Funayūrei
船幽霊（ふなゆうれい）
A ruined boat draws alongside at night and its crew asks for a scoop. Give them an ordinary one, and they may use it to fill your boat with seawater.
Yokai Night Parade
百鬼夜行
Discover the spirits, monsters, and strange encounters of Japanese folklore.
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Kodama
木霊（こだま）
Kodama can mean both a presence within an old tree and the echo that returns from a mountain — but Japanese tradition gives it no single fixed body.
Wanyūdō
輪入道（わにゅうどう）
In Toriyama Sekien's 1779 picture book, a single ox-cart wheel rolls through the night by itself — and anyone who sees it is said to lose their soul.
Kamaitachi
鎌鼬（かまいたち）
A 1955 Nagano record describes a weasel-like being so fast no one has seen it — known only by the clean cut it leaves on a stumbling traveler's shin.
Zashiki-warashi
座敷童子（ざしきわらし）
In Tōno Monogatari, an unfamiliar child crosses the corridor of an old house — and the family that shelters the spirit is said to prosper.
Umi-bōzu
海坊主（うみぼうず）
One account describes a vast Buddha-like shape crossing ahead of a boat on a clear, windless day, then slowly thinning until it vanished.
Featured Short
Funayūrei: The Ghost Crew That Asks for a Ladle
A ruined boat draws alongside at night and its crew asks for a scoop. Give them an ordinary one, and they may use it to fill your boat with seawater.
Read the articleAbout the Project
Yokai Night Parade pairs 30-second folklore shorts with referenced articles. We separate documented tradition from later popular imagery, cite our sources, and label every illustration as a reconstruction — never as a historical image.