化け物（ばけもの）
Bakemono
The old everyday word for a monster: a thing that changes its shape.
Bakemono comes from bakeru, to change form, and mono, a thing. It is the word an Edo townsman would have used for anything from a fox in disguise to a one-eyed umbrella, and the polite or childish form obake survives today as the ordinary word for a ghost or monster. Bakemono-zukushi, “a full set of monsters,” was a popular format for scrolls and cheap prints: a row of named creatures with no story, drawn to be enjoyed.
The name carries an idea that the later word yōkai does not. A bakemono is a transformation. An old cat, an old tanuki, an old umbrella, a worn-out sandal: things that have lived long enough to become something else. Several of the best-known yokai still carry the word in their names, like the bake-danuki and the bakezōri.
Related yokai
Bake-danuki
化け狸（ばけだぬき）
Morinji tradition tells of the monk Shukaku, an inexhaustible iron kettle, and the mujina or tanuki form revealed while he slept.
Bakeneko
化け猫（ばけねこ）
Stories of old cats that speak, perform, dress like people or take human form—and the separate cat yokai they keep getting confused with.
Bakezōri
化け草履（ばけぞうり）
A yokai scroll in the Nichibun collection shows a sandal monster covered in yellow straw, with a straw sandal for a face, riding a horse-head staff. It is stranger than the one-eyed singing sandal of modern books, and it comes with no story.
Chōchin-obake
提灯お化け（ちょうちんおばけ）
One of forty-eight monsters on Yoshimori's print Shinban Bakemono-zukushi is a paper lantern with an eye, a mouth, and something coming out of the mouth. That picture is the record — there is no story attached to it.