Toriyama Sekien's Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki records a local tale from Ōtsu in Ōmi Province that long ago an oil merchant stole oil nightly from the Jizō at the Ōtsu crossroads; when he died his soul became a flame. Sekien presents a note linking that flame‑story (abura‑nusumi no hi) to an infant figure that laps oil from lamps and suggests the baby‑figure may be the reborn soul of the oil‑stealer. Later yōkai compendia and commentators treat this as a folkloric etiological account and as part of a cluster of oil‑related yōkai narrative motifs rather than as a demonstrable historical fact.
Sekien's illustration shows an infant spirit lapping oil from an andon lamp; his accompanying note describes a flying ball‑like fire in Hatchō, Ōtsu. Later yōkai literature summarizes the creature as alternating between a ball of flame (mysterious fire/abura‑nusumi no hi) and a baby that briefly shapeshifts to lick andon lanterns before returning to flame and departing.
Primary behavior recorded in Sekien and later sources is the licking or sucking of oil from lamps. Sources describe a duality or alternation: a flying, ball‑like fire that at times assumes the appearance of a baby to take oil, then reverts to flame and leaves. Sekien frames this behavior as the postmortem repetition of an oil merchant's theft of a roadside Jizō's oil. Modern commentators note mundane explanations (for example, animals such as cats licking fish‑oil lamps) as possible rationalizations for the sightings and imagery.
Weaknesses
- otherNo specific weaknesses recorded in Sekien or the provided sources; treated in the material as an etiological/cautionary motif rather than a combatant spirit.
Wards
- otherNo specific warding rituals, charms, or prescriptions are recorded in the supplied sources; prevention is presented primarily as moral caution (avoid stealing or wasting oil).
5 Ronin
5 Ronin is a 2011 Marvel Comics five-issue limited series that reimagines five Marvel superhero archetypes as rōnin (masterless samurai) in a fictionalized post‑Sekigahara feudal Japan. The work places Wolverine, Hulk, Punisher, Psylocke, and Deadpool analogues into period roles to explore displacement, revenge, and identity in an era of political upheaval.
Abumi-guchi
A Japanese yōkai classed as a tsukumogami: an animated stirrup (abumi) depicted in Sekien Toriyama's Gazu Hyakki Tsurezure Bukuro. Traditional accounts say it is formed from a stirrup that belonged to a soldier who fell in battle and that it waits where the stirrup lies for its dead owner to return.
Abura-sumashi
A yōkai spirit from the Amakusa region of Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan, said to inhabit mountain passes. Traditionally explained as the ghost of a person who stole oil, it appears to surprise travelers and is represented in modern media with a straw-coat body and a potato- or stone-like head.
Aburabō / Abura-bōzu / Aosaginohi (traditions)
Two distinct Japanese traditions appear under related flame imagery: Aosaginohi/Aosagibi is presented as a will-o'-the-wisp type luminous night phenomenon interpreted as reflections from herons; aburabōzu (abura bōzu, "oil monk") appears in a separate anecdote as a reported fire-breathing apparition in a 12th-century Yasaka Shrine tale. The sources treat them as separate portrayals rather than a single unified being.
Acala
Acala (Sanskrit: अचल, 'The Immovable') is a wrathful protective deity (dharmapala) in Vajrayāna and East Asian esoteric Buddhism, classed among the Wisdom Kings (Vidyārāja). He functions as a ritual focus for visualization and mantra practice intended to remove obstacles and bind or destroy hostile forces.
Agaru
Agaru (attested historically as Agarum) appears in the supplied sources as a Bronze Age Near Eastern toponym—often identified with Failaka Island—and as a modern personal or media name. The provided material contains no evidence that Agaru is a supernatural being in any traditional cosmology.
Ajisukitakahikone
Ajisukitakahikone is a kami in Japanese mythic literature (Kojiki/Nihon Shoki). He appears in the transfer-of-rule cycle between heaven and earth, is described as a son of Ōkuninushi, associated with the Kamo cult (called Kamo no ōmikami in some modern museum/catalog entries), and features in narratives that explain landscape formation and meteorological genealogy.
Aka Manto
Aka Manto (赤マント, "Red Cloak") is a Japanese urban legend and schoolyard ghost-story about a masked, cloaked figure who appears in public or school toilet stalls and forces occupants to choose between colored toilet paper; each choice in the tale produces a violent supernatural consequence. The legend is part of modern popular folklore recorded in school contexts from the 1930s onward rather than a formal religious myth.
Akaname
Akaname is a Japanese yōkai associated with baths, bathtubs, toilets, and other places where scum and filth accumulate. Traditionally depicted as a child-like creature that licks grime, it functions in folklore as a cautionary figure tied to cleanliness; a few narrative variants cast it as dangerously predatory.
Akashaguma
Akashaguma is presented in the available sources as a child-like house guardian spirit in the Japanese yokai tradition, closely comparable to the regional zashiki-warashi. It is associated with domestic interiors (parlors or storage rooms) and with bringing prosperity to households where it dwells.
Akashita
Akashita (赤舌, lit. “red tongue”) is an Edo-period pictorial yōkai commonly represented as a hairy, clawed face emerging from dark clouds with a wide open mouth and a conspicuous red tongue. The figure appears in yōkai emaki and Toriyama Sekien’s Gazu Hyakki Yagyō; Sekien’s plate shows it atop a sluice, but the original pictorial tradition provides no explanatory caption. Later folklorists and popular writers (Shōwa and later) have variously interpreted the image as a punitive spirit linked to irrigation/floodgate justice or as a kidnapper in evening skies, though these narrative roles are post-hoc.
Akateko
Akateko (赤手児, lit. 'red child's hand') is a yōkai from Japanese folklore commonly told as a small, red, disembodied child's hand that appears from trees—especially the Japanese honey locust—and startles travelers; in some regional variants it is accompanied by a specter of a young woman or manifests as paired foot- or leg-like apparitions. Accounts vary between mostly harmless trickster apparition and a violent variant that attacks humans.
Community Record
- [1]Abura‑akago (Wikipedia summary). Wikipedia: Abura‑akago (summary of Sekien and later yōkai literature)wiki
- [2]Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki (Toriyama Sekien) — entry note as summarized. Toriyama Sekien, Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki (entry and accompanying note summarized in secondary sources)literary
- [3]Mythlok: Abura‑akago : The Oil Thief (popular summary). Modern popular retelling/summarization drawing on Sekien and later yōkai compilationsother
- [4]Yokai.com: Aburaakago (glossary/compendium). Contemporary yōkai compendium summarizing Sekien's depiction and later interpretationsother
- [5]Prints of Japan: Glossary / Sekien references. Glossary and referenced material on Sekien's yokai illustrations and motifsother