exposed for the cheater they are (“bake no kawa ga hageru“) and they will probably lose all of their money (“hageru,” “bouzu ni naru“) i.e. “become a priest.”

So what’s the connection? The obvious one is that “te me o ageru” is a play on words with the name te-no-me, with the yokai literally raising his eye hands. The rest of the joke lies in themes that run constant through much of Toriyama Sekien’s work; Sekien’s yokai books frequently mock the subjects he really hated, the big three of which were prostitution, gambling, and religion. This yokai doesn’t have anything to do with prostitution, but the subtle references to those idioms relating to losing at gambling and become a priest would not be lost on his clever readers. Amazing how just the simple name of a yokai can evoke so much!

tsuki (hanafuda)

Sekien’s illustration of te-no-me also includes subtle jokes: we see this yokai wandering through the grass under the moon. This is evocative of hanafuda cards, specifically the card for moon and grass. In hanafuda, moon, or tsuki, can also be written bouzu, (which as you may have noticed above, also means “priest”). And hanafuda is, of course, a card game, which is another poke at gambling.

Sekien managed to squeeze one last joke into his illustration: the grass in the hanafuda moon card is specifically pampass grass, which in Japanese is susuki. This evokes another idiom: “yuurei no shoutai mitari, kare obana,” literally “seeing the ghost’s true form, dry pampass grass.” The idea behind this idiom is that when you see something horrifying like a ghost, you may be scared, but in reality it is only something as simple as dry grass blowing in the wind. Your mind is just playing tricks on you.

Toriyama Sekien was truly a brilliant man!

My te-no-me

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Tsurube-bi (釣瓶火, つるべび)

Today’s yokai seems to be very closely related to another yokai with a very similar name: the tsurube-otoshi. Tsurube-bi is occasionally referred to as tsurube-otoshi or tsurube-oroshi, depending on the region, and they are considered by yokai researchers to be two species of the same yokai. From a casual glance, the chief difference seems to be that one is made of fire and the other is made of flesh, however they are actually much more different than they appear. They are considered to be a type of hi-no-tama, or fireball yokai, but more specifically they are said to be the soul of a tree lingering in the forest.

Tsurube-bi first appears in Toriyama Sekien’s Gazu Hyakki Yagyō. Sekien wrote no explanatory sentences, and it wasn’t until much later that a clear explanation of this yokai was developed.

Tsurube-bi are found in the Shikoku and Kyushu regions. They appear late at night in trees, usually conifer trees, as floating and bobbing blueish-white orbs of fire up in the branches. Occasionally they drop down and then float back up. Sometimes the vague shape of a human or bestial face can be seen in the flames.

Other than that, tsurube-bi do pretty much nothing at all. They do not hurt people, and their fire doesn’t even produce any heat or burn anything. Just an eerie, but somewhat playful and beautiful orb of light in the mountains and forests.

You might recognized today’s yokai from his brief appearance in my Kickstarter video, where I referred to him tongue-in-cheek as “the original Master Splinter.” However, there is nothing tongue-in-cheek or silly about the true story behind this yokai. It’s a tale of trust, betrayal, and ultimate revenge (and would it be a Japanese ghost story with revenge?).

Tesso (鉄鼠, てっそ)

Tesso wasn’t born a yokai. In fact, he was a real person. Long ago, during the time of Emperor Shirakawa (reigned 1073-1087), there lived a man named Raigō. Raigō was the abbot of Mii-dera, a monastery in Shiga prefecture at the foot of Mount Hiei.

The history of this period was all very complex, with conflicting power bases, rival emperors, family rivalries and so on (if you are looking for a great primer on Japanese history, I would suggest The Mikado’s Empire by W.E. Griffis), so I won’t go into detail, but suffice it to say, the Emperor was desperate for a proper male heir.

