Ushi-oni (牛鬼)

A great demon said to have dwelt since ancient times along the coastlines and mountain pools of western Japan. The head of a bull upon the body of an oni, or the reverse, or eight spider-legs splayed beneath — that no two witnesses have ever described the same form is attributed, in some tellings, to the creature wearing whatever shape it was first seen in.

It spits poison, devours the living, and visits sickness upon those who merely draw near. In an old pool in Wakayama, it is said that those whose shadows were licked by the creature died of raging fever within days. Its approach makes no sound — the body is soft as a cat's, they say, and swallows even footsteps whole.

In the southern Ise region of Mie, a lord who shot an ushi-oni lurking in a cave saw his entire bloodline destroyed by the curse that followed. To wound the creature is more dangerous than to kill it. Its grudge does not seek the one who struck the blow, but turns instead toward whoever that person holds most dear.

Yet there remain, rarely, accounts of this demon saving a human life. In the village of Miokawa in Wakayama, an ushi-oni is said to have borrowed the form of a woman, spoken with a man as one person speaks to another, and later pulled that same man from the flood that would have drowned him. By some law binding the creature, the moment it saved him it dissolved in a flow of crimson blood and was gone — a strange and solemn pride, belonging to a being for whom mercy and death are one.

Throughout the Kinki and Shikoku regions, place names such as Ushi-oni Fuchi and Ushi-oni Taki still appear on maps. Where a name remains, something still lies sunken there — so the village elders say nothing, only turn their eyes, without a word, toward the water.