Tenome – [yokai]

Description

Tenome – 手の目 – [Yokai] – “Eyes on Hands”

• About this yokai: a yokai which has the appearance of an elderly blind man with a face devoid of any real features; his eyes are in the centre of his palms. Often said to be the ghost of a zato (A blind guildsman, usually a musician) who was robbed and murdered, his body left in a field; His grudge against the attacker’s he never saw transformed him into a yokai with eyes on his hands to see over the tall grass it died in… Other stories say that it wanders graveyards in the dead of night and chases down anyone it sees and eats their bones! It also has a keen sense of smell & and an unnatural speed.

• History & Origin: One of many yokai that where recorded by Toriyama Sekien in his bestiary on yokai, Gazu Hyakki Yagyo (1776) in which Tenome is first given a name. However, unlike many others, there is no explanation, story, or description present to pair with the illustration. Although, given the layout of the illustration, some say that this drawing is actually a visual pun based off the autumn suite hanafuda card which features a large full moon over a field of tall grass, the joke of which is that tenome is bald!

[Toriyama Sekien Gazu Hyakki Yagyo 1776]

Despite the lack of description, Tenome is believed to have been based on or inspired by a different yokai that originated decades earlier, in 1677’s 諸国百物語 (Shokoku Hyaku Monogatari) in which a story titled “ばけ物に骨をぬかれし人の事” or “How a Person Had Their Bones removed by a Monster”. The accompanying illustration shows a young man being pursued by a Terrifyingly large, smiling bald man with an eyeball on his left hand. The story goes something like this:

“When word spread that a monster lurked in the graveyard at Kyōshichijō-gahara (Supposedly near present day ‘Shichi-jō’ in Kyoto) a group of young men gathered and decided that one of them would do a test of courage. Their challenge: go into the graveyard at midnight and return with the monster’s head. Around the strike of midnight, the monster appeared; a frightening old man of about 80 years old, about 8 feet tall, with a pale, blank face devoid of any features, and a single eye in the palm of each hand. The young man was terrified out of his wits and then the monster gave chase. He fled into a nearby temple and pleaded for help. The Lead Monk let him in. He opened a long chest, told the young man to get inside, then locked the lid. Soon after, the monster trailed after the man into the temple and began sniffing the environment intently. Eventually, it made its way to the side of the chest. The terrified monk stood out of the monster’s sight, frozen in fear as he heard a strange sound similar to a dog slurping on a bone. When at last the monster left and all was quiet he opened the chest to let out young man out but to his horror all that was inside the chest was the loose, empty skin. The young man’s bones had been sucked clean from his body!”

This story is a prime example of an early ‘Kimodamishi’ or “test of courage” which went horribly wrong (as these things tend to go!) – The same 1677 book also features a few others of which Toriyama also drew from, including the stories of ‘Wanyudo‘ & ‘Kiyohime‘. So it seems quite likely that this book was one of his sources for the yokai he included in his bestiarys. (A few other blind monk/zato inspired yokai drawn by Toriyama Sekien include: Ōzato, Umizato & Biwa bokuboku.)

[a later illustration of “teme-bozu” – 1832] (also the inspiration for my sticker.)

A few other ‘yokai with eyes in unusual places’ include:

• Shirime. – another faceless yokai, first written about & illustrated by poet Yosa Buson during his travels, its said to lurk near a bridge in kyoto, at night, it moons unwitting passerby’s showing off a glowing eyeball which is place of its anus!
• Hyakume. – A yokai resembling a mass of flesh with hundreds of eyes which pop out unblinkingly, much like Tenome they are said to appear in graveyards at night.
• Dodomeki. – a thief-girl who was cursed and now has “bird eyes” which grow all over her elongated arms.
• Mokumokuren. – The walls & floorboards of abandoned old homes, ghostly glowing eyes appear in the cracks of old shoji screens and worn out tatami mats.)

• Pop Culture: Tenome is definitely one of the better known yokai outside of Japan due to its uncanny resemblance to the ‘Pale Man‘ from Guillermo Del Toro’s ‘Pan’s Labyrinth‘ [2006], and indeed it does resemble him! However, In his 2013 book ‘Cabinet of Curiousities’ – Del toro said that the creature was inspired by the “bottom side of manta-rays”, ‘religious stigmata’ as well as Francisco Goya’s famous painting of ‘Saturn devouring his son.’ [1820’s] – meaning that any resemblance to Tenome was probably coincidental! (However, De Toro did in-fact leave a high-praise-rating on the back of “Japandemonium illustrated 2017” when the book came out; so there is that connection at least!) Along with pale man; several other monsters from American pop culture are often erroneously said to be ‘loosely inspired by or directly based on Tenome.’ – If its ‘bald & has eyes on its hands’ then Tenome probably comes to mind? But, these similarities are very often, entirely coincidental: lets not conflate “Krumm” with Tenome, without any actual citated reasons, yeah? its a bit silly in my opinion.💁

[Art sticker by @samkalensky (yo, thats me!), edited by @cattype (I’m here too!) check the shop and support for more! thanks for your support!]