Tenjo-name (Shiga)

Tenjo-name is a household yokai said to lick the ceiling with its long tongue and leave stains behind. The black stains and streaks on the ceiling of an old house are explained as marks left by this yokai licking in the middle of the night. The figure stands as a representative early-modern household-yokai in the figural lineage. Toriyama Sekien's Hyakki Tsurezure Bukuro (1784) figures the yokai as an emaciated figure with an outstretched long tongue, licking the ceiling; the inscription glosses it as a figure that descends in the night to lick the ceiling. The folk explanation of damp houses where the ceiling shows black stains is set out as the doings of this yokai. Toriyama Sekien's Hyakki Tsurezure Bukuro (Tenmei 4, 1784) is the principal early text. The book is a comprehensive figural treatment of yokai inhabiting household structures, utensils, and tools, the culmination of the early-modern figural lineage. Murakami Kenji's Nihon Yokai Daijiten (Kadokawa, 2005) and the Nichibunken Strange Phenomena and Yokai Folklore Database compile the figure. Adjacent household-stain yokai include aka-name (which licks the soil of a bath), forming a paired lineage of the folk explanation of household stains. Adjacent household yokai include yanari, makura-gaeshi, and mokumokuren. Specific Shiga local records are limited; the entry is preserved as a figural household yokai.