妖

Types of Yokai

Q: What does yokai mean?

Yokai is written 妖怪. In its broad sense it means anything unusual beyond human understanding. In the narrower sense used by folklorists, it means frightening spirits and strange happenings that are not regularly worshipped. Older everyday words for much the same thing are bakemono and obake.

Yokai (妖怪) is the Japanese word for the strange. The folklorist Komatsu Kazuhiko, writing in Heibonsha's Sekai Daihyakka Jiten, gives it two senses. In the broad sense it means any unusual thing or event beyond human understanding. In the narrow sense it is the general name for spirits and strange happenings that are not regularly worshipped, that frighten people and that can bring disaster. He adds that many yokai can change into other things, which is why they are also called bakemono or obake, "things that change". So a yokai can be a creature with a name and a face, or simply an eerie sound in the night.

There is no official list of yokai types. In the Edo period, Toriyama Sekien's picture books, starting with the Gazu Hyakki Yagyō of 1776, worked as an illustrated encyclopedia of yokai, as the National Diet Library describes them. Modern reference works sort yokai in different ways. The Nipponica encyclopedia groups many of them by where they appear: on the road, in the mountains, in the water, at sea, in the snow, inside the house, and as fire, sounds, trees and animals. Komatsu instead looks at how yokai come about, in the folk ideas people held. Old foxes, old tanuki and old tools turn into yokai as they age. The living and the dead with too strong a grudge return as demons or ghosts. Sorcerers can make and send out animal spirits.

This guide combines both approaches. It groups the yokai on this site by what they are and where they live. The groups overlap, so one yokai can sit in several of them: Nure-onna is a woman, a serpent and a creature of the water all at once. Every name links to a full, sourced article, and you can browse all of them in our yokai encyclopedia.

Animal yokai: shape-shifters and magical beasts

Many of the best-known yokai are real animals with uncanny powers. Komatsu describes an old belief that a spirit dwells in everything in the world, and that when it grows old it becomes a yokai. His examples are the old fox and the old tanuki. Foxes, tanuki and cats are said to change into people. Others in this group never change shape at all. They are composite beasts such as the nue, or animal spirits that people were believed to keep and send against others, like the inugami.

Kitsune (狐): the fox, which can bewitch people and take human form, and which also serves as the messenger of the god Inari.
Tanuki (狸): the Japanese raccoon dog, a comic trickster that changes into people and objects and drums on its belly.
Bakeneko (化け猫): a cat that gains magical powers when it grows old or large, or when it is wronged.
Nekomata (猫又): a monster cat with a forked tail, first a man-eating beast of the mountains and later an aged house cat.
Jorogumo (絡新婦): a spider that takes the shape of an attractive woman to lure men.
Kamaitachi (鎌鼬): the "sickle weasel" blamed for sudden cuts that open on the skin, said to ride in on a whirlwind.
Inugami (犬神): a dog spirit believed to be kept by certain families and to possess and sicken people.
Raiju (雷獣): the "thunder beast" that Edo-period people believed fell to earth with lightning.
Nue (鵺): a chimera with a monkey's head, a tanuki's body, a tiger's limbs and a snake for a tail, shot down in The Tale of the Heike.
Baku (獏): an imaginary beast from China that came to be known in Japan as the eater of bad dreams.
Namazu (鯰): the giant catfish beneath Japan whose thrashing causes earthquakes.

Oni and demons

The oni is the great monster of Japanese tradition, usually translated as "demon" or "ogre". Kokugakuin University's Encyclopedia of Shinto describes it as a misshapen visitor from the other world that can bring either disaster or blessing, and so was both feared and worshipped. Komatsu notes that people believed a person consumed by a grudge could become a vengeful spirit in the shape of an oni. He also lists the jailers of the Buddhist hells among the yokai who pass between that world and this one. Oni are also the monsters that heroes fight, as in the legend of Minamoto no Raikō and Shuten-dōji.

Oni (鬼): the horned, club-carrying demon, which has stood for plague spirits, hell's jailers and New Year visitors.
Shuten-doji (酒呑童子): the sake-drinking chief of the oni, beheaded by Minamoto no Raikō and his companions.
Hannya (般若): a woman turned into a demon by jealousy or resentment, known above all as a Noh mask.
Ushi-oni (牛鬼): an ox demon of western Japan's coasts and river pools, and the name of a festival float in Uwajima.
Tsuchigumo (土蜘蛛): the "earth spider", first a court insult for local people who would not submit, later a giant spider-demon slain by Raikō.

Ghosts and spirits of the dead

A yūrei is the ghost of a person who once lived. Most yokai are nobody's ghost. The Mypedia encyclopedia draws the line this way: a yurei seeks out a particular person, while a yokai appears in a particular place or at a particular time to anyone. According to Komatsu, people believed that the living or the dead who held too strong a grudge could wander this world as a ghost in the shape they had in life. The yurei article explains how a sudden death or neglected funeral rites could keep a soul from moving on.

