Takaonna (Ibaraki)

Takaonna is a yokai in the form of a woman who stretches her body unnaturally tall to reach a second story or eaves, peering into rooms. The figure is told in connection with the early-modern pleasure-quarters, inn-towns, and samurai residences, and stands as a representative female yokai of the early-modern jealousy lineage. Toriyama Sekien's Gazu Hyakki Yagyo, "yo" volume (1776), figures the yokai with extremely elongated neck and torso, peering through the shoji of a second story; the inscription gives the legend that a jealous woman became Takaonna. The canonical narrative places the figure outside the upper-storey shoji of an Edo pleasure-quarter or inn-town, while a man passes time inside with another woman; the figure stretches up from outside to peer in. The figure stands in lineage with the female jealousy-yokai of rokuro-kubi and nuke-kubi. Toriyama Sekien's Gazu Hyakki Yagyo, "yo" volume (1776), is the principal early text. Early-modern kaidan collections and ukiyo-e include cognate cases and figures, and modern folk-studies in the Yanagita Kunio lineage compile female-jealousy yokai. Murakami Kenji's Nihon Yokai Daijiten (Kadokawa, 2005) and the Nichibunken Strange Phenomena and Yokai Folklore Database compile the figure. Adjacent bodily-transformation female yokai include rokuro-kubi, nuke-kubi, and futakuchi-onna. Adjacent jealousy-themed female yokai include Kanawa, Hashihime, and Hannya. Specific Ibaraki local records are sparse; the entry is preserved as a figural female yokai of the early-modern pleasure-quarter lineage.