Daily mythical creature 292: the Dodomeki [Japanese folklore; yokai]!

(image source: Diane Özdamar on Artstation)

Many discussions about Japanese yokai creatures mention Toriyama Sekien at one point – his 18th century books remain some of the best sources on Japanese folktales, after all. However, there is reason to believe that he made up several of the stories himself, including the supposed myth of the Dodomeki.

The myth supposedly goes like this: there once was a woman with very long arms and a nasty habit of stealing money. To punish her, a spirit associated with money cursed her, and one hundred bird eyes appeared on her arms (note that “chōmoku” literally translates to “bird’s eye” but was a slang word for money or coins because Japanese copper coins in that time had a hole in the middle, roughly resembling an eye. Hence the play on words). The woman was nicknamed “Dodomeki” which means “the hundred eyed fiend”.

(image source: Gazu Hyakki Yagyo by Toriyama Sekien)

There is no known reference to this myth that predates Sekien’s book, and he cites a book called “Kankan-gaishi” as source, but this book has never been found or confirmed to exist.

There is, however, an older myth dating from the 10th century about a monster called the Dōmeki. This is a monster with one hundred eyes on each arm, much like the Dodomeki. Supposedly, this fiend was slain by the folk hero Fujiware no Hidesato. In fact, the Jongan-Ji temple in Japan has a collection of fangs in their possession, and they claim that these are the teeth of the Dōmeki.

Source: the Gazu Hyakki Yagyo from Toriyama Sekien, I personally read the “Japandemonium” translation by Hiroko Yoda and Matt Alt