Mountains & the Wild

The beast that rides the lightning down — in some tellings tearing apart the tree it lands in.

A stone at the edge of the village, given offerings at New Year, standing where the road stops being yours.

It starts as a small shadow, and the harder you look the further it rises over the roof.

It lives in the hearth ash. Poke the ash and it comes out — which was the point of saying so.

A red-haired child that lives in an old tree, most often a banyan. It brings endless fish to people who befriend it, but kills livestock or drowns those who harm its tree.

The same growing giant that other regions call taka-nyūdō, but a bōzu here.

It stands in the road and keeps getting taller as long as you keep looking up.

It slips into a cattle shed at night, leaves a tiny wound, and the animal is dead by morning.

An oni riding a headless horse, abroad on setsubun night and the year's turn.

A one-legged old woman in the snow. You can follow her prints, and there is only ever one line.

A stone by the road that asks to be carried, and gets heavier with every step you take.

Someone beats a mat somewhere nearby, over and over. Nobody is there, and there is no mat.

A tree comes down in the night with the axe strokes and the crash, and in the morning nothing is felled.

Stones fall from the sky with no thrower ever seen, blamed on a tengu.

A child walks past the edge of the village and does not come back, and the search party knows which word to use for it.

A two-legged figure whose red hair shines like the sun, too bright to look at twice; its feet stay hidden in the grass.

A weasel-shaped thing that goes for cattle and horses, listed among the beasts in an Edo encyclopedia.

A human shape standing on a road. It grows taller each time you look up at it, and shrinks when you look down.

A one-eyed yokai that appears without warning before someone walking alone on a night road, attacks them and eats them.

Something that cries 'chi, chi, chi' like a sparrow and follows you, front and behind, on a mountain road at night.

A red-robed monk who turns up in three unrelated stories — a stolen temple bell, a court omen, and a lantern on the shore.

A dog that walks the mountain path behind you: stay on your feet and it sees you home, stumble and it is on you.

A toad about 2.4 meters long in the Suō hills that does not chase its prey — it simply breathes it in.

Something small and dog-shaped that winds between your shins as you walk a wet Okayama road at night.

The spirit of a banana plant that takes a woman's shape at night and speaks to whoever answers.

A house deep in the mountains with the kettle still boiling and nobody in it; take one bowl home and your family never wants again.

A mountain spirit that appears only on clear days and simply cannot be seen when it rains.

A giant, tattered zatō who roams the main roads on stormy nights, always bound for the brothels to play his shamisen.

A clawed thing that peers down through the skylight on the one night you are required to stay awake.

A shrimp-like thing with scissor claws that snips mosquito nets and fishing nets with equal joy.

A hairy hag from a 1776 picture, later linked to a mountain woman who spins hemp at superhuman speed.

The idler's yokai: a man who did nothing with his life, reborn as a thing that licks lamp oil and does nothing still.

A monk who peers up through the privy floor on New Year's Eve—unless you say his name first.

A one-eyed, hairy mountain child—the kappa's mountain form—that helps loggers in exchange for food.

A bald figure on a Kyoto road with a single shining eye where its anus should be.

A monstrous head that plummets from treetops to snatch anyone passing beneath at night.

A horse's head that dangles from an old hackberry tree, neighing to frighten passersby.

A monkey-shaped creature with a pointed mouth that sucks a sleeper's breath. If someone else sees it, the sleeper lives long; if not, they die the next day.

A flaming one-wheeled cart carrying a woman or a fearsome man; to glimpse it is to invite doom.

A ghostly ox-carriage bearing a huge, glaring face that drifts through misty nights.

A thick, mallet-shaped snake with a gaping mouth that rolls down slopes at travelers.

A voice that suddenly bellows 'Uwan!' from an empty, dilapidated house—and nothing more.

A creature covered in hair all over, like the hairy immortal woman of Chinese legend; its name can also be written to mean 'seen only rarely.'

Footsteps with no body that follow a person walking a dark road at night. Step to the side, let it go first, and it leaves.

Countless eyes that appear on the paper sliding screens (shoji) of a ruined house.

A colossal giant whose footsteps shaped Japan's lakes, hills, and valleys.

A ghostly fire-breathing chicken whose cold flames give no heat.

A harmless boy yokai who trots through the rain carrying a block of tofu.

The spirit that dwells in an old tree; felling its host brings misfortune.

A small mountain spirit blamed for the echoes that answer you in the hills.

A hairy beast drawn on a shrine gate, later said to punish the irreverent.

A flaming ox-cart wheel bearing the face of a tormented monk that rolls down roads.

A long-tongued yokai that licks ceilings; later books blame it for the dark stains overhead.

A small yokai that creeps into dirty bathhouses at night to lick up the grime.

Whirlwind weasels that slash a traveler's legs with sickle-like claws, leaving painless wounds.

A mountain crone who shelters travelers—then may devour them.

A towering bald monk that grows taller the more you look up at it.

A gourd-headed old yokai who slips into homes and acts like the master.

A childlike, one-eyed monk yokai that startles people on lonely roads.

A proud mountain spirit with a red face and long nose, master of martial arts.