Kyokotsu (Kyoto)

Kyokotsu is a yokai in which the bones of one cast into a well acquire spirit and rise from it. The figure is depicted as a white-shrouded ghost in the shape of a skeleton in funeral robes. The figure stands as a representative early-modern yokai of the wells-and-water-and-death tradition, with cognate cases dense in Kyoto and the Kinai. Toriyama Sekien's Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki (1779) figures the yokai rising from the well-curb as a shrouded skeleton; the inscription glosses it briefly as "kyokotsu is the white bone in the well." The narrative type tells of the bones of one cast or thrown into a well, or of a murdered or self-drowned person, returning as a haunting; the figure stands in the lineage of well-yokai and water-yokai. Toriyama Sekien's Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki (Anei 8, 1779) is the principal early text. Well-yokai traditions are also recorded in the Konjaku Monogatari-shu volume 27, Ueda Akinari's Ugetsu Monogatari, and Ihara Saikaku's Saikaku Shokoku Banashi. Murakami Kenji's Nihon Yokai Daijiten (Kadokawa, 2005) and the Nichibunken Strange Phenomena and Yokai Folklore Database collect cases. Adjacent bone yokai include sharekobe and gashadokuro; adjacent well-yokai include Okiku (Sara-Yashiki) and the well-mirror.