Modern yokai books say Keukegen hides under the floor and makes a household sick. That is not what its creator wrote. The Edo artist Toriyama Sekien said two things about it. It is hairy all over. And it is seen only rarely. The sickness story arrived much later, in Shōwa- and Heisei-era books.
What does it look like?
Keukegen is covered in hair all over. Sekien's text compares its hair to that of Maonü, a hairy woman from Chinese legend.
Maonü has her own story. She was a palace lady serving the First Emperor of Qin. When Qin fell, she fled to the mountains. There she lived on pine needles. After 170 years she became an immortal. She grew so light she could fly, and her body grew hair.
Where Sekien put it
Sekien published Keukegen in 1781 (An'ei 10), in Konjaku Hyakki Shūi. This was his third yokai picture book. It followed Gazu Hyakki Yagyō and Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki. Konjaku Hyakki Shūi has three volumes, named Cloud, Mist and Rain. Keukegen is in the Rain volume.
A name with two spellings
The usual name is written 毛羽毛現. Its four characters are "hair," "feather," "hair" and "appear." It can also be read keugegen.
Sekien's text adds a second way to write it, 希有希見. This version means "something seen only rarely." Some later books write it 希有希現 instead. So the name carries two ideas at once. One is the hair. The other is how seldom anyone sees it.
Sekien's own text says only this much. It is hairy all over, and it is rarely seen. He gives no place, no habit and no harm.
The sickness story
Yokai books from the Shōwa and Heisei eras say much more. One example is Mizuki Shigeru's Nihon Yōkai Taizen. These books say Keukegen lives in damp places, around the house or under the floor. They say people living in its house fall ill. Because it brings sickness, some modern books treat it as a kind of plague god, an ekijin. Tada Katsumi's Gensō Sekai no Jūnin-tachi is one of them.
The yokai scholar Murakami Kenji points out a problem with this in his Yōkai Jiten (2000). These modern explanations were not taken directly from Edo-period folk tradition. They are later additions.
Where it comes from
Many yokai in Konjaku Hyakki Shūi are thought to be Sekien's own creations. They were not folk tradition of his time. Keukegen may be one of them.
If so, the name may be the seed. Sekien could have started from the spelling 希有希見, "seen only rarely." Then he may have given the idea a hairy body, borrowed from Maonü. That is one reading, and the sources do not confirm it.
The later sickness story fits the same pattern in reverse. A creature with no habits left an empty space. Later writers may have filled it with damp floors and illness.
See the original print
Toriyama Sekien drew Keukegen in Konjaku Hyakki Shūi (1781). This book has that picture, with its caption in English.
- Japandemonium Illustrated: The Yokai Encyclopedias of Toriyama Sekien →trans. Hiroko Yoda & Matt AltThe complete Edo-period bestiaries that so many of these entries trace back to, in full English translation.
- The Book of Yokai →Michael Dylan FosterThe most readable scholarly introduction to yokai — where they come from, what they mean, and the major creatures.
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Keukegen today
Keukegen has a bronze statue on Mizuki Shigeru Road. A model of it was shown in the Fukagawa Edo Museum's "Obake no Sumika" exhibition in 2024. It has been on view in two places, though Sekien said it was seldom seen at all.
