It is a yōkai with a face like that of a demon woman (kijo) torn from mouth to ear, and its entire body is covered in hair.
[clarification needed] In another instance, there is a drawing in the Hyakki Yagyō Emaki (Oda Gōchō, 1832) from after Sekien's era where it is depicted under the title of "uwan uwan",[3] and it is thought that likewise the ouni is a yōkai that Sekien drew while referring to earlier emaki.
There are no folk legends or records that are clearly about the ouni (or the "wauwau" based on Sekien's), so it is presently not clear what kind of yōkai they were intending to depict, but starting in the Heisei period, inferring from how there are many tales that seem highly related to the previous "o" and the yamauba, there have started to be many illustrated references, books, and other publications that suppose that these are yamauba who assisted in the making of threads and were taken in under the name "ouni",[4] which would mean that the ouni is a type of yamauba.
[2][5] There are many areas with tales about yamauba who would make threads from o (苧), but the following example is from Kotaki, Nishikubiki, Echigo Province (now Itoigawa, Niigata Prefecture).
[2] Before the proliferation of the idea that yamauba were related, they were often given the explanation that they would attack and eat people who come for a drink at a mountain stream.