妖怪
Yōkai is a flexible Japanese cultural term for uncanny phenomena and beings. It can include an unexplained sound as well as a figure with a recognizable body in a tale or picture. Local accounts, religious practices, painted images and later creative works give these encounters changing names and forms.
Two local accounts called azukiarai describe a woman in one place and an unseen sound in another.
Medieval scrolls and Edo publishing gave visible forms to many uncanny subjects.
Artists and modern storytellers have continued to invent and reshape yōkai.
Scholar Komatsu Kazuhiko describes yōkai as an elusive category covering beings and phenomena understood as beyond ordinary human knowledge. A yōkai need not have a body that an artist could draw from head to foot. Strange sounds, locally reported encounters and illustrated characters all belong within the wider cultural subject.
Komatsu gives examples of names tied to sensations: tatami-tataki for a sound like striking tatami, and azukiarai for one like washing red beans. A name makes an experience easier to retell, while an artist can later imagine a visible figure for it. Local storytelling and image-making need not follow one fixed sequence.
A Nichibunken database summary, drawn from a publication of 1974, recounts a story set in early Meiji in Matsuyama, Ehime. A woman of about fifty, wearing a head cloth, was said to wash azuki beans and rice in a tub with a swishing sound. People reportedly avoided doing laundry there for about five years. This visible figure belongs to that local account.
A second database summary, from a publication of 1984, describes a lonely riverbank in Higashichichibu, Saitama. At night, a sound like beans being washed could be heard although nobody was visible. It too was called azukiarai. The shared name connects different accounts; 1974 and 1984 date the publications, not the beginning of the tradition.
Komatsu traces uncanny beings in ancient stories and later scrolls depicting religious specialists conducting healing rituals, with strange creatures imagined as causes of illness and calamity. Fear, explanations of misfortune and rituals intended to control it could be closely connected. These relationships form part of the historical material through which yōkai are studied.
During the transition from ancient to medieval Japan, scrolls increasingly pictured unusual beings: creatures associated with calamity, and demons or spider beings defeated by warriors. Painting made the subjects available to look at. Komatsu also describes a growing element of visual enjoyment alongside fear and religious meaning.
Tokushima Prefectural Museum describes its Bakemono Emaki as a copy whose prototype was probably made in the medieval period. Its scenes include yōkai going out and watching or performing dengaku entertainment. Copying carried such images forward; the surviving copy and the proposed date of its prototype are separate parts of the object’s history.
Tsukumogami are yōkai formed from everyday objects. The NDL discusses Sekien’s transformed biwa lute, koto and kettle, comparing them with object creatures in a copied Night Parade scroll. Added limbs and expressions turn familiar instruments and containers into active figures, which later works can reshape again.
In the Edo period, people held ghost-story gatherings called hyakumonogatari, while novels, picture books and illustrated yōkai collections circulated. Woodblock publishing allowed texts and pictures to be printed repeatedly. Artists drew on existing stories and added creatures of their own imagination, making yōkai a continuing field of invention.
Toriyama Sekien’s Gazu Hyakki Yagyō was published in 1776. Tokyo University of the Arts Library catalogues three volumes with Edo publication details. The NDL places this work at the start of Sekien’s sequence of illustrated yōkai books extending to 1784. A printed collection brought many named figures together for readers to browse.
The NDL compares Sekien’s tengu with one by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi: Sekien’s is like a large bird, while Yoshitoshi’s is closer to a human figure. Artists can choose different bodies, dress and settings for a shared name. Identifying the work and its maker helps explain the image more precisely than assuming one permanent appearance.
Following the NDL’s comparison of particular images by the two artists.
In the modern period, Inoue Enryō sought rational explanations to combat superstition. Yanagita Kunio studied traditions as evidence of earlier beliefs, while Ema Tsutomu outlined categories and changes in yōkai representation. Komatsu reviews these approaches as predecessors of research connecting folklore, literature, art and cultural history.
Komatsu discusses Mizuki Shigeru’s work giving visual form to locally transmitted uncanny phenomena. He also follows yōkai material into novels, film, animation, manga and games. Creators can keep an old name while redesigning its body, personality or story. A familiar modern figure may combine transmitted material with a later artist’s invention.
No. The Higashichichibu azukiarai account describes a washing sound at night with nobody visible.
No. One describes a woman washing beans; the other describes only an unseen sound.
The museum holds a copy and considers its prototype medieval; those are separate stages in the object’s history.
Repeated printing carried stories and pictures, including artists’ new forms, to more readers.
A shared name can have different bodies in different works: Sekien’s is birdlike, while Yoshitoshi’s is more humanlike.
Collection objects and documentary photographs are identified by their particular object, period and use.