Ushi-oni
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.
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.
[5] 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.
[7][8] 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.
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.
[1] 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.
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 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.
[20] 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.
[21] 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.
[24] 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.
This version of the ushi-oni appears in groups and sticks to travelers' bodies when they cross bridges on humid, rainy days.
A sign nearby explains that this creature terrorized the area about four-hundred years ago, and was slain by a skilled archer by the name of Yamada Kurando Takakiyo (山田蔵人高清).
[25] When night fishing in Kumihama Bay of Kyoto, a voice is heard by fishermen beckoning them from the opposite shore.
In Kenchō 3 (1251), an ox-like yōkai appeared at Sensō-ji, and the 24 monks in the dining room was affected by its evil intent and fell ill, 7 of whom died.
This infant would be Minamoto no Yorimitsu's next younger sibling (in the original text, らいくわうの御しやてい "raikwau no oshatei", or ただの満中が次男, "tada no Mitsunaka ga jinan"), but he had an ox's horns and an oni's face, so he was about to be killed.
However, the court lady who was ordered to perform the killing instead saved him and raised him in secret in the mountains, and grew up to be called "Ushi Gozen."
[27] In an essay titled Isetsu Machimachi (異説まちまち) by Wada Masamichi, a warrior of the Sekiyado Domain, there are statements about ushi-oni as atmospheric ghost lights.
According to this essay, in Izumo Province (now the northern parts of Shimane Prefecture), at a damp time of continual rain, if one goes to a place where there appears to be a bridge across a mountain stream where some white lights would fly about and stick to the body and not come off, one would say "I have encountered ushi-oni," and it is said to disappear by warming oneself at a hearth.
[1] In legends of Inaba Province (now the eastern part of Tottori Prefecture), on snowy evenings, countless small firefly-like lights would collect on one's mino, and if one tries to shake them off, they would fall to the floor and then whirl up again and stick on.
[29] In Anan, Tokushima Prefecture, a family called Kajima has enshrined a beast's skull told to have come from an ushi-oni.
It is said that the Kajima family's ancestor's slew this ushi-oni upon request from the local farmers who were being tormented by it, and then brought back its head.
It is said that although the warriors of several provinces hesitated to slay it, the head priest Kanamitsu Shōnin slew it with nenbutsu and Buddhist power.
[31] At Negoro-ji on Aonomine, Goshikidai in Kagawa Prefecture, there are some treasured horns said to be from an ushi-oni slain by Yamada Kudando Takakiyo near the start of the Edo Period.
According to the pictures in the scrolls of this temple, this ushi-oni had the head of a monkey and the body of a tiger, and both legs is a flying membrane-shaped wing like that of a musasabi or bat.
[1][5] The cart is a turtle shell-shaped structure made from putting together bamboo, with an attached head (officially the "trunk") and tail ("sword").
In the Warei Festival performed from July 22 to 24, ushi-oni would take the stage not just in Uwajima, but also in the mountain regions and in Kōchi Prefecture (Nishitosa).
The autumn festival held at the Kamo Jinja in Kikuma, Imabari is the only one in the Tōyo region where ushi-oni appear.
Besides Ehime Prefecture, on Amami Ōshima, there is the ushi-oni belief festival called the "Numato Nukanushi", where an ox yōkai god (farming god) with decorated countless eight-horned, eight-footed, and eight-tailed madara-shaped patterns would rise up from the sea and shout with a loud charamela-like voice and roam about the basket fires, whereupon the islanders would put their heads to the ground when it comes to them.
[36] The comic artist Mizuki Shigeru surmises that in the backdrop of the ushi-oni are the ancient Indian ox gods, so the incarnations of Daijizaiten (Shiva), Izanaten (Ishana) and Enma-ten (Yama) are related, and that also related is the existence of the Tenmangū that shrines Sugawara no Michizane (who is also Tenman Daijizaiten).
