Translated from Opinions About Life and Death as Told by the Legend of Yaobikuni, Japanese Wikipedia, and this Blog

To learn more about Japanese Ghosts, check out my book Yurei: The Japanese Ghost

Japan has mermaids, but they are very different creatures from western folklore. They can take many shapes, but the most common in the form of a fish with a woman’s head. And even then, appearance is not their most distinctive feature—eating the flesh of a mermaid is said to grant an extended lifespan. And sometimes it does something else.

Yaobikuni – The Eight-Hundred Year Nun

One of Japan’s most famous folk legends, variations of this story can be found across the entire country. Most versions of the story involve a fisherman who catches a strange fish. He brings it home to cook for his family and a friend. The friend notices that the fish has a human face, and advises them not to eat it. The fisherman throws the fish away, but his hungry daughter slips into the kitchen and eats it any way. Cursed with immortality, she becomes known as Yaobikuni—the eight-hundred year nun.

Here is an interesting variation translated from Takeshi Noji’s “Opinions About Life and Death as Told by the Legend of Yaobikuni” [八百比丘尼伝承の死生観]. Notice the difference about how the mermaid flesh is discovered.

One day a man was invited to dine and be entertained at the house of another man whom he had never met before. Now, this was a man learned in Buddhism and who had attended many lectures, and he knew that many such invitations lead to places such as the Palace of the Dragon King or to a dead man’s abode. He accepted, but was on his guard.

When the feast came, he saw that he was being served mermaid meat. He was repulsed by the feast and did not eat it, but slipped some of the mermaid meat in his pocket as a souvenir of his strange adventure. Unfortunately, when he came home that night his daughter searched his pockets to see if her father had brought her a treat, and gobbled down the mermaid meat. From that time on she did not age.

Her life become one of bitter loneliness. She married several times, but her husbands aged and died while she went on. All of her friends and loved ones died as well. Eventually she became a nun, and left her village to wander the country. At ever place she visited, she planted a tree—either cedar, camellia, or pine. She eventually settled at Obama village in Wakasa province (Modern day Fukui prefecture) where she planted her final set of trees. The trees still stand to this day, and are said to be 800 years old.

Three Cedars of Togakushi

Normally, mermaid legends are found on port towns bordering the sea. But this story comes from Togakushi of Nagano, approximately 65km away from the shore. This legend follows the same beginning as the well-known Yaobikuni legend, but adds it’s own cruel twist.

One day, a fisherman caught a mermaid in the ocean. The poor creature begged for it’s life, but the fisherman didn’t listen and killed it. He brought the meat home to where he lived with his family and three children.

The following day, when he was out fishing, his hungry children crept into the storage box in the kitchen and gorged themselves on the mermaid flesh. Soon after their bodies began to change. Their skin sprouted scales like that of a fish. At the end of their torment, they died. The father was wracked with grief, and bitterly regretted his actions. But it was too late.

In a dream, a divine messenger told him “To save your children’s souls, make a pilgrimage to Togakushi, and plant three cedar trees to honor them.” The father did as he was told, and travelled the 400km to Togakushi to plant the trees.

They trees are still there, called the Sanbonsugi of Togakushi (Three Cedars of Togakushi) where they are worshipped in a Shinto shrine.

Translator’s Note:

I came across this blog post on the Three Cedars of Togakushi, and thought it was an interesting legend to post about! However, you can’t really put the Togakushi legend into context without the much-more famous story of Yaobikuni, so there they both are!

I like the variation of Yaobikuni that I found. Like the legend of Okiku, there are hundreds of different versions of her story spread all across Japan, each one changed in just a few key details. This one features a wily man who is too smart to fall under a spirit’s spell, but is then undone by his own daughter.

Translated from Opinions About Life and Death as Told by the Legend of Yaobikuni, Japanese Wikipedia, and this Blog

To learn more about Japanese Ghosts, check out my book Yurei: The Japanese Ghost

Japan has mermaids, but they are very different creatures from western folklore. They can take many shapes, but the most common in the form of a fish with a woman’s head. And even then, appearance is not their most distinctive feature—eating the flesh of a mermaid is said to grant an extended lifespan. And sometimes it does something else.

