Kerakera-onna.

Kerakera-onna (倩兮女, けらけらおんな) is startling less because of deformity than because scale and sound no longer obey ordinary human limits. She appears as a woman, but too tall, too distant, or too elevated to belong naturally in the space where she is seen. Her laughter, the kerakera cackle that gives the yokai its reading, makes the body feel even less stable, as though mockery itself has taken shape at the edge of sight.

That produces a very Edo kind of unease. The figure is concise, almost schematic, yet unforgettable. Instead of fangs or gore, she offers the impossible spectacle of a female presence that cannot be socially placed, too large to ignore, too amused to trust, and too self-possessed to be reduced to ordinary ghost sorrow.

Kerakera-onna does not need to seize or strike in order to dominate an encounter. Her power comes from how the witness is positioned beneath her, exposed to a laugh that may be ridicule, delight, or some unreadable supernatural reaction. The victim is made small, not necessarily through physical force, but through the sense of being observed by something whose proportions and mood cannot be negotiated.

That dynamic makes kerakera-onna a yokai of emotional imbalance. Many Japanese apparitions work through fear or pity. She works through humiliation and uncertainty. The listener hears the laugh and cannot tell whether it announces attack, derision, or the simple pleasure of being incomprehensible to the living.