Karakasa-obake (umbrella ghost)
The karakasa-obake, or kasa-obake, is an old paper umbrella turned yōkai, often shown hopping on a single leg. It is one of the tsukumogami: household things that come to life once they have been used for a long time or thrown away.
Meaning
The Metropolitan Museum of Art describes the One-Legged Umbrella Monster (kasa ippon ashi) as a tsukumogami, an artifact spirit: everyday objects such as umbrellas, brooms, lanterns, sandals or pots that turn into ghosts or monsters once they are no longer used, and tend to be more mischievous than evil. The V&A puts the kasa-obake first among the yōkai of folklore, literature, art and popular culture, and gives the other version of the belief: tsukumogami are everyday objects that receive a spirit on their hundredth birthday.
Origin and history
Komatsu Kazuhiko, former director-general of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies, traces umbrella yōkai to the Hyakki yagyō emaki, the night-parade scrolls artists began painting around the fourteenth century, in which yōkai in the form of old, worn-out tools march in procession; one peeks out from under a damaged umbrella. Stories grew up with the paintings that such tools turned into yōkai out of resentment at being discarded. In 1784 Toriyama Sekien published Hyakki tsurezure bukuro, with pictures of tools and utensils from daily life turned yōkai (National Diet Library). Komatsu adds that ukiyo-e omocha-e, toy prints for children of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, show many umbrella yōkai, from adorable to comical, and that they appear on yōkai sugoroku game boards and in Mano Gyotei’s votive tags, as an umbrella that has grown a leg and two arms.
On the kabuki stage
In 1857 Gosōtei Hirosada printed a kabuki actor, perhaps Onoe Tamizō II, in the role of the One-Legged Umbrella Monster. The Met notes that an actor playing the part would tie up one leg and hop about the stage.
Why an umbrella
Komatsu offers a speculation in Highlighting Japan: kasa means both a hat and an umbrella, and a hat that hides the wearer’s face was frightening because it hid their true form, while a handled umbrella, shaped like a mountain where spirits descend, was thought to work as a yorishiro, an object that draws kami and spirits. Together, he suggests, they may explain the umbrella yōkai.
Old yōkai, new umbrellas
Komatsu notes that yōkai turn up as motifs in anime, manga and video games. In 2024 the Young V&A in London asked 22 artists to turn umbrellas lost on London’s public transport into a parade of new yōkai.
Read next
- Next in Yōkai and creatures of Japanese folkloreBaku (dream eater)The baku is the dream eater: a beast with an elephant’s trunk and tusks that devours bad dreams. Its picture was hung in houses and its name written on pillows, and people called “Baku kurae!” (“Devour, O baku!”) after a nightmare.
- The same shape in Andean and Inca symbolsViracochaThe creator god of the Andes, who in the stories made the sun and moon at Lake Titicaca, called the peoples out of the land, and walked away into the sea. The Incas took him into their own pantheon, and an Inca emperor took his name.
See also
Kitsune (fox), Tanuki (raccoon dog), Bakeneko and nekomata (cat yōkai), Jorōgumo (spider woman), Tengu, Kappa.
Sources
- Umbrella-Shaped Yokai (Highlighting Japan, June 2023), Tanaka Nozomi, “Umbrella-Shaped Yokai” (with Komatsu Kazuhiko), Highlighting Japan, Government of Japan, June 2023, Cabinet Office, Government of Japan, article text
- Gosōtei Hirosada, One-Legged Umbrella Monster (the Met), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection record 76577: Gosōtei Hirosada, “One-Legged Umbrella Monster” (Kasa ippon ashi), woodblock print, 1857, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, object description
- Lost and Found Yōkai: meet the artists part 1 (V&A), V&A Blog, “Lost and Found Yōkai: meet the artists part 1”, Young V&A, 2024, Victoria and Albert Museum, post text
- TORIYAMA Sekien’s Illustrated Night Parade of the Demon Horde (NDL Image Bank), National Diet Library, NDL Image Bank, Columns: “TORIYAMA Sekien’s Illustrated Night Parade of the Demon Horde”, National Diet Library, Japan, “Tsukumogami”
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from circles or triangles.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 10, 2026. How we research
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