What is the bakotsu?
The bakotsu is a yokai that appears in Tosa Obake Zoshi, a yokai picture scroll drawn in the Edo period. It looks like a horse skeleton and is explained as a horse that burned to death in a fire.
The bakotsu in the scroll
In Tosa Obake Zoshi, the bakotsu is shown facing a toad-like yokai called the yadomori inside a mosquito net hung in a room. There is no detailed explanation of what mischief it does, and it hardly appears anywhere but this scroll, making it a mysterious yokai.
The expression “horse bones”
In Japanese, a person of unknown background is contemptuously called “horse bones from who knows where” (doko no uma no hone). The expression is said to come from a Chinese phrase used for something worthless, and one theory adds that in the Edo period cheap candles were made from fat from horse bones. The bakotsu is told of with such images of the phrase in mind. In recent years it has appeared in manga and become better known.