Yaobikuni – The Eight-Hundred Year Nun

One of Japan’s most famous folk legends, variations of this story can be found across the entire country. Most versions of the story involve a fisherman who catches a strange fish. He brings it home to cook for his family and a friend. The friend notices that the fish has a human face, and advises them not to eat it. The fisherman throws the fish away, but his hungry daughter slips into the kitchen and eats it any way. Cursed with immortality, she becomes known as Yaobikuni—the eight-hundred year nun.

Here is an interesting variation translated from Takeshi Noji’s “Opinions About Life and Death as Told by the Legend of Yaobikuni” [八百比丘尼伝承の死生観]. Notice the difference about how the mermaid flesh is discovered.

One day a man was invited to dine and be entertained at the house of another man whom he had never met before. Now, this was a man learned in Buddhism and who had attended many lectures, and he knew that many such invitations lead to places such as the Palace of the Dragon King or to a dead man’s abode. He accepted, but was on his guard.

When the feast came, he saw that he was being served mermaid meat. He was repulsed by the feast and did not eat it, but slipped some of the mermaid meat in his pocket as a souvenir of his strange adventure. Unfortunately, when he came home that night his daughter searched his pockets to see if her father had brought her a treat, and gobbled down the mermaid meat. From that time on she did not age.

Her life become one of bitter loneliness. She married several times, but her husbands aged and died while she went on. All of her friends and loved ones died as well. Eventually she became a nun, and left her village to wander the country. At ever place she visited, she planted a tree—either cedar, camellia, or pine. She eventually settled at Obama village in Wakasa province (Modern day Fukui prefecture) where she planted her final set of trees. The trees still stand to this day, and are said to be 800 years old.

Three Cedars of Togakushi

Normally, mermaid legends are found on port towns bordering the sea. But this story comes from Togakushi of Nagano, approximately 65km away from the shore. This legend follows the same beginning as the well-known Yaobikuni legend, but adds it’s own cruel twist.

One day, a fisherman caught a mermaid in the ocean. The poor creature begged for it’s life, but the fisherman didn’t listen and killed it. He brought the meat home to where he lived with his family and three children.

The following day, when he was out fishing, his hungry children crept into the storage box in the kitchen and gorged themselves on the mermaid flesh. Soon after their bodies began to change. Their skin sprouted scales like that of a fish. At the end of their torment, they died. The father was wracked with grief, and bitterly regretted his actions. But it was too late.

In a dream, a divine messenger told him “To save your children’s souls, make a pilgrimage to Togakushi, and plant three cedar trees to honor them.” The father did as he was told, and travelled the 400km to Togakushi to plant the trees.

They trees are still there, called the Sanbonsugi of Togakushi (Three Cedars of Togakushi) where they are worshipped in a Shinto shrine.

Translator’s Note:

I came across this blog post on the Three Cedars of Togakushi, and thought it was an interesting legend to post about! However, you can’t really put the Togakushi legend into context without the much-more famous story of Yaobikuni, so there they both are!

I like the variation of Yaobikuni that I found. Like the legend of Okiku, there are hundreds of different versions of her story spread all across Japan, each one changed in just a few key details. This one features a wily man who is too smart to fall under a spirit’s spell, but is then undone by his own daughter.

Translated and Sourced from Shigeru Mizuki’s Mujara, Japanese Ghost Stories: Spirits, Hauntings, and Paranormal Phenomena, and Other Sources

To learn more about Japanese Ghosts, check out my book Yurei: The Japanese Ghost

The yūrei of Japan have been riding taxis again. While they tend to eschew trains and busses, since taxis appeared around the late Taisho period yūrei have been hailing cabs for quick rides around town.

In Japan Ghost Passengers, taxi drivers have been reporting ghostly passengers who climb on board, ask to be taken to a destination, then mysteriously vanish before paying their toll. The recent spate of ghostly passengers have been attributed to the 2011 Fukushima disaster, as the dead struggle to find their way home—or may not even know they are dead.

