Enkō

Region/Culture: East Asia (Shikoku and the Chūgoku region, western Japan)
Mythos: Japanese Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Fairy Folk and Spirit Beings (a regional, monkey-like member of the kappa family of water yōkai)
Mythical Attributes: A river and shore yōkai with a water-holding dish on its head, elastic limbs, shapeshifting skill, and a revulsion for metal.
Role in Mythos: It guards the dangerous threshold of rivers and tidal shallows, drowning the careless and dragging cattle and swimmers under to feed.
Relation to Humans: It preys on fishermen, bathers, and livestock, most often to take the liver from a living body, yet it can be turned aside by a deep bow or a gift and, once bound by a promise, will protect a community instead. Where it is honored it is enshrined as a water-kami and begged each summer to spare the children.

After dark, on the slow stretches of a Kōchi river where the fishing runs good, a small shape sometimes waits at the edge of the lamplight. It looks like a doll in a child’s kimono, propped among the reeds, and a fisherman who leans down to poke it gets an answer he does not want. The doll grins back. It giggles. By then the water is already too near his feet, and the thing in the reeds is no longer pretending to be a doll.

This is the enkō, the river-dweller of Shikoku and the Chūgoku coast, a creature close enough to the kappa that the old stories treat them as cousins. Its name is written with two characters that have always meant monkey, and the resemblance is the point. It stands about as tall as a small child, its face a startling red, its body covered in coarse fur that never seems to dry. Touch it and the fur is slick as a catfish, the kind of wet that will not wash off. Its arms are the strangest part. They are elastic, jointed in some way that ignores how a body should work, and a person who grabs one and pulls will feel it stretch in his grip while the other arm draws shorter, as if the creature were made of something that pours. The fingers end in claws. On top of its skull sits a shallow dish, and that dish holds water, and the water is the whole of its strength.

It is an animal of edges. The enkō lives where the land gives way to water, in river bends and tidal shallows and the dark pools below fishing spots, and it swims better than anything that hunts it. It is patient and it is strong, far stronger than its size promises. Much of what it does is mischief, the petty thievery and pranking that kappa are known for, but the enkō has a darker appetite running underneath. It likes cucumbers. It likes, more than cucumbers, the fresh liver of a living person, and the way it takes that liver is the detail the old folk would lower their voices to share: a long arm forced up through the victim’s body to pull the innards out by the fistful, the swimmer still alive when it begins. It eats the liver.

Livestock are not safe either. The enkō hates cattle and horses, and an ox led down to drink or a horse crossing a ford could be seized and hauled under. There is an older shape buried in that hatred. The ethnologists who studied the kappa, Ishida Eiichirō and Yanagita Kunio among them, read the horse-drowning stories as the faded memory of something solemn, the ancient practice of giving a horse to the spirit of the water. In that reading the kappa is not a monster at all but a god come down in the world, a water-deity demoted into a bogey, still owed the offering it once received with honor. In parts of Kyushu the kappa is still called sui-jin, the water-god, and the line between the thing that drowns you and the thing you pray to has never been as clean as people would like.

Where the enkō comes from depends on which mountain you stand under. In Shikoku the answer is the shibaten, small spirits of the hills who in summer come down in a body, move into the rivers, and become enkō for the season. In the Chūgoku region it is the takiwaro, who spend three years in the mountains and three more in the rivers before the change takes them. Underneath all of it lies the long marriage of monkey and water-imp in the Japanese imagination, two creatures with the same long limbs, the same restless wandering, the same hairy bodies and the same talent for trouble, until people stopped being sure they were two things at all.

It is also a shapeshifter, and a good one. The doll in the reeds is its favorite trick, but it can wear the form of a woman, and the encounters that follow are not gentle. One story out of old Tōsa, the province that is now Kōchi, tells of a woman taken by an enkō who bore its child. The infant came into the world with a dish set into its head and a single long fang already in its mouth, and the villagers, sick with fear, burned it in a bonfire. The tale does not soften itself at the end, and it was never meant to.

And yet the same country keeps a shrine to one. At Kahaku Shrine in Nankoku, an enkō was caught trying to drag a horse into the river and was spared by the head priest, who let it live in exchange for a promise: never again to drown the people of the village. It kept the bargain and was enshrined as a kami. Every year on the first Saturday of June the village holds the Enko Matsuri in its honor, weaving irises into little shrines to keep the children from drowning, eating pickled cucumbers, watching the fireworks go up over the water that the creature swore to leave alone.

For all its strength, the enkō can be undone, and the way to do it is almost a joke. The water in the head-dish is its power, and if that water spills the creature goes limp and weak. A person who bows to it deeply will find the enkō, ever the courteous yōkai, bowing in return, tipping the dish, pouring its own strength out onto the ground. It cannot abide metal and will bolt from a hoe or a sickle. A cucumber thrown in tribute will buy a swimmer’s safety. Best of all, it can be held to its word, as the priest of Nankoku proved. The monster that pulls a man apart from the inside is also the monster that keeps a promise, and somewhere between those two facts is the river itself, which has always given and taken in the same breath.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an Enkō?

The Enkō is a river and shore yōkai from the Shikoku and Chūgoku regions of western Japan, considered a regional, monkey-like member of the kappa family. It is about the size of a three-year-old child, with a red face, slippery fur, elastic limbs, and a water-filled dish on its head that is the source of its strength.

What does the Enkō do to humans?

The Enkō attacks swimmers, fishermen, and livestock, dragging them underwater. It is best known for killing people to eat their liver, which it pulls from the body of a still-living victim, and it also drowns cattle and horses that enter the water.

How do you defeat or escape an Enkō?

Because the Enkō’s power lives in the water held in the dish on its head, spilling that water leaves it helpless, and a deep bow will trick the polite creature into bowing back and emptying its own dish. The Enkō also has a strong revulsion to metal and will flee from farming tools, and it can be appeased with an offering of cucumbers.

Where does the Enkō come from?

In Shikoku, mountain spirits called shibaten are said to migrate into the rivers each summer and become enkō, while in the Chūgoku region creatures called takiwaro transform into enkō after living three years in the mountains and three in the rivers. The Enkō also reflects an ancient Japanese association between monkeys and kappa-type water spirits.

Is the Enkō ever worshipped?

Yes. At Kahaku Shrine in Nankoku, Kōchi, an enkō that promised never to drown the villagers after being spared by a priest is enshrined as a water-kami, and the annual Enko Matsuri held there each June honors it and prays for children’s safety in the water.