Gataro, Medochi, Enko: The Many Names of the Kappa

"Kappa" is understood all over Japan today, but people in the past didn't all call it that. Those who lived by the rivers called this water yokai by different names, place by place. Follow the names, and you start to see just how closely the kappa has stayed beside the waters of Japan.

So many names, region by region

It's often said there are more names for the kappa than any single book could hold. Here are a few of the best known.

• Kawataro: "river boy." Widely used, especially in western Japan
• Gataro: thought to be a shortened form of Kawataro, heard in the Kinki (Kansai) region
• Medochi: a name passed down in the far north of Tohoku, such as Aomori
• Enko: a name from the Chugoku and Shikoku regions, sometimes told of as monkey-like
• Hyosube: a kappa relative told of in Kyushu

They're all mischief-makers of the waterside, but the stories about their looks and personalities shift a little from place to place. So many names may simply be proof that, in village after village, people told tales of their very own kappa.

Cucumbers and the water god

Say "kappa," and cucumbers come to mind. The pairing is so familiar that cucumber sushi rolls are called "kappa-maki."

Why cucumbers? One theory says the kappa became tied to an old custom of offering the year's first cucumbers and other early crops to the god of water. In Japanese folklore studies, there's even a view that the kappa is the water god itself, retold in a new form. A scary yokai, yes — but one still linked, somewhere deep down, to people's gratitude and prayers to the water.

Kappa-buchi in Tono

Tono, in Iwate Prefecture, is famous as the setting of Kunio Yanagita's The Legends of Tono. The book records several stories about kappa.

In Tono there's a small pool called Kappa-buchi, known as a place where kappa were said to live. On Pixel Yokai's Yokai Map, you'll find the kappa popping up in Iwate.

Read the kappa's legend in the Yokaipedia

The dish of water on its head, the advice to bow when you meet one, the kappa that repaid kindness by teaching a healing salve — you'll find the full legend on the kappa's Yokaipedia page.

The names may change, but wherever there's a river, there's a kappa story. Next time you walk along a riverbank, try imagining what the people there once called it.