Emperor Shirakawa approached Raigō and asked him to pray for a son to be born. Raigō prayed long and hard, and sure enough in 1074 a son, Prince Taruhito, was born. The Emperor promised to give Raigō anything he wished, and so in return for his prayers, the abbot asked that a splendid new building be built at Mii-dera so he could train new priests there. The Emperor gladly agreed… but as I said this was a time of conflicting power bases, and Mii-dera had a rival: Enryaku-ji temple, on top of Mt. Hiei, wielded great political power as well as having a powerful army of warrior monks at its disposal. Bowing to pressure from Enryaku-ji, the Emperor reneged on his promise to Raigō.

Raigō began a hunger strike in protest of Emperor Shirakawa’s broken promise, but the Emperor would not — or could not, rather — go against Enryaku-ji’s power. On the 100th day of his hunger strike, Raigō passed away, full of rage towards the unfaithful Emperor and the rival monastery of Enryaku-ji.

What happens next is where the true story takes a turn for the bizarre, and where different books range wildly in their accounts. Shortly after Raigō’s death, a ghostly vision of the abbot was seen hovering near young Prince Taruhito’s bed. So great was the grudge of Raigō that, upon his death, he was able to turn himself into an onryō, a ghost driven by pure vengeance. Shortly afterwards, the young prince died, leaving the Emperor heir-less once again.

Raigō did not come back as an ordinary ghost (if such a thing can be said to exist in Japanese folklore…). Instead, he used black magic to turn himself into a gigantic rat. His body was said to be as hard as stone and his teeth and claws as strong as iron, earning him the nickname Tesso, or “the iron rat.” Tesso summoned a massive army of rats, which poured through Kyoto and up Mt. Hiei, until they arrived at Enryaku-ji. There, Tesso wreaked his vengeance. The army of rats poured through the monastery complex. They chewed through the walls and doors, crawled into the roofs, and chased away the monks. They devoured the precious sutras, scrolls, and books of the temple, eating and despoiling everything they found. They even ate through the precious statues of the Buddha.

Nothing could stop Tesso and his army of rats until finally a shrine was built at Mii-dera to appease his vengeance. Raigō’s spirit is still enshrined there, and you can visit it today. One interesting footnote to the story: while Buddhist buildings are typically built facing the east, Raigo’s shrine is built facing the north; it points up Mt. Hiei, directly at Enryaku-ji.

OMG, why haven’t you backed my Kickstarter project yet?? This and other great illustrated yokai tales could be in your hands in glorious paperback or hardcover, postcards, and fine art prints, if only you pledge to back the project before October 31st!

Just a reminder to those who are coming here for the first time: A-Yokai-A-Day ends on October 31st, but you can keep on getting new yokai in your inbox past Halloween! Just join my Kickstarter project — even if you only pledge $1! — and you can become a part of the making of The Hour of Meeting Evil Spirits! Your name will go into the book as a supporter, and you’ll get to view the entire process of making the book, including all of the yokai that go in it. For the time being, all of the Kickstarter updates are public (and viewable here), but come November 1st, once the magic of Halloween ends, all of future updates will be private for backers only, and you’ll have to wait a whole year for more yokai!

Now, on to today’s A-Yokai-A-Day:

Yamajijii (山爺, やまじじい)

Wow, look at all of those dotted i’s and j’s!

Yamajijii is a strange and reclusive yokai from Kochi prefecture and other parts of the island of Shikoku. It’s name means “mountain geezer,” but an alternative name for this yokai is yamachichi, which means “mountain father.”

Yamajijii takes the form of an eldery man about 3-4 feet tall, with only one leg and one eye. Well, actually, he has two eyes, but one of them is huge and the other one is so tiny that you can barely see it, so he appears to have only one eye. His body is covered in fine gray hairs, and he is just as often seen scamping about in his hairy birthday suit as he is in old clothes or rags. He has sharp teeth and powerful jaws — his bite is said to be strong enough to crush the bones of wild boars or monkeys. Because his bite is so strong, hunters used to try to tame yamajijii and use them to drive away wolves.

Yamajijii rarely appear before humans, but their tracks are easily recognizable. They leave deep, sunken footprints about 12 inches long every 6 to 7 feet (from their hopping about on one leg). They are most well known, however, for their powerful voices. The cry of a yamajijii is so powerful it blows the leaves off of trees, shakes branches and moves rocks, reverberates through the mountains, and shakes the heavens and the earth. People who are too close to a yamajijii’s call sometimes have their eardrums burst, or even die from the impact of the shout.

