Hitotsume-kozō

What it is

Hitotsume-kozō is a yōkai, which is to say a supernatural apparition in Japanese lore. It takes the shape of a child with a shaved head, and a single eye sits in the centre of its forehead, which calls the Cyclopes to mind. Beside many other yōkai it is reckoned mild: it turns up without warning and gives people a fright, yet is not said to hurt anyone. Printed collections from the Edo period sometimes give it a comic or charming look, and in karuta cards, a game of picture cards, it is shown holding tōfu.

Where it comes from

Its beginnings are told in more than one way. Kunio Yanagita, an authority on folkloristics, argued from the idea that yōkai are gods (kami) that have fallen into ruin, and called the hitotsume-kozō a mountain god brought low. In several districts mountain deities were described as cross-eyed, and saying that someone has one eye was a usual way of saying cross-eyed, which points to spirits of the mountain. Other hints tie the figure to beings with one eye and one foot: a priest of Mount Hiei, said to be the transformed eighteenth Tendaizasu Ryōgen, or Ame no Mahitotsu no Kami, a one-eyed god honoured by workers at the tatara, the traditional iron-smelting furnace, among whom many lost an eye. A further view holds that infants born with one eye were given this name.

How it is done

Households in the Kantō region guarded against it on Kotoyōka. A bamboo basket was set outside the door so that the visitor would turn away. In some districts a sprig of hiiragi, or holly, was pushed through the weave, an act described as stabbing its single eye. On those nights people did no work and stayed indoors. The creature itself was said to go from house to house with a notebook, marking those with loose door fastenings or poor manners, and to leave the book with the dōsojin for safekeeping; burning the guardian's figure or shrine in the new year was held to wipe the record clean.

Tools and materials

The defences are plain household things: a woven bamboo basket hung or laid at the entrance, and hiiragi, holly, whose leaves were run through the weave. Accounts also mention a temporary shrine to the dōsojin, the guardian of roads and boundaries, which was put to the fire in the new year, at dondoyaki in Seya ward, Yokohama, and at the dōsojin festival in Izu. In yōkai karuta cards the creature carries tōfu. Katsumi Tada, a researcher of yōkai, noted that the word for bean pieces, mametsubu, resembles mametsu, a term for sound health, so beans were thought to keep it away, and tōfu, made from soybeans, later became its favourite food.

What it is for

The tales give the hitotsume-kozō no task, only an effect: a sudden shock. In the best-known account a man waiting on business at a samurai household saw a boy of about ten rolling a hanging scroll up and down in the alcove. Scolded for the prank, the boy turned and showed one eye. The man cried out and fell, and was carried home; the household said such things happened four or five times a year and came to nothing. Elsewhere the shock ran deeper. Near Aizuwakamatsu a girl met a child who asked whether she wanted money, and after he stared at her with his one eye she fainted.

Who does it

No one serves the hitotsume-kozō. Those who act are ordinary households in the Kantō region, who set out baskets and holly and kept to their homes on Kotoyōka, and villagers who put up small shrines to the dōsojin and burned them. Scholars came later: Kunio Yanagita, a founding figure of Japanese folkloristics, and the yōkai researcher Katsumi Tada, who wrote about the food it carries. The apparition is a boy of eight, nine or ten dressed as a kozō, a monk still in training, and in the famous story his answer to a scolding is short and rude.

Peoples and places

Japan is the country where the hitotsume-kozō is reported. Inside it the stories cluster in the Kantō region, home of the Kotoyōka customs, and also in Aizu, Okayama and Izu. Near Honshi no Chō in Aizuwakamatsu a girl met such a child. At Kamimomiimaidani, in Kume District, Okayama Prefecture, a night road called Hitokuchizaka, one mouth hill, took its name from a blue light and a figure whose long tongue licked those who froze with fear. In Oshu the being is called hitotsu managu, and Edo-period picture collections label it Mehitotsu-bō.

What people believe

The hitotsume-kozō lives in a world crowded with minor powers. Mountain deities, fallen from their old standing, come down to the villages on set nights. The dōsojin, guardian of roads and boundaries, keeps a notebook of household faults. The yakubyōgami, a deity of pestilence, is told of those faults and is thought to bring bad luck in return. Beans and tōfu are held to keep the visitor away. Folklorists point to cross-eyed mountain gods and to one-eyed gods of the iron smelters as part of the picture, and to a child born with a single eye as another possible source of the name.

When it is done

The busy nights are Kotoyōka, which falls on the 8th of the 12th month and the 8th of the 2nd month in the lunisolar calendar. On the December date the creature was said to write down each household's errors and leave the book with the dōsojin; on the February date it was expected back to collect it. Communities burned the shrine in the meantime, in Seya ward, Yokohama, on the 14th of the first month at dondoyaki, and in Izu, Shizuoka Prefecture, on the 15th at the dōsojin festival. With the record gone, misfortune was thought to be turned aside.

How scholars and sceptics see it

Yanagita's reading is the best known: he took yōkai to be gods that had declined, and placed the hitotsume-kozō among mountain deities brought low. Katsumi Tada looked at the food it carries in karuta cards and traced the change from beans to tōfu, tying it to the tōfu-kozō. Others connect the figure with the one-eyed, one-footed priest of Mount Hiei, with Ame no Mahitotsu no Kami of the iron workers, or with cyclopia, a developmental condition in which the cerebrum fails to divide and a single eyeball forms, ending in death before birth. A skull with one socket, found at a cemetery in Zama in 1932, was given a memorial jizō, and the legend attached itself to it.

Compare and confuse

It is often set beside the Cyclopes of Greek story and appears in lists of legendary creatures from Japan. Related figures in Japanese lore include the mikaribaba, an old woman said to roam with it on Kotoyōka, the tōfu-kozō, and the one-eyed, one-footed priest of Mount Hiei. The karakasa-obake, the umbrella spirit, has been used to explain its behaviour: both startle people without doing lasting damage. Edo-period picture books name it Mehitotsu-bō, and in Oshu it is hitotsu managu.

Today

In 1932 a skull lacking one eye socket was found at a cemetery in Zama, Kanagawa Prefecture. It was thought to belong to someone who had collapsed and been attacked by wild dogs, and a Hitotsume-kozō Jizō was raised as a memorial; people later tied it to the legend. Figures of the creature also stand among the yōkai statues on Mizuki Shigeru Road, where it is number 84. The stories themselves stay in print in kaidan, collections of ghostly tales, and in the writing of modern folklorists.

Questions people ask about Hitotsume-kozō

Good reading and sources

• Hitotsume-kozō on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data