The , or gyūki, is a yōkai from the folklore of western Japan. The folklore describes more than one kind of ushi-oni, but the depiction of a bovine-headed monster occurs in most. Ushi-oni generally appear on beaches and attack people who walk there.
Description Ushi-oni have brutal, savage personalites. Their appearance varies, mainly based on geographical location. They usually have an ox's head with sharp upward-curving horns, wicked fangs and a slender tongue. They spit poison and enjoy killing and eating humans. Their body is most commonly depicted as spider-like with six legs and long singular claws at the end of each appendage.
In other descriptions, they have the head of an ox and an oni's torso. Certain legends claim that they appear in front of temple gates in the mountains wearing human clothing, or flying with the wings of an insect. Other ushi-oni have a reverse appearance, with an oni's head and an ox's body.
They are said to appears in beaches, in mountains, in forests, in rivers, in swamps, and in lakes. They often appear in stream pools, and in the Kinki region and Shikoku among other places, there are many places names such as "ushi-oni fuchi" (ushi-oni stream pool) or "ushi-oni taki" (ushi-oni waterfall).
In yōkai emaki of the Edo Period such as the Hyakkai Zukan, they are most often shown with the bovine head and a spider torso. In the Hyakki Yagyō Emaki, a similar picture goes under the title of Tsuchigumo.
Legends by area Mie Prefecture The ushi-oni is considered to curse the Mie Prefecture. It is said that there was once an ushi-oni in the caves of Gokasho-ura, Minamiise, and when the lord of the Gokasho castle, Aisu Shigeaki shot it with a bow, the seishitsu (lord's wife) fell sick with an incurable illness due to the curse. Because of this, Shigeaki distanced himself from the seishitsu, and developed an infatuation for a shirabyōshi (dancer) who came from the capital. As a result, the seishitsu's parents, Kitabatake, came to have bad relations with the Aisu, and ended up ruining the Aisu.
Wakayama Prefecture The ushi-oni stream pool in Nishimuro District connects to the sea at its bottom, and when the water gets dirty, people would say "the ushi-oni is there." Just encountering this ushi-oni would result in catching an illness. It is said that by saying opposites like "rocks flow, leaves sink, oxen neigh, and horses bellow," one's life can be saved. The ushi-oni of this land possess a catlike body that is springy like a ball with a tail at a length of 1 shaku (about 3.3 meters) or more, and therefore do not make sound as they walk.
It is said that there is an ushi-oni at the waterfall basin in Wado River. People who have their shadows licked by one would get a high fever and die in a few days, and to avoid this, one can provide the ushi-oni with its favorite thing, some alcohol, every year at new years.
The tale about the yōkai at Mio River pool is an extremely unusual story about an ushi-oni who would shapeshift into a human, and even help a human. A young lad shared his bentō with a woman, who was the shapeshifted master of the stream pool, the ushi-oni, and when this young lad was washed away by a flood two months later, he was saved by the shapeshifted ushi-oni. However, it is said that an ushi-oni who saves a human must leave this world in exchange, so as the ushi-oni was saving the young lad, deep red blood sprang out from the ushi-onis body as it melted and disappeared.
In Wakayama Prefecture, ushi-oni are mountain-dwelling beasts. Legend says when a hiker or traveler makes eye contact with the ushi-oni, the person cannot avert his or her gaze. The person's soul or energy is drained and he or she dies. This is called "Kage wo kuu (影を食う)" or sometimes "Kage wo nomu (影を飲む)", which translates to "eating the shadow" or "drinking the soul".
Okayama Prefecture In tales told in Ushimado (now Setouchi), when Empress Jingū invaded the three Korean kingdoms, an eight-headed ox-shaped monster called Jinrinki attacked her, and she shot and killed it with an arrow. Jinrinki separated into head, torso, and tail, which became Ushimado's islands of Kishima (yellow island), Maejima (front island), and Aojima (blue island). As the empress returned from Silla, Jinrinki, who was not able to go in peace, turned into an ushi-oni and attacked again. The Sumiyoshi sanjin grabbed the ushi-oni by the horn and threw it away. After the ushi-oni was eliminated, it is said its body fell into pieces and became the islands of Kuroshima (black island), Naka no Kojima (middle small island), and Hashi no Kojima (side small island). The name "Ushimado" is considered to be from an accented form of calling this place of legend the "Ushimarobi" (the place where the ox fell). Also, in the Hachiman Gudōkun, which introduced the authority of Hachiman who was established in the Kamakura period, there are writings about an oni called Jinrin who fought with Emperor Chūai, and this is considered to be the origin of the aforementioned legend.
The Sakuyōshi (作陽志), at the Ōhira Mountain in Koshihata, Tomata District, Mimisaka Province (now Tomata District) mentions a paranormal phenomenon that it called "gyūki" (牛鬼). In the Kan'ei period, a villager girl just 20 years old had a child with a self-professed government official, but this child's fangs grew long, and became like an ushi-oni complete with a tail and horns, so the parents killed and skewered this child with a cast skewer to be exposed by the roadside. The folklorist Kunio Yanagita states that this is a once-deified mountain god who fell and became seen as a yōkai.