Yamajijii enjoy shouting contests with each other, and one legend from Shikoku tells of a brave hunter who challenged a yamajijii to a shouting contest. The hunter fired off his rifle when he shouted, winning the contest. Later on, the yamajijii realized he had been tricked, shape-shifted into a spider, and attacked the hunter in his sleep. In some versions of the tale, the clever hunter goes to the Ise Shrine on New Year’s Eve to prepare for the shouting contest, and crafts a special holy bullet with the name of the gods of Ise inscribed upon it. This bullet had special power, and when fired it would never miss its target. Because of its strong power, whenever the hunter carried it with him he would inevitably encounter yokai; however, any time a yamajijii came near enough to threaten him, the hunter would display the bullet, and the yamajijii would flee in terror.

Yamajijii also have the power to read peoples’ minds. Another tale from Tokushima tells of a group of woodcutters who were warming themselves by a fire in a cabin. A yamajijii suddenly appeared at their cabin, and the woodcutters were terrified. They all came to the same decision — to kill the yamajijii — and one by one the yamajijii read each one of their minds to know what their plans were. Suddenly one of the logs in the fire split with a loud snap! The yamajijii thought that there was a mind he could not read among the hunters, and he quickly fled the cabin in a panic.

Despite their tricky and sometimes dangerous nature, yamajijii can also be kind to humans. A story from Kochi prefecture tells of a yamajijii who gave a sorghum seed to a farmer as a gift. The farmer sowed the seed and had a great harvest that year. In the winter, the yamajijii returned and asked for some mochi to eat. The grateful farmer gave the yamajijii as much mochi as it could eat. The next year, another great harvest followed, and again the yamajijii came back to ask for mochi. Each year, however, it was able to eat more and more, until it was able to eat 3 huge barrels full of mochi. The farmer, fearing for his livelihood, gave the yamajijii a pile of burned stones and told him they were mochi. Upon eating them, the yamajijii felt sick and hot. The farmer offered the yokai a cup of hot oil, pretending it was tea. Surprised and hurt, the yamajijii fled into the woods, but died before it could get back to its home. Afterwards, the farmer’s family fell into ruin and was never rich again.

The moral of the story is as it always is: never f*ck with a yokai.

You can read a little bit more about yamajijii at yokai.com!

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Yamajijii (山爺, やまじじい)

山爺は人里から離れて過ごす奇妙な妖怪で、高知県や他の四国エリアにいるといわれている。その他の呼び名として、山父（やまちち）とも呼ばれている。

容姿は老人のようで、背丈は３～４尺程、一本の脚に一つの目を持つ（正確には2つの目をもつが、一つはとても大きく、もう一つは小さすぎてほとんど見えないとされている）。体は灰色の体毛で覆われ、時に衣やボロ布を纏っている事もあるという。鋭い葉と強靭な顎を持ち、イノシシやサルなどの骨を噛み砕くほど頑丈だといわれている。この強さを利用して、猟師たちは山爺を手なずけて狼を追い払うのに使っていたたとも言われている。

山爺は人の前に姿を現すことはほとんどないが、山爺の歩いた跡は容易に見つける事ができる。彼らは歩くたびに6～7尺おきに4寸程の大きな足跡を残すためである。山爺はとてつもなく大きな声を出すことでも知られている。その大声は木の葉をふるい落とし、木々や岩を動かし、また山中に響き渡るその音は地面をも揺れ動かすともいわれている。山爺の近くにいた者がその声を聴いてしまったために鼓膜が破れ、ついには死に至る者までいたのだという。

