Youkai Species List

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(Nature Spirits)

Yōkai (妖怪?, ghost, phantom, strange apparition) are a class of supernatural monsters in Japanese folklore. The word yōkai is made up of the kanji for "bewitching; attractive; calamity" and "apparition; mystery; suspicious".[1] They can also be called ayakashi (妖?), mononoke (物の怪?), or mamono (魔物?). Yōkai range eclectically from the malevolent to the mischievous, or occasionally bring good fortune to those who encounter them. Often they possess animal features (such as the Kappa, which is similar to a turtle, or the Tengu which has wings), other times they can appear mostly human, some look like inanimate objects and others have no discernible shape. Yōkai usually have a spiritual supernatural power, with shapeshifting being one of the most common. Yōkai that have the ability to shapeshift are called obake.

Japanese folklorists and historians use yōkai as "supernatural or unaccountable phenomena to their informants". In the Edo period, many artists, such as Toriyama Sekien, created yōkai inspired by folklore or their own ideas, and in the present, several yōkai created by them (e.g. Kameosa and Amikiri, see below) are wrongly considered as being of legendary origin.

Ubume
姑獲鳥
うぶめ

Translation: woman in late pregnancy; often written with different characters
Alternate names: obo, unme, ugume, ubame tori, and many others
Habitat: haunts the area where she gave birth
Diet: none; only exists to deliver her baby into safe hands

Appearance: When a woman dies just before, during, or shortly after childbirth, anxiety for her child may prevent her spirit from passing on. This troubled attachment manifests as a ghost known as an ubume. These women appear on dark, rainy nights. Ubume can appear in many forms: a woman carrying a baby; a pregnant woman; or a blood-soaked walking corpse carrying an underdeveloped fetus. Other times they just appear as horrific, bloody, pregnant women crying out desperately into the night for help.

These variations are due to the burial traditions of different regions, as well as the circumstances of their death. In some areas, when a pregnant woman died she would be buried with the unborn fetus still inside of her. In other places, the fetus would be cut out of her and placed in her arms during burial. Women who died after delivering stillborn babies were also buried this way.

Behavior: These tragic spirits wander the areas near where they died, seeking aid from the living which they cannot provide themselves. If the mother died after childbirth but her baby survived, the newly formed ubume will try to care for the child in whatever way it can. She enters shops or homes to try to purchase food, clothes, or sweets for her still-living child. In place of money she pays with handfuls of dead leaves. These ghosts also try to lead humans to the place where their baby is hidden so that it can be taken to its living relatives, or adopted by another person.

In cases where both mother and child died, an ubume can appear carrying the bundled corpse of her infant. When a human approaches, the ghost tries to deliver the bundle into the arms of the living. If the stranger accepts, the ghost vanishes, and the bundle grows heavier and heavier until the helpful stranger is crushed under its weight.

Other forms: The name ubume is written with characters that imply a bird’s name. The literal translation of these characters is “child-snatching bird” and some theories connect this spirit with another yōkai called the ubumetori. This yōkai is an evil bird which flies through the sky searching for clothing that has been left on the clothesline overnight. When it finds some, it smears its poisonous blood on the clothing. Shortly afterward, the owner of those clothes begins to develop shakes and convulsions; possibly leading to death. Ubumetori are also blamed for snatching babies and taking them away into the night sky. Whether this bird is another form of the ghostly mother or a separate spirit with a similar name is not known.

Ungaikyō
雲外鏡
うんがいきょう

Translation: mirror beyond the clouds

Appearance: Ungaikyō is a haunted mirror which shows demons and monsters reflected in its surface. The spirit which haunts this mirror, as well as the countless spirits which have been reflected in it over the years, can manipulate the reflection and cause it to appear as anything they like. People who gaze into an ungaikyō might see a transformed, monstrous version of themselves looking back.

Interactions: An ungaikyō can be used by humans to trap spirits. On the 15th night of the 8th month in the old lunar calendar, water is poured into a crystal dish to reflect the light of the full moon. (In the old days this was a popular way of admiring the reflection of the night sky.) If that water is used to paint the image of a yōkai onto a mirror, that spirit will then inhabit the mirror.

Origin: Ungaikyō appears in Toriyama Sekien’s book of tsukumogami Hyakki tsurezure bukuro. Sekien based this yōkai on a mirror from an old Chinese myth. That mirror was called shōmakyō (“demon revealing mirror”). It had the ability to expose the true forms of demons masquerading as humans when they were reflected in the mirror. Shōmakyō was used by King Zhou of the Shang dynasty to reveal that his beloved consort Daji was actually a wicked nine-tailed kitsune, intent on runing his kingdom through her evil depravities. Her true form revealed, she fled the country (setting into action a chain of events that would see her eventually wind up in Japan as Tamamo no Mae). Shōmakyō was used time and time again to reveal the true nature of disguised spirits. Sekien postulated that such a mirror might pick up a little of the strangeness of each yōkai and demon it reflected, eventually becoming one itself. Perhaps the countless spirits that is has reflected over the years have slowly gained the ability to manipulate its reflections.

More recently, ungaikyō has been described simply as a mirror which has transformed into a conscious being. Upon reaching one hundred years of age, the mirror develops a soul and is transformed into a yōkai—a very common theme among tsukumogami.

Ungaikyō has also been portrayed as one of the many transformations performed by tanuki. By sucking in large amounts of air and inflating their bellies, a tanuki is able to display a picture on its bare belly similar to a television screen. This portrayal is not rooted in folklore however, but comes from Daiei Films’ 1968-69 yōkai movies. Nonetheless, it has caught on and remains a popular variation of ungaikyō in many productions.