People in the Legends
Terajima Ryoan was a physician who worked in Osaka in the mid-Edo period.
Following the Chinese Ming-dynasty encyclopedia Sancai Tuhui, he compiled the illustrated encyclopedia Wakan Sansai Zue (completed around 1712, 105 volumes), covering astronomy, geography, people, animals, plants and more. It includes an entry on the “nozuchi snake,” drawn as a snake shaped like a mallet, often cited as an early record of the tsuchinoko.
A water yokai said to live in Chinese rivers, the size of a child and covered in hard scales. In Edo-period Japan it was treated as a relative or another name of the kappa, and a kappa encyclopedia called Suiko Koryaku was compiled.
A yokai said to live in the mountains and fields, with no eyes or nose, only a big mouth. It is said to roll down slopes to attack people. It is also known as one of the old names of the tsuchinoko.
A Japanese cryptid described as a snake with a short, fat body that moves by jumping. It goes by many local names and became the subject of a nationwide boom in the 1970s.