This is no new phenomenon. One of the first things I ever wrote on yūrei was Tales of Ghostly Japan for Japanzine back in (I think) 2005:

True Tales of Tokyo Terror Taxis

The cabdriver knew that the ghosts of Japan were not confined to ancient graveyards and shadow-haunted shrines. Any modern resident of the nation’s capital could tell you that the taxis of Tokyo are more haunted than hearses, and his own route took him regularly through open gates to the spirit world. There was Sendagaya tunnel, which winds beneath the cemetery of Senjuiin Temple, or Shirogane tunnel, where legend has it that screaming faces are silhouetted against the tunnel’s pillars and through which the Shinigami – the spirit of Death itself – is said to pass. All of his fellow cabbies could wax a yarn of passengers who got on then disappeared, or of catching a glimpse of a woman or child’s face in the rear view mirror. He too had a story to tell.

It was a stormy autumn night, near Aoyama Cemetery, where he picked up a poor young girl drenched by the rain. It was dark, so he didn’t get a good look at her face, but she seemed sad and he figured she had been visiting a recently deceased relative or friend. The address she gave was some distance away, and they drove in silence. A good cabbie doesn’t make small talk when picking someone up from a cemetery.

When they arrived at the address, the girl didn’t get out, but whispered for him to wait a bit, while she stared out the window at a 2nd floor apartment. Ten minutes or so passed as she watched, never speaking, never crying; simply observing a solitary figure move about the apartment. Suddenly, the girl asked to be taken to a new address, this one back near the cemetery where he had first picked her up. The rain was heavy, and the driver focused on the road, leaving the girl to her thoughts.

When he arrived at the new address, a modern house in a good neighborhood, the cabbie opened the door and turned around to collect his fare. To his surprise, he found himself staring at an empty back seat, with a deep puddle where the girl had been sitting moments before. Mouth open, he just sat there staring at the vacant seat, until a knocking on the window shook him from his reverie.

The father of the house, seeing the taxi outside, had calmly walked out bringing with him the exact charge for the fare. He explained that the young girl had been his daughter, who died in a traffic accident some years ago and was buried in Aoyama Cemetery. From time to time, he said, she hailed a cab and, after visiting her old boyfriend’s apartment, asked to be driven home. The father thanked the driver for his troubles, and sent him on his way.

The Vanishing Hitchhiker

Anyone with a knowledge of folklore can easily recognize these tales of disappearing passengers as The Vanishing Hitchhiker. It is an ancient legend—the oldest known account dates back to ancient Rome, when Proculus meets a traveler on the road, who disappears after revealing himself as Romulus, one of Rome’s legendary founders. The story is known in almost every country with slight variations. In his 1981 book The Vanishing Hitchhiker, Jan Harold Brunvand says the legend has “recognizable parallels in Korea, Tsarist Russia, among Chinese-Americans, Mormons, and Ozark mountaineers.”

The story has a basic pattern. A driver picks up a passenger; either a customer for a taxi cab or a hitchhiker. The passenger requests a destination, and the two chat a bit while the driver speeds along. When the arrive at the destination, the driver turns around to find the passenger vanished—always leaving some trace of the phantom passenger to prove they existed. The trace can be a lost glove, or a puddle of water from the rain, or evidence on a taxi meter. There is often some additional confirmation, such as a graveyard with their name, or a father coming out to pay the fare.

They are always told as true stories, not legends—and maybe they are.

Driverless Yūrei Taxi Cabs

In his yokai encyclopedia Mujara, folklorist and artist Shigeru Mizuki records a different type of haunted taxi—the driverless vehicles known as 無人車幽霊タクシ—Driverless Yūrei Taxis.