山爺は大声比べを挑むことがあるという。四国に伝わる伝説によると、一人の勇敢な猟師が山爺に対決を挑み、大声と共に銃声を鳴らして山爺に打ち勝ったという話があるという。しかし、後にだまされたと気づいた山爺は、蜘蛛に化けてその猟師の家に忍び込み、寝込みを襲ったとも伝えられている。また別の話では、知恵ある猟師が大みそかの晩に伊勢神社に参り、そこで作った銃弾に菩薩の名を刻んだとされている。この銃弾には不思議な力が宿っており、発砲すると必ず命中するのだとか。また、それを携帯していると必ず妖怪に出会ってしまうとも言われている。山爺に出会った際にはこの銃弾を見せて脅すと、恐れおののいて逃げ出してしまうのだとされている。

山爺は人の心を読み取る能力があることでも知られている。徳島県に伝わる伝説によれば、木こりが焚火で暖を取っている所に山爺が現れて次々に木こりの考え（山爺を殺してしまおう）を当ててしまったという。しかし、焚き木の火が弾け飛んだその時、山爺はそれを言い当てる事ができなかった事に驚き、去っていったとのことである。

時に危険な生態であるにも関わらず、山爺は人間に対して優しい行いもするといわれている。高知県に伝わる話では、山爺がある農民にモロコシの種を与えたとされ、その農民はその年大豊作に恵まれたという。山爺が後に再び現れ餅を欲しがったので、農民は餅をたらふく食べさせてやった。しかし、翌年も、またその翌年も山爺が現れ餅をせがみ、３斗もの餅をたいらげるようになったため、家計を心配した農民は山爺に餅と偽って焼き芋を食わせた。焼き芋の熱さに苦しんだ山爺に、さらに今度は熱い油を飲ませたという。山爺は山へ逃げたが、その道中で死んでしまう。その後、その農民の家は廃れ、二度と繁栄することはなかったという。

このお話では絶対に妖怪に悪さを働いてはならないというモラルを説いているようですね。

もしこの妖怪が気にいられて、もっと日本の妖怪について知りたいと思われましたら私の本もチェックしてみてください。そして、今開催中のKickstarter プロジェクトでの第２弾の本の出版へのご協力も是非お願いいたします！

Today’s yokai is one of my favorites. Not only because she just looks fierce and awesome, but because of the history and legends surrounding her. She is one of the awesome yokai whose legends go back more than 1100 years, and she is found in many old books, such as The Tale of Genji and the Tale of the Heike.

Hashihime (橋姫, はしひめ)

“Upon a narrow grass mat laying down her robe only tonight, again — she must be waiting for me, Hashihime of Uji”

– the Kokin Wakashū, 905 AD

Hashihime first appears in a collection of ancient poems known, easily enough, as the “Collection of Japanese Poems of Ancient and Modern Times,” or the Kokin Wakashū. Her name means “lady of the bridge,” but she is a lot more fearsome than that sounds.

There are a few hashihime legends from various parts of Japan: the hashihime of Uji-bashi, Kyoto, the hashihime of Nagara-bashi, Osaka, and the hashihime of Seta-no-karahashi, Shiga are the three most famous ones — however, they can be found haunting most very ancient, very long bridges in Japan.

The details of each hashihime story vary, but the main idea is always pretty similar: they tell of a beautiful young maiden, waiting by the bridge for her lover to return, but he never does. Over time, her love turns into jealously, and then into mad rage, and she transforms into a horrible demon — sometimes throwing herself into the river to drown first, sometimes transforming while still living. So great is the jealousy of the hashihime that it is said if you speak good things about another bridge while walking across the bridge that they haunt, or if you recite Noh verses that deal with a woman’s jealousy as the theme, something terrible will happen to you.

Aside from being horrible demons of “feminine rage” (don’t get angry at me — I don’t make up these terms, only translate them) and raw jealousy, hashihime are also revered as guardian deities of the bridges they haunt. There is even a shrine dedicated to the Uji Hashihime located near Uji-bashi. They are believed to guard bridges from invading armies, and they also benefit people by acting as goddesses of separation. They can be invoked in order to cut oneself off from bad things, whether it be awful luck that is dogging you, or a nasty lover that you want to break away from. Such is their power of separation that by tradition in Uji, Kyoto, newlyweds never cross the bridge where the hashihime haunts for fear of ruining their marriage. Instead, when crossing the river, they go together underneath the bridge on a boat.

