Chōchin-obake: The Lantern That Looked Back

What is Chōchin-obake?

A chōchin is a paper lantern — a collapsible cylinder of paper on a bamboo frame, carried on a pole at night to light the road. An obake is a shape-changer, a thing that has become something else. A chōchin-obake is a lantern that has become a monster.

It is one of the most recognisable yokai in Japan. It is also one of the thinnest in the historical record.

One figure among forty-eight

The International Research Center for Japanese Studies holds a print by the artist Yoshimori titled Shinban Bakemono-zukushi — roughly, “A New Edition: All Kinds of Monsters.” Shinban, “newly published,” was a common selling word on popular prints. The sheet shows forty-eight different monsters.

One of them is labelled chōchin no obake. The center’s catalogue describes it in three short statements: a lantern monster; the lantern has an eye and a mouth; something appears to be coming out of the mouth.

That is the record. There is no caption telling you what the lantern does, who met it, or how it came to be. It is one figure in a crowd of forty-eight, on a sheet meant to be looked at, and it is recognisable because of what has been added to an ordinary thing.

Appearance

A paper lantern, with an eye and a mouth, and something issuing from the mouth. The catalogue does not name the something.

Our illustration reads it as a long paper strip hanging like a tongue, and gives the lantern one large eye. Both are interpretation. The lantern is being carried on a pole by someone on a wet night street, because that is what lanterns are for.

Behavior and abilities

• It looks. The eye is the first thing the catalogue mentions.
• Something comes out of its mouth. The second.

There is no third. The print records no movement, no flight, no attack, no laughter, and no victims.

Weaknesses and countermeasures

None are recorded, because no threat is recorded. A picture of a lantern with a face has no encounter in it to defend against.

Documented print and later imagery

Documented print. Yoshimori, Shinban Bakemono-zukushi, a sheet of forty-eight monsters in the collection of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies. Its figure chōchin no obake is described as a lantern with an eye and a mouth, something apparently coming out of the mouth. No narrative is given.

Later imagery. The modern chōchin-obake is a fully formed character: a torn lantern split open into a grinning mouth, a long tongue lolling out, one or two eyes, often floating on its own. It is frequently explained as a tsukumogami — a household object that comes to life after a hundred years of use — and sometimes given ghost stories to go with it. Those explanations are not on Yoshimori’s sheet.

What the print keeps is a small, sharp reversal. The thing you carry to see by has started to see you. If your lantern blinked tonight, you would still need it to get home.