If you’d like to join me and many others in painting a yokai a day this month, all you have to do is paint, draw, or create any yokai you like, and share it using the hashtag #ayokaiaday. There’s no set list of yokai you have to paint, but you’re free to browse yokai.com or any other yokai resource and choose your favorites.

Kasamushi
笠虫

Translation: capped worm

Harikikigaki describes kasamushi as a red worm who lives in either the heart or the small intestine. Its primary symptom is a very high fever. It prefers very bland food, low in salt and miso flavoring. Kasamushi infections are treated with dried ginger root and pepper.

I have to admit that this worm has me stumped. First of all, its name is kasamushi, but it doesn’t have a kasa. We’ve seen a number of worms with conical hat-like objects on their heads, including the hizo no kasamushi on yokai.com. So why doesn’t this guy have a cap? Or why did they call him kasamushi at all? He’s a very plain looking worm with no outstanding features at all.

Then, it says it lives in the heart or the small intestine. Ok… but there’s quite a bit of difference between those two organs… why not the heart and the lungs? Or the small and the large intestine? It’s a weird pair of organs to infect, but I suspect there’s something in Chinese medicine that I don’t know about which explains the connection.

As for it’s food preferences, presumably it imparts these preference to its host as well, as many yokai worms do. That may be the reason that ginger root and pepper are effective. Those both have pretty strong spicy flavor to them, and a worm that only likes bland food would probably be driven off by highly spicy foods.

I wish there was more about this worm in the book. It’s so vague, and leaves me with questions. Like where is its kasa??? Oh well, as I always say: the appeal of yokai is in the mystery.

If you enjoyed today’s A-Yokai-A-Day entry, please consider becoming a patron and supporting my work by visiting patreon.com/osarusan.

If you’d like to join me and many others in painting a yokai a day this month, all you have to do is paint, draw, or create any yokai you like, and share it using the hashtag #ayokaiaday. There’s no set list of yokai you have to paint, but you’re free to browse yokai.com or any other yokai resource and choose your favorites.

Nayami no mushi
悩みの虫

Translation: worry worm

Nayami no mushi lives in your lungs. Its long white body is coiled up like a spring. It is covered with black spots spaced at even intervals. Its drooping eyes make its facial expression appear weary.

This worm loves sour, acidic foods. People who are infected with it experience strong cravings for those flavors, and find themselves constantly reaching for those kind of snacks. They become pessimistic, and even the smallest things cause them to feel a heavy sense of grief.

Treatment for nayami no mushi is accomplished with herbs. Funabarasō (Vincetoxicum atratum) and mokkō (Saussurea costus) are effective.

If you enjoyed today’s A-Yokai-A-Day entry, please consider becoming a patron and supporting my work by visiting patreon.com/osarusan.

If you’d like to join me and many others in painting a yokai a day this month, all you have to do is paint, draw, or create any yokai you like, and share it using the hashtag #ayokaiaday. There’s no set list of yokai you have to paint, but you’re free to browse yokai.com or any other yokai resource and choose your favorites.

Harawata no mushi
腸の虫

Translation: intestine worm

As you must suspect, the harawata no mushi lives inside of the intestine. Because the large intestine is white, and the small intestine is pink, it is presumed that it lives in the large intestine. This nasty little bugger uses its prickly legs sprouting all over its body to grab, rip, and chew at the body’s internal organs.

The primary symptom of this kind of infection is acute and sever abdominal pain.

It is treated with herbal remedies. Yamahakka (Isodon inflexus), a bitter perennial, is brewed into a tea and drunk to strengthen the stomach.

According to Harikikigaki, in studies, patients who died from this infectious yokai were autopsied, revealing the harawata no mushi tightly clinging to their large intestine.

If you enjoyed today’s A-Yokai-A-Day entry, please consider becoming a patron and supporting my work by visiting patreon.com/osarusan.

If you’d like to join me and many others in painting a yokai a day this month, all you have to do is paint, draw, or create any yokai you like, and share it using the hashtag #ayokaiaday. There’s no set list of yokai you have to paint, but you’re free to browse yokai.com or any other yokai resource and choose your favorites.

Subakuchu
寸白虫

Translation: white sun* white (i.e. tapeworm) worm

Subakuchu is a long worm with a dragon-like face and a forked tail. It doesn’t have a fixed home; it travels back and forth between the abdomen and the scrotum. Ordinarily it spends its time stretching left and right around the belly, wriggling up and down below the diaphragm. However, when its host’s body becomes cool, it slithers down into the scrotum and coils itself up, remaining motionless.

Patients infected with a subakuchu suffer from acute bouts of abdominal pain once or twice a year. The longer the subakuchu gets, the more dangerous it becomes. By the time it reaches 15 meters in length, the patient is sure to die.

Subakuchu can be treated with acupuncture, although it is difficult to recover from. The trick for treating this infection is a secret, and is only passed down orally.

