Umbrella yokai
The umbrella yokai of Japan goes by three names: karakasa-kozo, kasa-obake and karakasa-obake. Karakasa-kozo is the umbrella yokai: an old paper umbrella with a single eye, a long tongue and one leg to hop on. It is one of the most recognisable yokai in Japan, and one of the strangest, because it appears in almost no traditional stories. Its fame comes almost entirely from pictures.
唐 (kara): the first half of karakasa, the oiled-paper umbrella.
傘 (kasa): umbrella.
小僧 (kozō): a boy, a young apprentice.
唐傘, karakasa, is the oiled-paper umbrella of old Japan, made of bamboo ribs and washi, so karakasa-kozo is “the umbrella boy.” It is just as often called kasa-obake, “umbrella ghost.” Obake comes from bakeru, to change form: a thing that has become something else.
Karakasa-kozo belongs to a family of yokai called tsukumogami: household objects said to gain a spirit after a hundred years of use. A Muromachi period scroll tells of old tools thrown out at the year-end cleaning, just short of their hundredth year, that came back as yokai to take revenge on the people who discarded them.
Behind the stories sits a simple idea: that things used for a long time carry something of the lives around them, and deserve to be treated with care.
Where most yokai began as stories and were drawn later, karakasa-kozo worked the other way. It appears again and again in Edo period prints, picture books and card games, hopping through the parade of yokai, while the old tales barely mention it. Its one eye and single leg made it easy to draw and instantly recognisable, and it has stayed that way.
The Karakasa-kozo Tee draws it the way the Edo prints did: a paper umbrella standing on its single leg, one eye open and its tongue out.
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