Shirime

Shirime is a yokai of strange bodily expression said to stand with its back turned on a night road; when it turns, the face has no eyes or nose, and the figure lifts the hem of its garment to show a great eye in the buttocks, startling those who pass. The figure is told of along the mountain roads and the precincts of old temples of Kyoto, and is widely known in figural lineage with a touch of humour. The canonical narrative places a samurai-form figure on a night road; when called to, the figure turns its back, lifts the hem of its kimono, and shows a great open eye in the buttocks, startling the viewer. Cognate cases are told in the Kurama Highway in Sakyo, Kyoto, and at the approaches to old temples in Higashiyama. The yokai is said to do nothing more than startle, a humorous figure that does no harm. The figural scroll attributed to Yosa Buson (1716-1784), the Buson Yokai Emaki (held by the Hokkaido Museum of Art and in private hands), figures shirime as a yokai of Kyoto. Buson lived in Kyoto as a haikai poet and painter, and his interest in the strange is preserved in the scroll. The figure is not included in Toriyama Sekien's figural cycles, and the scroll is regarded as an important source for the yokai culture of early-modern Kyoto. Murakami Kenji's Nihon Yokai Daijiten (Kadokawa, 2005) and the Nichibunken Strange Phenomena and Yokai Folklore Database systematize the cases. Adjacent faceless yokai include nopperabo and zunbera-bo; adjacent multi-eye yokai include dodomeki (eyes on the arms) and mokumokuren (eyes on the shoji). Cognate cases are recorded in Kyoto gazetteers around Kurama and Higashiyama.