Tradition / Region: Japanese Mythology
Alternate Names: —
Category: Ghost, Mountain dweller
The Myth
At a mountain temple, there once lived a young page named Yashawaka. He was an ordinary boy until, around the age of fourteen or fifteen, something about him began to change. He stopped eating and drinking altogether, yet he did not grow weak. Instead, he became increasingly withdrawn. Each night, once darkness fell, he would quietly leave the temple grounds and vanish into the surrounding hills.
As weeks passed, his appearance became unsettling. His face turned deathly pale, his cheekbones jutted sharply from his skin, and his features grew strange and hollow. The monks whispered among themselves, uneasy at his nightly wanderings and unnatural endurance. Suspecting something dreadful, one of them decided to follow him in secret.
Late one night, the monk watched as Yashawaka crept into the temple cemetery. There, beneath the moonlight, he dug into fresh graves with frantic strength. When the earth was pulled away, he uncovered the newly dead—and began to eat the corpses. The watcher fled in horror and reported what he had seen.
The head priest ordered the entire temple to seize Yashawaka. Monks rushed into the night to capture him, but he moved with terrifying speed. He ran as though he could fly, leaping across the ground, then climbing into the treetops where no one could follow. From branch to branch he vanished into the mountains, swallowed by the forest.
Yashawaka was never seen again. Some say he became a creature of the wild, neither living nor dead, while others believe he still wanders the mountains, driven by hunger and darkness, a warning of what happens when the boundary between the human and the monstrous is crossed.
Gallery
Sources
TYZ-Yokai Blog contributors. (n.d.). ヤシャワカ (Yashawaka). In TYZ-Yokai Blog, from https://tyz-yokai.blog.jp/archives/1057282474.html
Interpretive Lenses
Religious Readings
- Christian Ascetic Deep Dive
Philosophical Readings
- Nietzschean Deep Dive
Psychological Readings
- Jungian Deep Dive
Esoteric Deep Dive
- Hermetic Deep Dive
Political / Social Readings
- Marxist Deep Dive
Other
- How to Invite The Yashawaka