Tradition / Region: Japanese mythology Alternate Names: — Category: House dweller, Gnome
The Myth
The Chopirako is said to be the most beautiful and refined of the household spirits known as zashiki-warashi. It appears as a small child, no more than four or five years old, pale and strikingly white, with a presence gentler and more radiant than its kin. Where a chopirako dwells, the house is blessed with quiet prosperity and harmony.
In old stories from northern Japan, a single household might host several such child spirits, each bound to a different space. One might live in the earthen floor, another in the living room, another near the tools of daily labor. The chopirako, however, was the highest and most graceful among them, associated with the heart of the home rather than its margins.
At night, when the house slept, these spirits made themselves known through sound rather than sight. Soft footsteps, the whisper of movement, or the faint presence of a child passing unseen through rooms were signs that the spirits were awake. They were never meant to be watched directly, and attempts to spy on them risked driving them away forever.
As with all zashiki-warashi, the chopirako was a double-edged blessing. As long as it remained, the household would thrive. If it vanished—offended, neglected, or simply choosing to depart—fortune would fade, and the house would fall into decline. Thus families treated their homes with care and respect, believing that unseen children might be listening, watching, and quietly deciding the fate of those who lived there.
In the farmhouses and old family homes of northern Japan, there lives a mysterious child spirit known as the zashiki-warashi. It appears as a young child—sometimes five or six years old, sometimes closer to twelve—often with a red face and long or cropped hair. Though it looks human, it is not. It belongs to the house itself.
A zashiki-warashi dwells in the inner rooms of prosperous households, especially among wealthy farmers or old, respected families. As long as the child spirit remains, the house flourishes. Crops grow well, money comes easily, and the family prospers. But if the zashiki-warashi leaves, misfortune soon follows. Wealth drains away, sickness appears, and families fall into ruin.
The spirit is playful and unpredictable. It may wander around beds at night, flip pillows, make footsteps in empty rooms, or rustle paper screens. Sometimes it laughs, sometimes it snorts, and sometimes it speaks openly with people. Guests may glimpse it crouching beneath a household altar or peeking from behind doors. In other homes, it remains unseen, known only through sounds and disturbances.
Some houses are said to host more than one zashiki-warashi. In certain villages, they are even ranked—some higher, some lower—each with a different temperament and influence. A few appear as boys, others as girls, and some are remembered as former princesses or noble children bound to the house by fate.
Many stories tell of disaster following their departure. In one tale, two zashiki-warashi were seen moving from a house to another; soon after, nearly the entire family left behind died from poisoned food. In another, a household fell into poverty the moment its spirit vanished. These stories serve as warnings: the spirit’s presence must be respected, never mocked or driven away.
Most strangely, zashiki-warashi do not reveal themselves to everyone. Often, only the head of the household can see them—and even then, only a few times in a lifetime. To others, the spirit remains invisible, known only by laughter in empty rooms or footsteps where no child should be.
Thus the zashiki-warashi endures as both blessing and omen: a child who brings fortune, a spirit bound to home and lineage, and a reminder that prosperity, once lost, may never return.
Tradition / Region: Japanese mythology Alternate Names: Red Cow Category: Cow
The Myth
Long ago, during the early ninth century, monks were building Enzō-ji temple in the town of Yanaizu. The work was heavy, and the task of carrying stone and timber up to the site was exhausting. One day, a powerful red ox appeared and began helping the monk Tokuitsu Daishi, hauling construction materials tirelessly as if it understood the sacred purpose of the work.
The red ox labored until the temple was complete. When the final stone was set, it did not return to the wild. Some say it turned to stone on the temple grounds; others say it simply chose to remain there forever, watching over the place it had helped create. From then on, it was known as Akabeko—the Red Cow.
Generations later, people remembered Akabeko not only for its strength, but for its devotion. Small figures of the red cow were made in its image, and it was said that Akabeko protected children from sickness and misfortune. Its red color was believed to drive illness away, just as the living cow had once driven fatigue and hardship from the builders of the temple.
