Akashita

Yōkai

is a Japanese yōkai that appears in yōkai emaki in the Edo Period, among other places. They are depicted as a beast with clawed hands and a very hairy face covered with dark clouds, but its full body appearance is unknown. In its opened mouth is a big tongue. Sekien did not attach an explanatory note about this yōkai, but its origins are identifiable as Akaguchi which appears in older Edo period yōkai scrolls such as Bakemono no e. This yōkai is known interchangeably as Akaguchi and Akashita.

Usually, they are not depicted accompanied with anything other than a black cloud, but in the Gazu Hyakki Yagyō by Toriyama Sekien, they are depicted on top of a sluice. However, there is no accompanying explanation, so details about it are unknown. Concerning the name "akashita", the modern literary scholar Atsunobu Inada among others suggest that they are related to the shakuzetsujin (赤舌神) and shakuzetsunichi (赤舌日), who protect the western gate of Tai Sui (Jupiter) as explained by onmyōdō. In the Edo Period e sugoroku, the Jikkai Sugoroku (at the National Diet Library) and the emakimono Hyakki Yagyō Emaki (Oda Gōchō, 1832), they are depicted by the name "akashita", but in depictions closer to the later mentioned "Akaguchi", it is depicted differently from Sekien's picture, and there is no depiction of a sluice.

In literature starting from Shōwa, several explanations about the akashita have come up in publications, but other than by appearance, they all appear unrelated to the one in the emakimono and by Sekien. The following is a rough summary of these.

In the illustrated yōkai references Yōkai Daizukan (妖怪大図鑑, Big Illustrated Yōkai Reference) (1973) and Yōkai Daizenka (妖怪大全科) among others by Arifumi Satō, there is the explanation that they are a yōkai that would stick out their tongues from the red sky on evenings and kidnap people. They state that the families of those people kidnapped by an akashita would later prosper,

Akaguchi has association with the use of water in farming country. During droughts, water is carefully controlled and distributed equally to farmers in the area. As a form of warfare, some would siphon above the allotted amount of water for their personal fields. This was a great crime and could cost neighboring farmers their livelihood. It was believed that the perpetrators of this crime not punished by law would be punished by Akaguchi. If these criminals came near the floodgate Akaguchi would appear and swallow them, scooping them up with its giant red tongue. The name Akashita may be correlated to shakuzetsujin (赤舌神) which guards the western gate of Jupiter. It may also be related to the shakuzetsunichi (赤舌日), a day of bad luck in Onmyōdō.