*A sun is old Japanese unit of measurement equal to about 30.303 millimeters. From the name, I would guess this worm starts out just over a few cm or so in length, and from there grows to its deadly length of 15 meters. Or, perhaps the segments that we can see in the illustration are each one sun in length. If so, a 15 meter subakuchu would have roughly 495 segments! Nothing in Harikikigaki explains the origin of its name, so it’s just my best guess.

If you enjoyed today’s A-Yokai-A-Day entry, please consider becoming a patron and supporting my work by visiting patreon.com/osarusan.

If you’d like to join me and many others in painting a yokai a day this month, all you have to do is paint, draw, or create any yokai you like, and share it using the hashtag #ayokaiaday. There’s no set list of yokai you have to paint, but you’re free to browse yokai.com or any other yokai resource and choose your favorites.

Kannoju
肝の聚

Translation: liver colony*

Kannoju are long worms with white, snake-like bodies. The tips of their tails and ears are red. They infect the liver, and while Harikikigaki doesn’t explicity say it, it sounds from their name like they live in a huge colony of many worms inside your liver.

When a kannoju becomes mature, it begins to crawl higher and higher up the body, chewing its way up the liver and into the torso. It elongates its body as it straightens out, then its start to wriggle violently. This causes stiffness through its host’s body, followed by violent tremors which cannot be stopped.

There are ways to treat this infection with acupuncture, but these secrets are only passed down orally, and are not included in Harikikigaki. The book notes that treatment of this disease become more difficult after the kannoju have reached maturity.

*The name kannoju is a tricky one to translate. Kan means liver, which is straightforward enough, but unlike the other mushi we’ve looked it, it’s not designated as a mushi or a shaku. Instead, the word ju is used, which implies a gathering or a collection of sorts. It’s not a simple or clear meaning, which makes it hard to translate. To me, it sounds like these creatures gather or amass in the liver, which is why I chose “liver colony” as a translation, but it just as well might be some obscure meaning that isn’t common today, or even a character chosen for its sound rather than its particular meaning.

If you enjoyed today’s A-Yokai-A-Day entry, please consider becoming a patron and supporting my work by visiting patreon.com/osarusan.

If you’d like to join me and many others in painting a yokai a day this month, all you have to do is paint, draw, or create any yokai you like, and share it using the hashtag #ayokaiaday. There’s no set list of yokai you have to paint, but you’re free to browse yokai.com or any other yokai resource and choose your favorites.

Koshiita no mushi
腰痛の虫

Translation: lower back pain worm

Koshiita no mushi is another worm that infects the kidneys. In this case, it’s not so strange though, as it mainly affects the lower back. It has a black head and a white body, with a long pointed beak like a bird.

It uses this beak to peck at its host’s muscles from inside the body, causing all sorts of pain throughout the lower back. The lower back begins to feel heavy and sore, and in severe cases movement becomes impossible.

Treatment is accomplished using the dries roots of the thistle mokkō (Saussurea costus).

If you enjoyed today’s A-Yokai-A-Day entry, please consider becoming a patron and supporting my work by visiting patreon.com/osarusan.

If you’d like to join me and many others in painting a yokai a day this month, all you have to do is paint, draw, or create any yokai you like, and share it using the hashtag #ayokaiaday. There’s no set list of yokai you have to paint, but you’re free to browse yokai.com or any other yokai resource and choose your favorites.

Kuromushi
黒虫

Translation: black worm

The front half of a kuromushi’s body is black, while the rear half is white. They infect the kidneys.

The only symptom of a kuromushi infection listed in Harikikigaki is deafness.

They are treated with the fruit of the star anise (Illicium verum).

I have to say this yokai is the weirdest one so far this month. Not for any one feature, but for the odd combination of them that amounts to something so mundane. Overall it just seems a little random. Like they had chart with colors, symptoms, and treatments and just threw darts at it to make up a new bug.

First of all, why they are called black worms and not black-and-white worms or something along those lines is beyond me. Most of these worms have some sort of physical feature related to their symptoms, but how does a half black half white body relate to deafness?

Second, they live in the kidneys? Why there? What does that have to do with deafness? Why not the ear canal? I imagine that whoever wrote this book was working off of some real sickness, just as yesterday’s worm seemed to relate with an actual parasitic worm. What could possibly be the real-world inspiration for this mushi?

Lastly, it’s treatment is seems unrelated to the symptoms. Chinese star anise has a long history in Chinese folk remedies, and even today it is cultivated for shikimic acid–a compound used in some pharmaceuticals. However, Japanese star anise is highly toxic, and ingestion causes seizures, hallucinations, and severe inflammation of the digestive tract, urinary tract, and kidneys. Presumably your folk doctor would know the difference between Chinese and Japanese star anise, but if they didn’t, it sounds like the treatment would be worse than the disease!

If you enjoyed today’s A-Yokai-A-Day entry, please consider becoming a patron and supporting my work by visiting patreon.com/osarusan.