To this day, Akabeko endures as a gentle guardian. Those who visit its likeness at Enzō-ji rub it for luck, honoring the red cow that gave its strength freely and chose to remain behind as a silent protector of the faithful.
One night, during the Ansei era, a wandering rōnin arrived at a guardhouse in Edo and begged for shelter and food. He was tall, powerfully built, and strange in appearance, like a man hardened by severe training. The guards refused him, saying the guardhouse was not a place for lodging, and told him to seek an inn elsewhere.
At this, the man’s face grew pale.
He declared, “I am Tenchishindousai. There is none who does not know my name. Yet because the land has been calm for many years, people have grown contemptuous. They catch my kin, roast them, stew them, and kill them without cause. I have come to avenge them.”
He spoke of his journey: how he had shaken people to death at temple gatherings, how he had passed through province after province—mountains, capitals, and ports—causing the earth to tremble beneath his feet. Now, he said, he had arrived in Edo.
When the guards realized he claimed to be the Earthquake itself, they tried to seize him. Enraged, Tenchishindousai vanished on the spot.
At once, heaven and earth roared. The ground convulsed violently. Houses collapsed, storehouses fell, fires erupted across the city, and countless people were crushed or burned. Amid the devastation, Tenchishindousai spoke again, saying that the gods were absent from the land—and that if the deity who pins the earth were to arrive, the destruction would grow even greater.
With that, he fled north.
Those who saw his true form said his face was that of a giant catfish, the ancient creature that writhes beneath the land and shakes the world when angered. Thus the people believed the great earthquake was not chance, but revenge—carried out by Tenchishindousai, the living will of the trembling earth.
Tradition / Region: Buddhist Lore, Japanese Mythology Alternate Names: Hyaku-headed Fish Category: Fish
The Myth
Long ago, Shakyamuni Buddha traveled with his monks along the banks of a great river. There, fishermen hauled up an enormous fish from the water. It was so vast that hundreds of people were needed to drag it ashore. When the crowd gathered, they saw that the fish bore the heads of one hundred beasts—camel, cow, horse, boar, sheep, dog, and many more—each head crying out in suffering.
The Buddha approached the fish and spoke to it. He asked where the one who had guided it now resided. The fish answered that she had fallen into the hell of unending torment. Those who heard this trembled, and Ananda asked the Buddha what sin could have brought such a fate.
The Buddha then told of the fish’s former life.
In an earlier age, there lived a brilliant youth born into a learned family. Though gifted with wisdom, he followed his mother’s urging to deceive his teacher. When he failed to complete his studies, he returned to the monk who had taught him and repaid kindness with cruel words, mocking and humiliating the one who had guided him, likening his teacher’s head to that of an animal.
For these words, heavy karma was formed.
After death, the mother fell into hell, and the son was reborn as a monstrous fish, bearing upon his body the animal heads he had spoken in insult. Each head was the echo of a word once uttered in contempt.
When asked whether the fish could escape this form, the Buddha answered that even across vast ages and countless rebirths, such punishment was not easily shed. Words spoken in cruelty return in kind, and speech, like action and thought, shapes destiny.
Thus the Hyakutou is remembered—a living sermon of flesh and scale, drifting through the waters, bearing one hundred faces of suffering as the weight of its past words.
In the seas near Kibi Province, sailors spoke in fear of the Akugyo, the Evil Fish. Vast beyond measure, it rose from the depths to overturn ships as easily as toys, devouring the sailors who fell screaming into the water.
Some Akugyo breathed fire from their mouths, scorching ships before dragging them under. Others resembled enormous ningyo, their bodies covered in gold and silver scales that gleamed beneath the waves. There were also Akugyo shaped like colossal mermaids, bearing two white horns like those of an oni sprouting from their heads. Fishermen dreaded these monsters, for a boat could become trapped between the creature’s massive fins, leaving the crew helpless as the Akugyo fed.
In the sixth month of 1805, an Akugyo appeared off the coast of Echigo Province. Its body stretched more than eleven meters in length, and its horns were longer than a man’s arm. The terror it caused was so great that the Lord of Kaga dispatched a vast force—fifteen hundred men and four hundred fifty cannons—to hunt it down. After a great battle at sea, the monster was finally slain.
