Aka Manto

Aka Manto appears in twentieth-century Japanese schoolyard rumor and urban-legend repertoires; scholars and compilers record versions of the tale from the 1930s onward. The figure's imagery has shifted over generations (the older meaning of manto as a sleeveless kimono-style jacket appears in earlier tellings, while modern accounts present a red cloak or cape). The story functions as oral peer-culture lore rather than part of formal religious cosmology.

Accounts consistently depict a figure associated with a red outer garment (manto) and with concealment of the face in many versions (a mask). Variants describe him as a masked, cloaked man (sometimes handsome beneath the mask in some tellings, or as a tall man with a sickly bluish-white face in others). An alternative variant casts Aka Manto as a hairy yōkai called a kainade who lives in the toilet; in that telling bodily form and behavior differ markedly from the masked-man motif.

Aka Manto's characteristic behavior is to appear to a person occupying a toilet stall (often late at night) and ask a forced-choice question about colored toilet paper (commonly red or blue). Reported consequences vary by version: choosing red results in laceration/stabbing/flaying so the victim is soaked in blood; choosing blue results in strangulation or a draining of blood leaving a blue face; choosing yellow (in some tellings) causes drowning by being held head-down in the toilet; choosing another color may lead to being dragged to the underworld. Other reported abilities include making brought toilet paper vanish before use (in some accounts) and, in the kainade variant, producing a hairy arm of the chosen color from the toilet. Trick responses such as refusing both options or ignoring the question are reported survival tactics in many versions.