In about 1931, there were rumors of a driverless taxi that drove the streets in the vicinity of the Imperial Palace. At night, taxis would line up for passengers, and they often saw a taxi whizzing dangerously through the streets. Looking inside they could see no one at the wheel. After the car was gone, they would look on the streets but could find no trace of its passing. However, those that saw the care would inevitably meet with an accident within two days. Taxi drivers that worked near the Imperial Palace were terrified of glimpsing the phantom vehicle.

Similar driverless vehicles were reported on the Gotemba interchange between Tokyo and Nagoya, and in the Namba area of Osaka. Most reported the cars as white and travelling at unsafe speeds.

The Phantom Rickshaw

There are older tales from the same area near Gotemba, of a white rickshaw that would travel through town without anyone pulling it. The rickshaw often had a family crest painted on the back, and was attributed either to a murdered member of that family, or to a yūrei from a nearby burial mound. Apparently across the years the spirit has upgraded himself to modern technology.

Who knows what vehicle he may ride in the future?

Translator’s Note:

This entry was an answer to the numerous people who sent me the MSN story of modern taxi yūrei currently haunting Japan. It was great to see the ghosts of Japan are still up to their old tricks! And nostalgic remembering my very first yūrei article written more than 10 years ago!

I also wanted to have something new for Folklore Thursday on Twitter! If you are a fan of legends and lore, join in the fun every Thursday!

Sourced and translated from Kaii Yokai Densho Database, Japanese Wikipedia, Yokai Jiten, Nihon Kokugo Dai-ten, and Other Sources

Out on the seas comes upon a strange vision. A three-legged half-fish person rises from the water and speaks a prediction; this year shall bring a great wealth of crops followed by a devastating plague. However, the fish creature says, show my picture to anyone stricken down by the disease and they shall be healed.

Amabie are one of several prophetic yokai. The follow the same basic pattern as modern chain emails, warning that horrific things will happen if their image is not shared widely. This causes people to replicate the image and share them with as many people as possible.

The legend of the amabie arose during the Edo period and has been all but forgotten over the years until a resurgence during the Covid pandemic of 2020.

What does Amabie mean?

The word Amabie (アマビエ) is written entirely in katakana, giving no clue as to its meaning. “Ama” phonetically can mean nun (尼), female diver (海女), or fisherman (海士). “Bie” in the Higo dialect is related to fish. Therefore amabie most likely refers to some sort of merfolk.

The History of Amabie

There is only one single account of an Amabie. It appeared in the Edo period, in the third month of the 3rd year of Koka (mid-May, 1846 by modern calendars), in Higo province, modern day Kumamoto period.  Locals reported a strange, glowing light appearing in the sea each night. Finally a government official was sent out on a boat to investigate.

When they arrived at the glow, a strange creature appeared. It spoke, saying “I am an Amabie, who lives in the sea. For six years hence crops will be abundant across all provinces. But a horrible plague shall spread. For those who succumb, show them my image as soon as possible and they will be cured.”  With that said, the creature sank back into the sea.

The official drew an illustration of what he saw, showing a chimeric creature with a bird’s beak, fish scales, long hair, and three finned feet. The story and illustration were printed in kawaraban woodblock-printed broadsides and disseminated across Japan.

Mermaid Legends and Pandemics

The amabie is not the first magical mermaid to appear in Japan. In Tensho 9 (1581), Tokugawa vassal Matsudaira Ieda drew this illustration in his diary and wrote that a mermaid had appeared in a dried rice field on New Year’s Day in Azuchi. It was more than six feet tall, and ate several people.

The year before Ieda’s illustration Japan had suffered heavy rains and flooding, followed by a pandemic that killed many across the country. Temples were filled with people praying for an end to the pandemic.

Using yokai as amulets of protection against disease was a common tradition in Japan, usually images of oni that were meant to frighten off epidemics. There is some evidence of mermaid prayer amulets being used at the time.

Amabie Variations

While the Amabie is the best known, there are many variations on the same story, some of them older. It has been suggested that the Amabie is a misheard or mistranscribed versions of earlier stories, mixed with mermaid legends.

Folklorist Yamato Koichi identified seven variations of amabie. Nagano Eishun later expanded this to nine. While their physical forms are different, most share similar stories offering predictions of both a bumper crop followed by plague, and the mitigation of showing pictures of their image.