Another tale tells of Izutsuya Kanroku, a famed taiko drummer from Kaga. While crossing the Sea of Japan, his boat suddenly came to a halt. Beneath it lay the back of an Akugyo, and the vessel had become lodged upon the monster’s body. Believing death inevitable, Kanroku took up his drum and played with all the strength he had left. His drumming thundered across the sea and sky, echoing like a storm.
Moved—or perhaps startled—by the sound, the Akugyo shifted. The boat slipped free, and Kanroku escaped unharmed.
Thus the Akugyo remains a creature of terror and wonder: a destroyer of ships, yet sometimes driven away by courage, sound, and human resolve.
In Kawachi Province there lies a deep pool known as Uchisuke-ga-fuchi, whose waters were said never to dry. On its bank lived a fisherman named Uchisuke, a solitary man who made his living by catching carp.
One day, Uchisuke caught a female carp of uncommon dignity, marked by patterns unlike any he had seen before. Instead of selling it, he kept the fish. As years passed, a tomoe crest appeared upon its scales, and the carp grew strangely attached to him. It began to respond when called by name, lingered near him like a companion, and in time even left the water to sleep in his house and share his meals.
For eighteen years Uchisuke kept the carp in a tank. By then it had grown to the size of a young girl of fourteen or fifteen.
At last, Uchisuke married. One night, while he was away fishing, a beautiful woman wearing a pale blue kimono patterned with rising waves burst into the house. She spoke to the new wife with fury, saying that she had known Uchisuke for many years and was even carrying his child. Burning with resentment at being cast aside, she ordered the wife to return to her parents’ home at once, warning that if she did not, a great wave would rise within three days and drag the house into the pond.
Terrified, the wife fled and told Uchisuke what she had seen. He laughed it off, saying that such a woman could never have desired him, and that it must have been an illusion. As dusk fell, he returned to the pond in his boat.
Suddenly the water surged. Seaweed parted, and a massive carp leapt into the boat. From its mouth it spat out a small being shaped like a human child, with hair upon its head, yet with scales upon its body. Then the carp plunged back into the depths and vanished.
Uchisuke fled in terror. When he returned home and looked into the fish tank, Tomoe was gone.
After this, the villagers spoke among themselves and said, “In all things, it is not good for humans to keep living creatures too close to them.”
During the reign of Emperor Go-Kōgon, there lived a loyal samurai named Karakoto Uraemon, a retainer of the Shinano guardian Ogushi Jirozaemon. He dwelled with his lawful wife, San, beside the banks of the Chikuma River. Though their life was peaceful, sorrow lingered in the household, for San bore no children despite many years of marriage. Uraemon prayed daily to gods and Buddhas, begging for an heir.
Around this time, goldfish newly arrived from Ming China were admired as rare wonders. Uraemon purchased a pair at great cost for his lord, who rewarded him with a fine sword. The goldfish multiplied, and some were given back to Uraemon, who raised them with devotion until their colors shone red, white, and gold.
Still childless, Uraemon took a concubine, seeking only kindness of heart. He chose a young woman of seventeen, raised in the capital, modest in appearance yet naturally beautiful. He named her Mohana—Weed Flower—and gave her a room in the house. There was no jealousy between San and Mohana, and when Mohana soon became pregnant, joy filled the household.
Soon after, Uraemon was summoned to Kamakura on duty. Before leaving, he told the two women only this: to care well for the goldfish until his return.
While Uraemon was away, San encountered a man named Furutori Minobunta, a handsome but violent youth living nearby. He whispered poison into her ears, claiming that Mohana and Uraemon had long been lovers and were plotting to murder San. At first she doubted him, but forged letters bearing her husband’s hand shattered her trust. Consumed by jealousy and rage, San fell into a secret relationship with Minobunta, who fed her lies and guided her thoughts toward murder.
One day, San lured Mohana—eight months pregnant—into the storehouse. There she abused her, gagged her, stripped her, bound her with rough rope, and beat her with bamboo. Mohana’s face swelled and her body bled, yet she could not scream. For three days she hung there, starving and weak, like a hungry ghost.