Her outward appearance has a special meaning as well: she wears white robes, has her face painted white, and wears a kanawa (an iron trivet) around her head, carrying five candles. This is the required outfit for performing a very nasty curse known as ushi-no-koku-mairi,* or the “pilgrimage of the hour of the ox.” In the Heike Monogatari, she wears this outfit because she was performing this curse on her ex-husband and his second wife. Fearing for their lives, the two consult the famous onmyōji Abe-no-Seimei, who uses his power to deflect the curse back upon the jealous girl. The power of the curse corrupts her soul and transforms her into a demon, after which she flees in shame back to the river, where she remains as a hashihime.

* Ushi-no-koku-mairi is so darn cool that I am devoting a separate entry to it in my new book, The Hour of Meeting Evil Spirits. It won’t appear in this year’s A-Yokai-A-Day, though, so make sure you back the Kickstarter project to learn more about this curse, Abe-no-Seimei, and Japanese black magic!

You can read a little bit more about hashihime at yokai.com! | 今日の妖怪はとても気に入っている妖怪の一つです。恐ろしくかつ魅力的な容姿だけではなく、彼女にまつわる伝説にも興味をかきたてられます。１１００年以上昔から言い伝えられており、数々の古い書籍（源氏物語や平家物語など）にも登場しています。

Hashihime (橋姫, はしひめ)

″さむしろに衣かたしき今宵もや 我をまつらん宇治の橋姫″

－「古今和歌集」　905A.D

橋姫に関する記載のうち最も古いものは「古今和歌集」である。名前の意味は「橋の姫」だが、実際はその名前からは想像できないような恐ろしさがある。

橋姫にまつわる伝説は各地によって内容が異なっており、京都の宇治橋、大阪の長柄橋、滋賀県の瀬田の唐橋などがある。これらの橋はそれぞれ大変歴史のある長い橋としてしられている。

伝承されている橋姫伝説は細かい部分で異なる点はあるが、主なストーリーは共通している。美しい若い女が恋人を橋の上で待つが、男は二度と戻ってこない。女の愛情は次第に嫉妬へとかわり、すさまじい嫉妬心で女は鬼へと姿を変えるのである。

ある説によれば、女は川に身沈め、生きながらにして鬼と化したともある。

橋姫の嫉妬心の強さは、現在にも伝わる言い伝えからもうかがい知れる。―橋姫の祀られた橋の近くで他の橋を褒めてはいけない・・・などである。もし「能」バージョンの橋姫を見る事があれば、その恐ろしい嫉妬心がテーマとなった演出が見られることでしょう。

これらの恐ろしい嫉妬心による鬼の話とは別に伝えられているのが、橋の「守り神」としての橋姫である。京都の宇治橋の近くには神社（橋姫神社）も祀られており、橋を守るとされている他、縁切りの神としても知られている。

夫婦、または恋人同士で橋を渡ってはいけないとの言い伝えもあり、川を渡らなくてはならない時には船を使って向こう岸に行かなくてはならぬという話もあるという。

橋姫の姿には特別な意味がある。白い衣を羽織り、白塗りの顔と頭には鉄輪を乗せたものであり、鉄輪の脚には3本の松明を燃やしていたという（これは伝統的な丑の刻参りの装束と通じている）。平家物語では、橋姫がこの格好をしたのは彼女の元夫とその妻を呪うためであるとされている。この話では、その夫婦が安倍清明に祈祷を依頼し、橋姫を退散したとされている。

丑の刻参りはとても興味深いため、本の中では別に取扱い、「呪い」についての話をしようと思います。A-Yokai－A-Day（今日の妖怪）では登場しませんので、是非私のKickstarter プロジェクトのBacker(サポーター）になって、呪いや安倍清明、日本での黒魔術などの世界を覗いてみましょう！

もしこの妖怪が気にいられて、もっと日本の妖怪について知りたいと思われましたら私の本もチェックしてみてください。そして、今開催中のKickstarter プロジェクトでの第２弾の本の出版へのご協力も是非お願いいたします！