San'in region On the coast from the San'in region to northern Kyushu, they are said to appear from the sea together with the nure-onna and iso-onna. It is said that a woman carrying a baby would stop someone and ask them to hold the baby; when this person holds the baby, the baby would become heavy like a stone, making the person unable to move, and the ushi-oni would use this chance to kill and eat that person. They are said to shapeshift themselves into women to approach people, but it is said that even after having shapeshifted, their reflection on the waterfront will still be that of an ushi-oni, so that is how one can discover their true identity. Likewise, in Iwami (now Shimane Prefecture), an angler was approached by a strange woman embracing a baby, who asked, "can you please hold on to this baby for a bit?" After he took hold of the baby, it looked like the woman disappeared, whereupon ushi-oni came forth from the sea, and the baby in his arms became a stone so heavy that fleeing was impossible. His family's inscribed sword passed down through generations came flying and pierced the ushi-oni's neck, thus making a narrow escape from death. The ushi-oni is also related to the origin of certain place names, and the island of Ushijima in Hikari, Yamaguchi Prefecture is said to be because an ushi-oni appeared there.
Kōchi Prefecture In Meiwa 3 (1776), in a year of drought in the village of Okanouchi (now Kami), a man named Jirōkichi was said to have witnessed an ushi-oni at the river Mine no Kawa. In a tale from this prefecture, in a certain village, the livestock ox was killed and eaten by ushi-oni. The villagers who tried to slay it were also killed and eaten, and a warrior of Chikamori Sakon who heard of this slew it with a single arrow shot. The villagers were overjoyed, and it is said that the villagers would imitate pulling an arrow while telling about how the ushi-oni was slain, and this is considered the origin of this prefecture's festival, the Momotesai.
In the legends of Azahodo field in Monobe (now Kami), it is said that an old lady who lived around the area rescued a crying ushi-oni who fell and was trapped in a pot-shaped bowl about 2–3 ken deep, and after that, the ushi-oni never cursed these lands again.
In Tosayama, there is a tributary of the Kagami River called the Shigekura River where there is a stream pool called the ushi-oni pool. Once, when it was known as the koke (moss) pool, an ushi-oni lived in it. A hunter from the village of Hase went out to hunt animals in their wallows, when he encountered an ushi-oni with a body height of 7 shaku, the body of an ox, and the head of an oni, so the hunter killed it. The ushi-oni fell into the stream pool and let out blood for 7 days and nights, and after that, bones with a length of about 7 shaku floated up. A small shrine was built and enshrined, so the shrine was called "Kawauchi-sama" and koke pool became called the ushi-oni pool.「殺牛・殺馬の民俗学」、2015年、筒井功、河出書房新社、11‐13頁
Ehime Prefecture The legend of the ushi-oni at Uwajima is one of the most well known among all the ushi-oni legends. Once, an ushi-oni attacked people and livestock, so a yamabushi from Kawabe, Kita District was called to slay it. Facing off with the ushi-oni in the village, the yamabushi blew a conch and chanted a mantra, whereupon the ushi-oni recoiled. The yamabushi thrust a sword between its eyebrows and proceeded to cut its body into pieces. The ushi-onis blood flowed for 7 days and nights, becoming a stream pool. Various places called "ushi-oni fuchi" (ushi-oni stream pool) – one at Tosayama, Kōchi Prefecture, one at Shirakiyama, Tokushima Prefecture, and one at Negoro-ji, Kagawa Prefecture – are said to be where this took place.
Another theory is that the ushi-oni that infested Ehime Prefecture had the head of an ox and the body of a whale. Despite being legends under the same name of "ushi-oni", they have remarkable variety in appearance, which has led the yōkai researcher Bintarō Yamaguchi to state that large monsters that come from the sea may all have been called ushi-oni.
In the Uwajima Domain, the shrine, Warei-jinja, built on the occasion of a house strife called the Warei Sōdō, holds the Ushi-oni Festival on July 23 and 24.『イベントカレンダー 牛鬼』, 『スペシャル企画 vol.2 牛鬼の歴史と仕組み 』 - 宇和島市観光物産協会. Something like the dragon dancers at a Chinese New Year celebration, this ushi-oni is represented with a huge, multiple-person costume with a cloth body and a carved, painted head held upon a pole. It has an oni-like head, a long neck, and the body of an ox. The body is either red or brown with shaggy hair similar to the coat of a yak. A short sword replaces its tail.
Tsubaki root theory There is a theory that the ushi-oni is actually an aged tsubaki root. There are legends in Japan that divine spirits dwell in Tsubaki, so there is the interpretation that the ushi-oni is an incarnation of this spirit, and there are customs where they are honored for warding off evil spirits. Also, tsubaki has been viewed as a special, holy flower that grows in sanctuaries in the final reaches of capes and shores, and since tsubaki flowers bloom at the boundaries, there is the theory that this expresses the place where ushi-oni appear. Both the accompanying nure-onna and the ushi-oni appear from the shores, and do not come from anywhere else.
Shimane Prefecture, Iwami Area (島根県石見) Another well-known ushi-oni is a massive, brutal sea-monster which lives off the coast of Shimane Prefecture and other places in Western Japan and attacks fishermen. It is often depicted with a spider- or crab-like body. This ushi-oni seems to be connected to another monster called the nure-onna, who sometimes appears before an ushi-oni attack and tricks the victim into holding her child, which then becomes stuck to the person's hands and grows heavier in order to hinder escape.
Izumo Region (出雲) The appearance of the ushi-oni in the Izumo region according to some legends differs radically compared to the other legends. This bakemono resembles a shining, white butterfly instead of an ox. This version of the ushi-oni appears in groups and sticks to travelers' bodies when they cross bridges on humid, rainy days.
Kagawa Prefecture, Takamatsu City (香川県高松市)