At last she escaped and crawled to the goldfish tank, pressing her mouth to the water in desperate thirst. Her cry drew San and Minobunta. Minobunta kicked her, tearing open her womb, and from it a living boy crawled out. Driven mad with jealousy, San strangled the child at once.
Mohana screamed in agony, spat blood, and died.
Her blood flowed into the tank. A fierce wind arose, and the water churned. The goldfish absorbed the blood, their bodies turning the deep crimson of human flesh. Their eyes burned with fury, their bellies swelled, and they thrashed wildly, spitting water as if crying out in wrath.
Minobunta hid the bodies beneath the floor and fled with San into the night. Only a young maid witnessed the truth. Mohana and her child were later buried in secret by Uraemon’s brother.
Unaware, Uraemon labored faithfully in Kamakura. One night, passing a Jizō hall, he saw a woman in white cradling a child. Though gaunt, the face was unmistakably Mohana’s. Shaken, he soon learned the truth by letter and rushed home.
The goldfish swam strangely around him, as if bearing Mohana’s resentment. Uraemon prayed for her soul and released the fish into a temple pond. Through Buddhist teaching, Mohana’s spirit found enlightenment, but the goldfish remained as a warning of cause and effect.
Uraemon became a wandering avenger, seeking Minobunta and San. He eventually met Minobunta on a rainy night, and after a fierce clash, was trampled to death amid pursuing men and horses.
Long after, it is said, the blood-marked goldfish spread through the land, their lineage preserved as living reminders of grief, jealousy, and karmic retribution.
Tradition / Region: Japanese Mythology Alternate Names: Furukawa Catfish Category: Yōkai, Well dweller, Fish, Catfish
The Myth
In the Furukawa River area of Iguchi, there were many ancient wells whose origins were long forgotten. Each of these wells was said to be home to a great catfish, known as the master of the well.
One day, the young men of the village gathered together and spoke of a plan to catch these catfish. Among them sat a single young man no one recognized, who listened quietly as they talked.
That night, carrying torches, the young men went to the old wells to carry out their plan. Yet when they arrived, something was wrong. Though every well was known to have its master, not a single catfish could be found.
As they searched in confusion, one young man leaned over a large old well. Suddenly, he screamed. Startled, the others rushed to look inside, and there they saw many masters of the wells gathered together in one place.
The strangers’ secret had been revealed. One of the catfish had disguised itself as a human, slipped into the village, and overheard their discussion. The masters of the Furukawa wells had assembled to speak of the danger.
From that time on, it is said that the people of this region never again tried to catch catfish from wells.
In the deep and distant seas lives an immense, slender fish known as the Oarfish, sometimes called the Messenger of the Dragon Palace. Its body is long and pale like polished silver, marked with strange circular patterns, and crowned with vivid red fins that trail behind it like a flowing mane. When it rises from the depths, it moves with slow, solemn grace, as though carrying a message from another world.
The oarfish is rarely seen. It normally dwells far below the surface, beyond the reach of ordinary fishermen. When it does appear near the shore, people believe it is not by chance. Its emergence is taken as a sign—a warning from the sea itself. The sight of its red crest cutting through the water is said to foretell great disturbances: earthquakes, storms, or upheavals hidden beneath the waves.
Because of its size and otherworldly appearance, the oarfish has long been regarded as a strange being rather than a mere fish. Those who encounter it often describe it as unfamiliar and unsettling, a creature that does not belong to the human world. Some say it glides just above the water’s surface, its fins spreading wide like wings, as though it could lift itself into the air.
The oarfish is also linked to tales of beings from the sea depths—palace guardians, messengers, and even merfolk. Its flowing red fins and pale body resemble the descriptions of sea spirits and mysterious women of the ocean, and it is sometimes said that the oarfish travels between the Dragon Palace beneath the sea and the world above, carrying omens rather than words.
Though it does not attack humans, its presence inspires unease. To see an oarfish is to be reminded that the sea has its own will, its own hidden realms, and its own warnings. When it appears, people watch the water closely, knowing that something unseen is stirring in the depths.