Yurei (幽霊): the ghost of a dead person, held in this world by a missing rite or a powerful emotion.
Gashadokuro (がしゃどくろ): a giant skeleton said to be made from the bones of the unburied dead, first described in print in 1966.
Hanako-san (トイレの花子さん): the ghost girl said to answer from a stall in a school toilet.

Yokai in human form: women, faces and necks

Some yokai look like ordinary people until the moment they reveal themselves. The noppera-bō turns round to show no face. The rokurokubi's neck stretches while she sleeps. Others were once human and changed into something else, like the jealous Kiyohime who became a serpent. Animals in human shape belong here too, such as the fox Tamamo-no-Mae. Komatsu also points out that many yokai, such as the tengu, the yamauba and the kappa, seem to have been shaped from the strange images people held of mountain folk, river folk and religious figures such as mountain ascetics and shrine maidens.

Yuki-onna (雪女): the snow woman, a pale figure who appears out of winter storms.
Rokurokubi (轆轤首): a woman whose neck stretches at night, or in another version whose head flies off.
Noppera-bo (のっぺらぼう): a faceless apparition that frightens by revealing its blank face.
Futakuchi-onna (二口女): a woman with a second, hidden mouth at the back of her head.
Kuchisake-onna (口裂け女): the masked "slit-mouthed woman" who asks children if she is pretty.
Yamauba (山姥): the wild woman of the mountains, feared as a man-eater but also a bringer of good fortune.
Nure-onna (濡女): the "wet woman", drawn with a woman's head on a huge snake's body.
Tamamo-no-Mae (玉藻前): a court beauty exposed as a nine-tailed fox, whose spirit entered the Killing Stone.
Kiyohime (清姫): the woman of the Dōjōji legend, who turned into a serpent to chase the monk who left her.

Water and sea yokai

Water is one of the oldest settings for yokai. Nipponica separates the yokai of fresh water, where the kappa is the most famous, from those of the sea, such as the ship-ghost funa-yūrei and the umibōzu. It says the ship-ghost is the ghost of someone who drowned and that the umibōzu is seen in the same way. The sea also brought omens. The ningyo and Amabie were creatures whose appearance foretold good or bad times.

Kappa (河童): the child-sized river creature that drags people and horses into the water, yet keeps its promises.
Umibozu (海坊主): the round-headed "sea monk" that rises beside boats at night.
Ningyo (人魚): the Japanese "mermaid", originally a fish with a human face whose flesh was said to give long life.
Nure-onna (濡女): a snake-bodied woman of the sea and rivers, often paired with the ushi-oni.
Amabie (アマビエ): a creature that rose from the sea off Higo Province in 1846 to foretell an epidemic.
Ushi-oni (牛鬼): an ox demon of coasts and deep river pools.

Mountain and forest yokai

For villagers, the mountains were the edge of the human world. Nipponica names the tengu and the yamauba as typical yokai of the mountains. Britannica Japan describes mountain yokai as broken-down forms of belief in the god of the mountain. Echoes were part of the same picture. The kodama article explains that an echo was once thought to be the spirit of the trees, or of the mountain, answering a human voice. The older nekomata was a man-eating beast of the mountains too, and the Daidarabotchi was said to have made the hills themselves.

Tengu (天狗): the winged, proud spirit of the high peaks, seen over the centuries as an enemy of Buddhism, a teacher of warriors and a guardian.
Yamauba (山姥): the mountain woman who lives beyond the edge of village life.
Kodama (木霊): the spirit of a tree, and the word for an echo.
Daidarabotchi (ダイダラボッチ): a giant whose footprints became ponds and whose dropped earth became hills.
Nekomata (猫又): in its oldest form, a man-eating cat-beast of the mountains.

Household yokai and tsukumogami (object yokai)

Yokai do not live only in the wild. Nipponica lists the zashiki-warashi as a yokai that appears inside the house, and Britannica Japan suggests that many house yokai are household gods in decline. The best-known group of house yokai are the tsukumogami, everyday objects that come alive. The standard dictionary definition is a spirit that lodges in a tool more than a hundred years old. In the Muromachi-period Tsukumogami scroll, the old tools turn into monsters because they were thrown away without thanks. The scroll's hundred years is best read as "very old" rather than as an exact rule.

Tsukumogami (付喪神): household objects, from brooms to lutes, that gain a spirit with great age.
Kasa-obake (傘おばけ): the one-legged umbrella ghost, usually counted among the tsukumogami.
Zashiki-warashi (座敷童子): a child spirit of the inner rooms whose presence makes a house prosper.
Akaname (垢嘗): the "grime-licker" said to lick the dirt from bathtubs.
Nurarihyon (ぬらりひょん): a bald old man who, in modern descriptions, walks into people's homes and drinks their tea.
Bakeneko (化け猫): the house cat turned monster, frightening because it lives inside the home.

