Detail map
Japan
8 entries in 8 subareas: 7 at grade A, 1 at grade B. The points fall where the entry was collected, not where the story is set. Hover a point to see the subarea, click it to open the entry.
The entries, in brief
The folklore of Japan documented in this atlas: Kappa, Kitsune, Yūrei, Namahage, Zashiki-warashi, Tengu, Yuki-onna and Amabie. Every entry is placed on the map at the point where it was collected or attested — not where the story is set — and carries its declared grade of documentation (7 at grade A, 1 at grade B), with the sources it comes from. The 8 subareas are not an administrative division: folklore lives in cultural areas, which rarely coincide with state borders.
Amabie A
A sea creature with long hair, a beak, a scaly body from the neck down and three legs. It emerges from the sea radiating light every night; an official of the place goes to see; the creature introduces itself, prophesies six…
Kappa A
As tall as a child, greenish, with webbed hands and feet, a tortoise carapace and a beak. The decisive feature is the sara, the hollow on the top of the head that holds water: if the water spills the kappa loses its strength or…
Kitsune A
A fox that acquires power with age: at a hundred years it can transform itself and bewitch, and the number of tails grows with age and power up to nine. It transforms itself by placing on its head a leaf, a skull or a human hair…
Namahage A
On the evening of 31 December young men of the village put on oni masks, red or blue, carved locally and different for each hamlet, straw capes called kede, and take up a wooden knife and a pail. In groups of two or three they…
Tengu A
For seven hundred years the tengu has no long nose: it is a bird of prey. In the Konjaku monogatarishū, 12th century, its «true form» is that of a kite, and its business is to harm the Dharma — it displays false Buddhas, abducts…
Yūrei A
The visual convention is extremely codified: white katabira, that is the funeral kimono fastened the wrong way round, long, dishevelled black hair, hands dangling from the wrists, hitaikakushi, the triangle of white cloth on the…
Zashiki-warashi A
A boy or girl of three to fifteen, red face, bobbed hair, traditional dress, who lives in the zashiki, the tatami reception room, or in the storehouse of large, old houses. It plays harmless tricks: ash footprints on the floor,…
Yuki-onna B
In the oldest text she is not the most beautiful young woman in a white kimono: she is a giantess with white hair, about three metres tall, encountered in Echigo. The regional oral traditions, collected between the late Edo…
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