Tōfu-kozō

The tōfu-kozō is first attested in An'ei-era printed works and is regarded in the sources as a yōkai created from Edo urban popular culture rather than appearing in older folktale or hyakumonogatari collections. It emerged in kusazōshi and kibyōshi as a visual and narrative character tied to the city’s tōfu vendors and printed entertainments; one early printed source (Bakemono Shiuchi Hyōbanki) includes it and also records a passage where weasels transform into tōfu-kozō, indicating some narrative variation in print-era accounts.

Depicted as a childlike kozō with an emphasized large head in many early illustrations; often shown wearing a kasa (conical hat) and bamboo on the head and carrying a round tray bearing tōfu (commonly a momiji-dōfu pressed with an autumn-leaf design). Clothing patterns in illustrations frequently include motifs (harukoma, daruma, horned owls, swinging drums, red fish) that are shown for the purpose of warding off smallpox in contemporary visual language. Visual conventions vary across sources: some late-Edo depictions show a single eye, while other works present the figure almost indistinguishable from human children.

Early kusazōshi and kibyōshi portray tōfu-kozō as lacking special powers and functioning as servants who deliver tōfu and sake around town; they are characterized as amicable, timid, humorous, and non-confrontational. Later popular and children's literature introduce narrative accretions—for example, motifs of rainy-night offerings of tōfu that develop mold while being eaten and invented genealogies naming other yōkai as parents (e.g., mikoshi-nyūdō, rokurokubi)—but researchers cited in the sources consider the mold trope a post–Shōwa creation and the more extravagant powers/lineages are absent from early print accounts.