Here are some of them:

Amabiko  (海彦; 海 (ama, sea) + 彦 (hiko, boy).

The earliest version with an exact age appeared in Echigo province, now Nigata prefecture, in Tempo 15 (1844). The kawaraban “Tsubokawamoto.” The illustration shows a creature with three legs growing out of its head, with no body. The accompanying text says this creature prophesied that 70% of Japan would die that year if not shown this image.

Amabiko  (尼彦; 尼 (ama, nun) + 彦 (hiko, boy)

The text states that in Meiji 15 (1852), a person named Hikozaemon Shibata heard a monkey’s voice every night, and eventually tracked it down to the source. He encountered the Amabito who delivered the usual dire warning.

The veracity of this account is dubious, as it says it took place in “Shinji town,” which does not exist, and uses the name Kumamoto prefecture instead of Higo province, showing that it was created after the abolition of the feudal clan system in 1871.

Amabiko Nyudo (尼彦; 尼 (ama, nun) + 彦 (hiko, boy) + 入道 (nyudo, priest)

This variation comes from Hyuga provice (Miyazaki prefecture). It tells the same account as the other Amabiko but with a different image.

Amahiko no Mikoto (天日子尊; Amahiko, sunlight + Mikoto, noble child)

This version comes from Yuwaza in Nigata prefecture, and appeared in the Tokyo Nichi-Nichi newspaper in Meiji 8 (1875).  This version was said to have appeared in a rice field. The illustration shows something like a four-legged version of a daruma doll. This version carries the name of “mikoto” identifying it as something holy, and it professed to be a servitor of the heavenly gods.

Arie (アリエ)

In 1876, the Yamanishi Nichi-Nichi newspaper reported a similar version of the tale, with a different version of the creature under the name of Arie. It was said to have come out of the ocean in Kumamoto and made its prediction. As many of the details were incorrect, this was declared a hoax at the time.

Why all of these Amabie?

No one really knows what sparked the proliferation of amabie stories at the time. Speculation is that the stories of disaster and salvation played on people’s fears and made for a good sales pitch for the kawaraban broadsides. As there was little contact between towns at the time, they would have been unaware of the other variations of the legend. Enterprising traveling salesmen could have encountered the stories and then concocted their own legends.

There was no pandemic in the 1840s, although cholera would reach Japan in the 1850s, and the third bubonic plague pandemic would strike in 1896. However, the fear of disease was constant and many households would have not wanted to take the risk by not buying a picture of the amabie when offered.

The modern resurgence of amabie was sparked on March 6th, 2020, when the Kyoto University Library Twitter account posed an image of the 1846 illustration with an account of the manifestation. On March 17th, the family of Shigeru Mizuki posted his version of the yokai as well to pass on its blessing. From there, Japan’s artists’ imagination was sparked and images of of the healing yokai began to spread across the internet.

Translator’s Note:

Well, it has been three years since I have posted anything new on this site! I started this when I was an amateur, and since it lead to professional work and writing my own books and lecturing I really didn’t have time to maintain this site as a hobby.

But it seemed like this was the time to come back and make another post! May the spirit of the Amabie live on and help us all out in these troubled times!

I rarely visit this site anymore, but anyone who wants to see what I am up to can find me at https://zackdavisson.com/

If you are walking through the forest and hear mysterious laughter or the sound of crashing trees, take caution. You may have stumbled into the territory of the species of tengu called guhin. These mischievous spirits are charged by the mountain kami with the task of ensuring humans have proper awe and dread of their craggy realms.

What does Guhin mean?

Guhin is made up of two kanji. 狗 (gu) meaning “dog” and 賓 (in) meaning “guest” or “visitor from afar.” These seem innocuous enough, however both have deeper associations.

狗 is the kanji used in the name tengu (天狗), which translates literally as “heavenly dog.” Tengu originally take their name from the Chinese tiangou, a black dog of the heavens that eats the moon during eclipses. Japan took the name of the tiangou and attached it to the garuda avian deities from India to create what we know of as the Japanese tengu.

