NazoMap Encyclopedia of Yokai, Cryptids, Urban Legends & Ancient Mysteries 日本語

People in the Legends

Toriyama Sekien

  • Ukiyo-e artist
  • Japan
  • 1712–1788

Toriyama Sekien was an ukiyo-e artist of the mid-Edo period. He studied painting in the Kano school and is also known as the teacher of Kitagawa Utamaro.

Beginning with Gazu Hyakki Yagyo (The Illustrated Night Parade of a Hundred Demons) in 1776, his four illustrated books of yokai depicted creatures from folklore and classical literature across Japan one by one, each with its name. Much of how we picture yokai today, including the satori, tesso, ushi-oni, nure-onna and nurarihyon, comes from Sekien’s pictures, making him the founder of the yokai encyclopedia.

Entries Related to Toriyama Sekien

Entries: 36
Yokai ★★★★★ Japan

Makura-gaeshi

A yokai that comes at night to turn sleepers' pillows over or reverse the direction of their head and feet. In northeastern Japan it is often said to be the mischief of a zashiki-warashi. People once believed the soul left the body during sleep, and feared that if the pillow were moved, the soul could not return.

Yokai ★★★★★ Japan

Mokumokuren

A yokai in which countless eyes appear in every square of the paper screens of a ruined house. Toriyama Sekien drew it and explained it as the intense focus a go player once directed at his board, spreading through the whole house. An optical illusion on moonlit screens has been suggested as its true nature.

Yokai ★★★★★ Japan (Shizuoka, Miyagi and elsewhere)

Jorōgumo

A spider yokai that turns into a beautiful woman to lure men and drag them into waterfall basins and deep pools. Legends of it remain at Jōren Falls on the Izu Peninsula and at Kashikobuchi pool in Sendai. Toriyama Sekien drew it as a spider woman controlling fire-breathing baby spiders.

Yokai ★★★★★ Japan

Ubume

A ghost or yokai of a woman who died in childbirth, appearing with a baby in her arms. She asks passers-by to hold the baby, and those who endure its growing weight to the end are said to receive great strength. A tale of her appears in the Heian-period Konjaku Monogatari, and she is linked to the "child-raising ghost" legends found across Japan.

Yokai ★★★★★ Japan (coastal areas nationwide)

Funayūrei

Ghosts of people who died at sea that approach boats and say, "Lend us a ladle," then use it to scoop seawater into the boat until it sinks. It is said you can escape by handing over a ladle with the bottom knocked out. They were believed to appear on stormy or foggy nights and around the Obon season.

Yokai ★★★★★ Japan

Ōnyūdō

A yokai in the form of a towering, shaven-headed monk who suddenly appears on night roads to frighten people. Told of throughout Japan, it is often said to be a tanuki, fox or otter in disguise. It is considered a relative of the mikoshi-nyūdō, which keeps growing taller.

Yokai ★★★★★ Japan (Kyoto)

Wanyudo (Wheel Monk)

A yokai with a terrifying man's face in the center of a flaming ox-cart wheel. It is said to steal the soul of anyone who sees it, but cannot approach a house with a charm reading "This is the village of Shobo" on the door. Toriyama Sekien drew it.

Yokai ★★★★★ Japan

Dorotabo (Mud-Field Monk)

A one-eyed, three-fingered yokai that rises from a muddy rice field to the waist and cries "Give back my field!" It is said to appear because the son of an old man who left rice fields for his descendants betrayed his wishes by drinking and selling the fields.

Yokai ★★★★★ Japan

Kasha

A yokai that appears at funerals and graveyards and steals the bodies of the dead. It is said to target the remains of those who did many evil deeds, and is often described as a cat yokai. Its name is said to come from the "fire cart" that carries sinners to hell.

Yokai ★★★★★ Japan

Itsumade

A monstrous bird that eerily cries "itsumade, itsumade" ("until when, until when"). The Taiheiki tells of one appearing over the palace in a year of epidemic and being shot down by a master archer. Toriyama Sekien named it "Itsumade" and drew it.

Yokai ★★★★★ Japan

Hyosube

A kappa-like yokai told of in Saga Prefecture and elsewhere in Kyushu. It cries "hyo hyo," loves eggplants and ravages fields. Anyone who sees it is said to come down with a fever.

Yokai ★★★★★ Japan

Narukama (Singing Cauldron)

A Shinto ritual at Kibitsu Shrine in Okayama Prefecture in which fortunes are told by the sound of a cauldron, and the supernatural tales around it. It is known from "The Cauldron of Kibitsu" in Ueda Akinari's Ugetsu Monogatari, and Toriyama Sekien also drew it as a cauldron yokai.

Yokai ★★★★★ Japan

Tsurubebi

A pale, bluish fire yokai that bobs up and down on a night mountain road, as if hanging from a tree branch. A human face sometimes appears in the flame. Its name comes from moving up and down like a well bucket (tsurube).

Yokai ★★★★★ Japan

Kamaitachi

A yokai said to ride on whirlwinds and cut people's skin like a sickle. The cuts are said to be painless and barely bleed. One tradition says kamaitachi come in threes: one knocks you down, one cuts, and one applies medicine.

Yokai ★★★★★ Japan

Aosagibi (Heron Fire)

A mysterious fire in which the body of a grey heron seems to glow pale blue at night. It was said to be light given off by old grey herons or night herons, and Toriyama Sekien drew it too. One theory says it was feathers lit by the moon.

Yokai ★★★★★ Japan

Aoandon (Blue Lantern)

A demon-woman yokai said to appear when the hundredth story has been told at a hyakumonogatari ghost-story gathering. It comes from an Edo-period game of telling ghost stories by the light of an andon lamp covered with blue paper.

Yokai ★★★★★ Japan

Hone-onna (Bone Woman)

A female yokai in the form of a skeleton, who visits her beloved in the form she had in life. Toriyama Sekien drew her, and she is linked with the ghost story Botan Doro, in which Otsuyu, who visits a man every night, turns out to be a skeleton.

Yokai ★★★★★ Japan

Oboroguruma (Hazy Carriage)

An ox-cart yokai with a giant face on its front that appears on nights when the moon is hazy. Drawn by Toriyama Sekien, it is said to be the grudge of a woman shamed in the "carriage quarrel" of The Tale of Genji, lodged in a carriage.

Yokai ★★★★★ Japan

Yamauba

An old woman yokai who lives deep in the mountains. She is told of as a terrifying hag who eats people, yet she also appears as a mountain goddess and as the mother of Kintaro. She is familiar from folktales such as "The Three Charms."

Yokai ★★★★★ Japan

Keukegen

A hairy yokai covered all over in long hair. It lives in damp places such as under floors, and sickness is said to come to the house where it settles. Its name is also written with characters meaning "rarely seen."

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