Japanese dragons and serpent yokai

Snakes and dragons sit on the border between monster and god. Kokugakuin's Encyclopedia of Shinto says that Chinese ideas shaped Japanese dragon worship, but the dragon that people actually worshipped was a deified snake, the symbol of a water god. Komatsu gives an example from the Hitachi Fudoki: some of the dragon-snakes called yato no kami that troubled the people were killed, and the rest were given a shrine and became protectors. The Kojiki (712) and Nihon Shoki (720) both tell how the god Susanoo killed the eight-headed serpent of Izumo.

Ryujin (龍神): the dragon god of water, who brings rain and rules a palace beneath the sea.
Yamata no Orochi (八岐大蛇): the eight-headed, eight-tailed serpent slain by Susanoo.
Kiyohime (清姫): the woman who became a great serpent and burned a monk inside the bell of Dōjōji.
Nure-onna (濡女): the serpent with a woman's head.

Modern yokai and urban legends

New yokai are still being made. Kuchisake-onna grew out of a rumour that the usual account traces to Gifu Prefecture at the end of 1978. The folklorist Iikura Yoshiyuki describes how it spread through schools and cram schools, and it frightened children across Japan in 1979. Hanako-san is a school ghost. Japanese writers trace her to an account from about 1948, and she became a national figure in the "school ghost story" boom of the 1990s. Other yokai are modern in a less obvious way. The gashadokuro was invented for a girls' magazine in 1966. Amabie is known from a single print of 1846 but only became famous in 2020. The nurarihyon's role as boss of the yokai goes back to a caption of 1929.

Kuchisake-onna (口裂け女): the slit-mouthed woman of the 1979 rumour panic.
Hanako-san (トイレの花子さん): the ghost of the school toilet, spread by children's storytelling.
Gashadokuro (がしゃどくろ): the giant skeleton, often presented as ancient, which first appeared in print in 1966.
Amabie (アマビエ): an Edo-period prophetic creature revived during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Nurarihyon (ぬらりひょん): an Edo-period picture whose fame as "supreme commander" of the yokai is a twentieth-century addition.

Gods and divine creatures (kami)

Kami are the gods of Shinto. They are worshipped, so strictly speaking they are not yokai. The line between the two is thin, though. Komatsu notes that the folklorist Yanagita Kunio thought yokai were gods who had fallen from worship. Komatsu's own view is that yokai have existed alongside gods in every age, and that a feared spirit could become a kami if people worshipped it. Several gods also look like monsters, such as the oni-like thunder god Raijin. Our guide to the Japanese gods tells their stories in full.

Amaterasu (天照大御神): the sun goddess, ruler of heaven and ancestor of the imperial house.
Susanoo (須佐之男命): Amaterasu's unruly brother, who killed Yamata no Orochi.
Raijin (雷神): the thunder god with his ring of drums.
Fujin (風神): the wind god with his bag of wind, nearly always paired with Raijin.
Inari (稲荷): the kami of rice and harvest, whose messengers are foxes.
Seven Lucky Gods (七福神): the seven gods of good fortune, only one of them native to Japan.
Yatagarasu (八咫烏): the divine crow that guided the legendary Emperor Jimmu.
Ryujin (龍神): the dragon god of the sea and of rain.

Frequently asked questions

How many types of yokai are there?

There is no fixed number and no official classification. Edo-period artists such as Toriyama Sekien catalogued yokai in illustrated books, and modern encyclopedias sort them in different ways. Nipponica, for example, groups them by where they appear: road, mountain, water, sea, snow, house, fire, sound, tree and animal. This guide uses ten broad groups, and many yokai belong to more than one.

What is the difference between yokai, yurei and kami?

Yokai is the broad word for strange beings and happenings. A yurei is the ghost of a particular dead person, and the Mypedia encyclopedia notes that a yurei seeks out a particular person, while a yokai appears at a set place or time to anyone. Kami are the gods of Shinto, who are worshipped. The boundary is not sharp: a feared spirit could become a kami once people worshipped it.

What are the most famous yokai?

No one keeps a ranking. Komatsu Kazuhiko names the oni, the tengu, the kappa, the yamauba and the one-eyed boy hitotsume-kozō as yokai still well known today, along with possessing spirits and ghosts. The fox, the tanuki and the modern Kuchisake-onna are also very familiar. Amabie became famous across Japan in 2020.

Are yokai evil?

Not always. Komatsu describes yokai as basically hostile to people, but says they can also help. In tales and rituals the yamauba, the kappa and the oni sometimes help a hero, bless people or make a family rich. The zashiki-warashi brings prosperity to a house, and some yokai are simply startling, like the umbrella ghost.

What does yokai mean?

Yokai is written 妖怪. In its broad sense it means anything unusual beyond human understanding. In the narrower sense used by folklorists, it means frightening spirits and strange happenings that are not regularly worshipped. Older everyday words for much the same thing are bakemono and obake.