Akkorokamui

Also Known As: Ainu at-kor-kamuy, “the kamuy that has strings”, from at “strand, cord” and kor “to have”; also atkor-kamuy, and the common noun atuy-na or atui-inaw, “sea-inau”; Japanese アッコロカムイ, sometimes written 大章魚 and read odako, “giant octopus”
Region/Culture: East Asia
Mythos: Ainu Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Monsters and Beasts
Mythical Attributes: A red octopus reported at the size of a cho of farmland, roughly a hectare, whose colour is strong enough to throw a stain up onto the sky and give away its position from miles off.
Role in Mythos: It is the nushi, the presiding lord, of Uchiura Bay on the Pacific coast of Hokkaido, the water Japanese charts call Funka Bay.
Relation to Humans: Fishermen crossing to the amberjack grounds sailed in the knowledge that the bay had an owner and that the owner could take a coastal cargo ship down whole. Nobody in the tradition kills it or bargains with it; the entire human response is to watch the water, read the red, and go somewhere else.

The water reddens first. That is the mercy in the story, such as it is: a stain spreading under the surface of Funka Bay until the light coming off it catches the underside of the cloud and turns it the colour of a burn. Crews learned to read that glow from a long way out and to put the helm over while there was still sea between them and whatever was making it. A thing of that size cannot hide, and the tellings are clear that its inability to hide was the only reason anyone survived it.

The Ainu of the Iburi coast called it at-kor-kamuy, which comes apart into ordinary words. At is a strand or a length of cord, kor is to have, kamuy is a spirit with rank. The one that has strings. It is a fisherman’s name rather than a priest’s, describing exactly what you would see if a tentacle came up beside the hull, and the same construction gives the plain Ainu noun for octopus. Another name in circulation is atuy-na or atui-inaw, sea-inau, after the shaved willow prayer-sticks whose curled fringes an octopus does genuinely resemble. Missionaries and folklorists recording Hokkaido at the turn of the twentieth century wrote both down without much comment. In print the name later acquired the Japanese characters for giant octopus, which is accurate and much less interesting.

Size is where the accounts start pulling apart. The Iburi version has the creature reaching one cho, a unit of farmland, which converts to about a hectare. Picture a field of rice standing off your bow and then picture it moving. That body was thought capable of swallowing a bezaisen, the fat single-masted coastal freighter that carried most of Japan’s domestic cargo before steam, and the danger was worst on the runs out to the grounds where the amberjack shoaled. Crews took a long-handled hook aboard for the crossing, which tells you something about the practical courage of coastal fishermen and rather less about their odds. A man named Itaknep gave a smaller and more specific report: he had seen one off Cape Ikori at Rebunge, big enough to take a whale, which he put at twenty ken, about thirty-six metres. What he remembered most was the water. The tide for a long way round bubbled and frothed and would not settle.

Two accounts explain where it came from, and they do not agree in the slightest.

The first is a monster story with a bureaucratic ending. At Rebunge there lived a colossal spider called yaoskep, the net-braiding one, and it went through the village the way weather goes through a village, pulling down houses and stripping the ground. A travelling elder from Shakotan found five men still alive in a cave and got the story out of them. He went to his son at Lake Toya, and together they prayed to Samayukur kamuy and to Okikurmi to shrink the thing small. It could not be done; the spirit given the task was not equal to it. So the people asked Repun Kamuy, god of the open sea, to take the problem off their hands. He agreed, carried the spider down into Funka Bay, and the water changed it. The legs multiplied and went soft. The body went red. Nobody had beaten it. It had been rehoused.

The second origin is quieter and belongs to Chiri Mashiho, the Ainu linguist who spent his life on this material. Kotan-kar-kamuy, the god who shaped the land, was mauled by a bear at a place called Akapira, and his wife came down to nurse him. When the two of them went back up, she found she could not carry anything she had worn in the earthly world. So she took off her pon-kut, the under-belt braided from eight separate cords that women of standing wore beneath their clothes, and let it drop into the sea. It became at-kor-kamuy. In the same telling her undershirt fell and became atuy-kor-ekasi, the old man of the sea, a turtle, and her spittle became the swan, which is why that bird cries like a woman. Eight cords, eight arms. Nothing in the record joins those two numbers, but they sit there together and it is hard to look away.

Its abilities all follow from the one fact of its bulk. It can roll a ship, hold a hull down, take a whale, and turn a mile of tide into standing froth by moving. Nothing in the accounts credits it with speech, cunning, weather-work or any of the reciprocal dealing that runs between the Ainu and the more sociable kamuy; there is no offering that buys it off and no ritual that calls it up. Against that, its limits are almost comically physical. It is confined to one bay by a stronger god’s decision. It cannot approach unseen, because the red goes ahead of it into the sky. And it can be outrun by anyone paying attention, which is precisely how everyone who told the story had lived to tell it.

One late detail deserves a warning label. English-language writing since about 2018 describes Akkorokamui as a healing kami honoured for ailments of the limbs and skin, on the reasoning that an octopus that can shed and regrow an arm ought to be able to mend yours. The idea is charming and it is modern. It comes from popular natural-history writing rather than from Yoshida, Chiri, Sarashina or any Ainu source, and the Hokkaido material has nothing benevolent in it at all. What the Hokkaido material has is a red light on the clouds and a reason to go home.

A last piece of housekeeping, since the two get mixed up constantly. The famous wrestling match against the huri, the giant bird, at the mouth of the Ishikari River is not this creature. That octopus is Ratoshikamui, in a different sea on the other coast, and the pair of them fought to a draw that supposedly gave the Ishikari its name.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Akkorokamui?

Akkorokamui is a gigantic red octopus in Ainu tradition, held to be the presiding lord of Uchiura Bay, better known as Funka Bay, on the Pacific side of Hokkaido. The name is Ainu at-kor-kamuy, “the kamuy that has strings”, meaning tentacles. Accounts collected in the Iburi region give its size as roughly a hectare.

How big is Akkorokamui supposed to be?

The most commonly repeated figure is one cho, an old Japanese land measure equal to about a hectare, which would make the creature more than a hundred metres across. A separate eyewitness account attributed to a man called Itaknep at Cape Ikori gives a smaller but still enormous twenty ken, about thirty-six metres, and describes it as large enough to swallow a whale. The tradition treats it as capable of taking down a bezaisen coastal cargo ship.

Where did Akkorokamui come from?

Two origins circulate. In one, it began as a giant spider called yaoskep that destroyed the village of Rebunge until the sea god Repun Kamuy carried it into Funka Bay, where it turned into an octopus. In the other, recorded by the Ainu linguist Chiri Mashiho, it was formed when the wife of the creator deity Kotan-kar-kamuy dropped her eight-corded under-belt into the sea before returning to the heavens.

How did people protect themselves from Akkorokamui?

Nobody in the Ainu accounts fights it. Its body colour is so intensely red that it reflects into the sky, so its position could be spotted from a great distance and ships could steer clear. Crews sailing out to the amberjack grounds also carried a long-handled hook as a precaution, though avoidance was the real defence.

Is Akkorokamui a healing god?

Not in the Ainu record. The idea that Akkorokamui heals injured limbs and skin, based on an octopus’s ability to regrow a severed arm, appears in English-language popular writing from recent years rather than in the Hokkaido folklore collections. The Ainu material presents it purely as a danger to shipping.