Otoroshi

Otoroshi does not have a single canonical origin story in the supplied materials. It appears primarily as a pictorial type in Edo-period yōkai emaki (e.g., Hyakkai Zukan, Gazu Hyakki Yagyō, Bakemonozukushi, Bakemono Emaki) where image and name are paired with little or no explanatory text. Later regional accounts and modern yōkai literature sometimes localize or narrativize the figure (for example, listing it among creatures on a haunted hillroad in an 1814 traveler's account or placing one in Narabayashi in the Bakemonozukushi caption), but researchers note that many prose narratives and moralizing roles are later accretions rather than features of the original pictorial tradition.

Across emaki the otoroshi is repeatedly depicted covered in long, messy hair, often with hair hanging over the face, and is sometimes labelled Ke Ippai ('much hair'), emphasizing profuse hair as its defining visual trait. Some later summary descriptions add details such as a hunched posture, blue or red skin, and large tusks, but primary emakimono generally present a hair-dominant, monstrous visage without accompanying explanatory text. A Bakemonozukushi caption (as 'shishitori') gives a more anthropometric depiction—height about 8 shaku (~1.8 m), an expansive area of about 8 jō, and an unusually large mouth—but such measurements derive from specific captioned manuscripts rather than widespread textual tradition.

Classical Edo-period emaki supply no systematic account of powers; the visual tradition places otoroshi in fear-evoking contexts (e.g., perched on shrine gates in Sekien's image) but offers little prose about capability. Later popular and modern yōkai literature often ascribes predatory behavior—pouncing from above on irreverent people, seizing the unfaithful at temple gates, or devouring livestock—but scholars cited in the sources caution these are imaginative extrapolations based on pictorial placement rather than documented Edo-period legends. A Bakemonozukushi caption records a 'shishitori' that ate horses and cattle in one gulp and was later slain by hunters with a bamboo spear, a narrative instance rather than a codified ability set.