賓 can also be read as marebito, and refers to an ancient belief in divine beings who come from afar to bring supernatural gifts of wisdom and knowledge. In ancient Japan, villages welcomed marebito with rituals and festivals.

Guhin the Dog Tengu

In modern times guhin are usually depicted as dog-headed creatures, as opposed to the usual avian ko-tengu or long-nosed dai-tengu. However, this appears to be a modern invention. There are no physical descriptions of guhin in Edo period sources, where the guhin always manifest as mysterious forces in the woods and are never actually seen.

I’ve not been able to find where the image of guhin as dog creatures come from, and the oldest description I can find with that description comes from the 1969 English-language Encyclopedia of Beasts and Monsters in Myth, Legend and Folklore. The anthropomorphic wolf description of guhin is more common in English language sources and does not appear often in Japanese.

Guhin as Regional Variant of Tengu

Guhin are not considered an individual tengu species everywhere. In many parts of Japan the word is used as regional variant of tengu. In Aichi and Okayama prefectures, and the Kotohira district of Kagawa prefecture, guhin is simply the local term for tengu.

The Legend of Guhin

Guhin are considered the lowest order of tengu. They are common tricksters, far removed from the lofty reams of the dai-tengu and ko-tengu. It is said that while the dai-tengu and ko-tengu occupy the sacred peaks of Japan, the guhin live in the myriad nameless hills and mountains that define the craggy surface of a country that is 80% mountainous. Also, while dai-tengu and ko-tengu are associated with Buddhism and the mountain aesthetic religion of Shugendo, guhin are closely identified with traditional sangakushigo mountain worship and the ancient folkloric deities that were native to Japan before the introduction of Buddhism from Korea.

Guhin are, to borrow from Shakespeare, but deities of the working day. Their existence is intimately intertwined with human lives, and they exist on the earthy not heavenly planes. They are said to be servants of the mountain kami, and their primary task is to inspire in humans proper fear and awe of the mountain realms. Guhin are said to be the cause behind such mischief as tengu taoshi, an auditory phenomenon where you hear the crashing of a tree falling when no tree actually fell, tengu tsubute, a rain of gravel thrown from nowhere, tengu warai, a mysterious laughter heard deep in the woods, and tengubi, mysterious lights that drift through the forest.

In the 1764 collection Sanshu Kidan (三州奇談),a story is told of a man who wanders deep into the mountains gathering leaves when he is assaulted with a sudden and ferocious hailstorm. The man fled back to the villages where locals told him that a guhin lives in those woods, and that anyone who took a single leaf would die.

Aside from this warning, there are no accounts of guhin causing actual harm to humans. They lack the divine powers of dai- and ko-tengu. However, they are still supernatural beings. It is said if you didn’t heed the guhin’s warnings and wantonly destroyed nature that they could still bring disaster to human families.

Guhin Mochi

It was important for those who worked in the mountains and woods such as loggers to maintain good relationships with guhin. They held festivals to offer them mochi rice cakes which were thought to be a favorite treat of the guhin. The 1849 Sozan Chomon Kishu (想山著聞奇集) records the custom in Mino province called Guhin Mochi, which was mochi set out in the woods to placate guhin in the mountains.In places such as Gifu and Nagano these rituals and festivals are still maintained.

Sankidai Gongen of Mt. Misen

In a reversal of most guhin legends, in the western part of Hiroshima prefecture guhin are considered instead to be the highest order of tengu. According to local legends, a guhin named Sankidai Gongen lives in Mt. Misen at Miyajima shrine. This is the primary kami of the local tengu-worshiping sect of Shingon Buddhism.

In the forests of Ujina, it was said there was a law that not a single new leave should be taken and only dead trees could be harvested.

Translator’s Note

I’m back again! This was by special request of Stan Sakai, and hey, I would do anything for Stan Sakai! Maybe we will see a guhin popping up in Usagi Yojimbo?