Hitotsume-kozo

◆ The legend

He looks like a little boy with a shaved head, like a young temple apprentice, and right in the middle of his face is a single big eye. Some pictures show him sticking out a long tongue, too. He is said to pop up on night roads and in old houses to startle people. Stories of someone turning around, meeting that one eye, and falling over in shock are told in many places, but you rarely hear of him doing any real harm. He is a yokai with a certain charm.

There are plenty of other one-eyed yokai, from the karakasa umbrella ghost to the ippon-datara. The folklorist Kunio Yanagita suggested that one-eyed yokai like these might be gods who were once worshipped, then retold as yokai as people slowly stopped believing in them. He shows up often in Edo-period pictures and books, too, as one of the best-known yokai in the shape of a little monk.