Yamajijii

No single cosmogonic origin is recorded in the supplied sources. Yamajijii appears in Early Modern Tosa yōkai documentation and regional folktale collections as a long-standing mountain presence — an anthropomorphic 'mountain old man/father' whose character and activities are narrated in localized tales rather than traced to a single creation myth.

Accounts vary by source and tale. Early Modern Tosa documentation describes a creature about three to four shaku tall (≈90–120 cm) with gray hair growing over the body and strong jaws/teeth able to crush the bones of wild boar or monkey. That documentation notes it has two eyes, one very large and the other unusually small (a feature later misremembered in popular tellings as 'one eye'). Some folktale illustrations (e.g., Tosa Obake Zōshi) depict a larger, giant humanoid with two legs; other popular memories report one-legged or one-eyed forms — differences that reflect variant local narratives rather than a single standardized appearance.

Tale-specific abilities are recorded across regional accounts. Most frequently emphasized is an extraordinarily loud voice said to shake the mountains, make leaves fall, move rocks and trees, and in some stories rupture eardrums. A Tokushima tale (Ashū Kiji Zatsuwa) records a yamachichi who correctly read woodcutters' thoughts until surprised by an unexpected open fire; that account therefore attributes limited mind-reading/insight localized to that episode. Other narratives record shapeshifting (one story has it transform into a spider to sneak into a house), predation and theft (kidnapping children or stealing animals and loads), and tamability (hunters baiting and using a yamajijii to drive off wolves). These abilities appear piecemeal in different tales rather than as a uniform, universally-applied power set.