Kamikiri

 

Kamikiri is a yokai from the Edo period of Japan. It sits on the edge between legendary creature and cryptid, with newspaper articles about encounters with the creature coming out at the time, yet being treated as folklore now. Although the line between yokai and cryptid isn’t always clear.

The kamikiri is a yokai who’s all about cutting off people’s hair. In previous eras in Japan long hair was a symbol of age and status. Both men and women had long hair, men wearing their hair in top knots and women in various styles. There was a much greater need to conform in Japan’s past, people wore hairstyles based on status and role in society, rather than for fashion. So having your hair cut off was far worse for the person that it would be in modern times.

The kamikiri would lurk around its victim in secret and wait for a time they were alone to attack. They would then quickly and silently cut off the victim’s hair. Often the kamikiri would never be seen and the victim would would only know they had been attacked when they find their hair laying on the ground

Even though no one sees the kamikiri during its attack its appearance was known. It looked like a gremlin like creature, with a small, frail, human like body, a bird’s head and scissor like hands for cutting hair.

Many yokai are associated with animals, the kamikiri was no different. The kamikiri was believed to be a long-horn beetle. Weather the gremlin form of the kamikiri was something the long-horn beetle could shape shift into or if this was an artistic interpretation of the insect is never made clear.

The kamikiri is best known from setsuwa stories from the 1740’s, taking place in the Edo (Tokyo) area. These stories would all follow a similar format, of the victim either walking alone down a dark road, or using a washroom, late at night, would suddenly find their hair cut off, with the kamikiri sneaking off unseen.

On March 10, 1874, a kamikiri attack was reported to the Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun newspaper. At 9pm a woman known only as Gin reported having her hair cut as she used the washroom. She said that she noticed her hair tie had been cut, only then to see her hair lying on the floor. She was so shocked by this incident that she out of the rest room and to a nearby house, where she then fainted. The people of the house looked after Gin for the night and searched the washroom, but where unable to find the kamikiri, only Gin’s cut hair. Gin was then picked up from the stranger’s house by her parents, where she fully recovered from the traumatic incident. No one ever used that public washroom again and it was torn down.

Even though this was the only official report of hair cutting in a news paper, or possibly the only one that survives to modern times, there were many more incidents being spoken off among the population, as the hair cutting was apparently a wave of crime.

In earlier times, in the Muromachi period (1336 to 1573) there was a similar wave of hair cutting incidents. Although these were blamed on the antics of kitsunes, rather than a yokai dedicated specifically to hair cutting. In later times the kamikiri became the rival of kitsunes. It was believed that when a kitsune took on human form to covertly marry a human the kamikiri would save that human by cutting the kitsune’s hair. She would becomes so embarrassed she would flee from the wedding. It was also believed that cutting the kitsune’s hair would reveal her fox form.

There had been later incidents of hair cutting crime, such as in the 1930’s. While these were initially blamed on kamikiri, they were all later found to be causes by human criminals. Such as one man, charged in 1931. He cut a young woman’s hair to use it as an offering at a shine, believing in return his feeble body would be made strong.

Sources

https://yokai.com/kamikiri/?srsltid=AfmBOootm1zbzxv72wCsL5MZLRCQIOSj6Une0bnTjhmC0wwFMKoRQgVa

https://samkalensky.com/products/kamikiri

https://abookofcreatures.com/2017/04/28/kamikiri/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamikiri_(haircutting)