Okubi (Yamaguchi)

Okubi is a yokai in which a giant human head or face is said to rise in the night sky or out of the dark. Toriyama Sekien's Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki (Anei 8, 1779) shows a vast severed woman's head with blackened teeth (ohaguro) emerging from cloud. The typical narrative places it before a traveller on a mountain road or pass at night, with a house-sized face that stares silently, or shows blackened teeth in a smile; those who see it are said to faint or fall ill. Cases cluster in the mountain districts of Yamaguchi and the Chugoku region. Toriyama Sekien's Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki (1779) is the principal early text. Early-modern kaidan collections and ehon, modern folk-studies work on mountain yokai, Murakami Kenji's Nihon Yokai Daijiten (Kadokawa, 2005), and the Nichibunken Strange Phenomena and Yokai Folklore Database all compile the figure. Adjacent giant-face yokai include the nopperabo and dodomeki; regional variants include "onyudo no kubi" and "yoru no okubi."