Akaname (垢嘗)

§Appearance

Akaname (垢嘗, あかなめ) is usually imagined as a small crouching goblin built for one task, licking filth from the corners of neglected baths. Edo and later descriptions give it a childlike or impish body, greasy skin, thin limbs, and a tongue far longer than seems natural. The creature is often illustrated with the posture of a scavenger, all attention directed downward to the scum it has found.

Its body matters less than its environment. Akaname belongs to slime, dampness, mildew, and stale air. The yōkai's grotesque physical form is really a visible concentration of those conditions. In visual terms it makes household neglect suddenly animate, giving the dirt of the bath a creature that seems born from the very substance it consumes.

§Interactions

Akaname is usually not a hunter of people. Its real work is to appear where cleanliness has failed, slipping into bath areas and lavatories at night to lick away scum, grease, and rot. That makes it one of the most legible moral yōkai in the tradition. If a household keeps the bath clean, the creature has no reason to come. If the place is neglected, the yōkai is already implied by the dirt itself.

Some expanded Edo descriptions make the older akaneburi tradition darker, including stories of deceptive or more dangerous forms. Even so, the dominant image is not of a killer but of an unsettling scavenger. The akaname turns hygiene into folklore, making ordinary cleaning feel like a defense against physical filth and spiritual decline at once.

The precursor form appears as akaneburi in Kokon Hyakumonogatari Hyōban (1686), where the creature is explained as something generated from the foul energy of old baths and ruined dwellings. Toriyama Sekien's Gazu Hyakki Yagyō (1776) then fixed the now-standard name akaname and gave the yōkai its most influential visual form. Later works such as Nittō honzō zusan elaborated the description and anecdotes further.

This development shows how Akaname moved from moralized filth lore into the canon of named Edo yōkai. The creature's logic is straightforward: filth breeds its own inhabitant. Because that logic is so easy to grasp, akaname has endured as one of the clearest examples of a yōkai formed at the border of physical environment, social discipline, and visual imagination.

Akaname does not revolve around a single grand narrative. Instead, it appears in scenes. A servant enters the bath area in the morning and touches something slick in the dark. A neglected washroom is found marked by strange licking sounds. An abandoned house grows foul enough that the filth itself seems alive. In these stories the yōkai exists as the final proof that the place has been allowed to decay too far.

Later retellings often turn the creature into a lesson. Children are warned to keep bath spaces clean, and adults are reminded that old grime invites more than embarrassment. The yōkai may be grotesque, but its function is practical. Akaname turns neglected maintenance into a folklore event, one long tongue away from becoming visible.

Akaname.

§Appearance

§Interactions

Ohaguro-bettari

Kitsune

Karakasa-obake

§Origin

§Legends

References

Primary Sources