Umibōzu

What it is

Umibōzu is a yōkai, one of the beings of Japanese folk tale, and its name means 'sea monk'. It is described as a huge black creature shaped like a person, with a bald head shaved like a priest's. Usually only the part above the waist is seen. Accounts put its size anywhere from human scale to tens of metres. It comes to boats at night: the sea lies calm, then heaves, and the head comes up and breaks or damages the hull. Sailors in many parts of Japan told of it, and near-synonyms such as Umihōshi and Uminyūdō are both built on words for a monk or priest.

Where it comes from

Little about the umibōzu is settled. One explanation holds that it is the ghost of someone drowned, a belief recorded locally in Chiba Prefecture. Lore from Chōshi in that prefecture names a priest, Shōgaku-bō, who drowned and became the creature, as Edo period writing has it, and an English source describes the umibōzu more broadly as the spirit of a drowned priest. A narrative in the Kii Zōdan Shū, printed in 1687 and set in the Meiō era, calls the thing it meets a nyūdō wani, a 'priest crocodile', and says such beings are fallen dragon deities who demand sacrifice.

How it is done

The tales follow a pattern. A boat is out at night, the water is flat, and the umibōzu rises. Sometimes it simply breaks the hull. More often it asks for a ladle or dipper, and once it has one it scoops seawater into the boat to sink it. The way out, as the stories tell it, is to hand over a ladle with its base knocked out: the creature tries to bail, finds the tool useless, and the crew rows off while it is still puzzled. Fishermen also held that smoke drives it away, tobacco fumes in some accounts.

Tools and materials

The object that recurs is the hishaku, a wooden ladle or dipper. In the Morozaki version from Aichi the funayūrei asks instead for an aka-tori, a name joining words for bilge water and for a taker. A ladle with the bottom punched out is the counter the tales describe. Boats carried basket fires and torches, which the creature is said to put out, and one night fisherman threw his burning torch at it. Tobacco smoke is named in some accounts as something it avoids. In Aomori, miso dissolved in water was let run over the sea to turn away ghost ships.

What it is for

Sailors did not treat the umibōzu as a thing to use but as a danger to be answered. In the Tohoku region the first catch of the season was offered to the Sea God, and if that offering was skipped the umibōzu was said to come, wreck the boat and carry off its owner. On Awaji Island the told remedy was to throw the most precious cargo overboard, and it had to go from the bow. Some places credited the sight with good rather than harm: at Uwajima in Ehime, anyone who saw an umibōzu was said to live a long life.

Peoples and places

Tales of the umibōzu are spread across Japan and differ by coast. Around the northern Gotō Islands in Nagasaki Prefecture the creature may be called umibōzu or funayūrei, and it is said to board from the prow and never the stern, because Funaō-sama, the 'Lord Ship King', faces that way. In Nagato Province, now Yamaguchi Prefecture, a night fisherman saw one put out his fire and threw torches at it. San'in lore puts it on the beach after dark, rubbing against walkers and trying to pull them into the sea. Inland Nagano Prefecture has it in rivers, and at Uwajima it is said to take the shape of a blind person and kill women.

What people believe

The creature sits in a sea full of powers. The Tohoku custom of offering the season's first catch is made to the Sea God; in one tale a ferryman blames a storm on the Dragon God and has valuables thrown overboard to calm it. The 1687 story calls its monster a fallen dragon deity that wants sacrifice. Drowned people are another strand: the umibōzu is explained in Chiba as the ghost of the drowned, and named as a dead priest. Some boats carried Funaō-sama, a 'Lord Ship King', whose place at the stern was said to keep the creature off.

When it is done

Encounters are told of at night, on water that looks calm and then turns rough. In the Tohoku region the offering of the season's first catch belongs to the start of the fishing year, and skipping it was said to bring the umibōzu down on the boat. A related sea creature, the mukuri kokuri of Tanabe in Wakayama Prefecture, was said to appear on the third day of the lunar third month in the mountains and on the fifth day of the lunar fifth month at sea.

How scholars and sceptics see it

The record mixes old writing with local report. The Kii Zōdan Shū of 1687 and the Honchō Goen of 1706 both carry narratives; the latter tells of the samurai Shōni Yoshiyori, who crossed toward Tsushima and met a slick, oily sea monster, and was told by a fisherman what it was. The Inaba kaidan-shū, an Edo period collection, tells of a strongman from near Matsue who wrestled a one-eyed creature, and an old man who thought it might be the umibōzu. A capture at Kemi in Wakayama was reported in the Miyako Shinbun of Tokyo on 26 December 1888. Minakata Kumagusu suggested that a related land being blended lore of the mole and the kappa.

Compare and confuse

Umibōzu is hard to tell apart from the funayūrei, the 'ship ghost', and around the Gotō Islands the same being answers to either name. Umihōshi and Uminyūdō are near-synonyms, built on hōshi and nyūdō, words for a monk. In the western seas the name covers a human-headed sea turtle, the heshang yu of Chinese literature, called oshōuo, 'monk-fish', in Japanese. European folklore has its own sea monk and sea bishop. A Bisan Seto creature also called nurarihyon is unrelated to the old-man yōkai of that name.

Questions people ask about Umibōzu

Good reading and sources

• Umibōzu on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data