Itsumade (Kyoto)

Itsumade is a strange bird said to have appeared above the Imperial Palace in Kyoto. The Taiheiki (Nanboku-cho period), volume 12, "Hiroari shoots the strange bird," records that in the autumn of Kenmu 1 (1334) the bird perched nightly atop the Shishinden hall, crying "itsumade, itsumade" until the warrior Oki no Jiroza-emon Hiroari shot it down with a great arrow. The figure is said to have had a human face, a serpent's body, a hooked beak, and blade-like talons. Toriyama Sekien's Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki (Anei 8, 1779) gives the canonical image. Murakami Kenji's Nihon Yokai Daijiten (Kadokawa, 2005) treats it as an independent entry, and the Nichibunken database also records it. The cry "itsumade" (until when?) is sometimes read as the lament of the unburied dead in the plague outbreaks of the Kenmu period.