Dodomeki

Kanji: 百々目鬼
Kana: どどめき
Pronunciation: dodomeki /do.do.me.ki/

TRANSLATION: Many-eyed demon
ALTERNATE NAMES: Todomeki; Hyakumeki
ORIGIN: Edo period folklore; Toriyama Sekien, Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki (c. 1779)

HABITAT: Towns; roads
DIET: Unknown

ABILITIES:

• Picks pockets and steals coins
• Sees in many directions through hundreds of bird-shaped eyes
• Uses unusually long arms to take coins from purses and sleeves
• Transforms into an ordinary woman to walk among humans

WEAKNESSES:

• Buddhist sermons
• Sutras

OVERVIEW: Dodomeki is a cursed Edo-period yokai woman whose long arms carry hundreds of tiny bird's-eye coins. She punishes the habit of theft.

APPEARANCE: Dodomeki appears as a young Japanese woman in a long kimono. Her arms are unusually long, and the limbs go down past her knees. Hundreds of small bird-shaped eyes cover the skin of these arms. The eyes match the shape of the dōsen, a holed copper coin called chōmoku or "bird's eye." In daylight Dodomeki keeps the arms inside long sleeves. At night the many eyes glow and show her true form.

BEHAVIOR: Dodomeki walks crowded streets and markets after dark. She uses her long arms to pick coins from purses and sleeves, and the eyes on her skin find money from every angle. The yokai keeps her arms covered by day because she is ashamed. Dodomeki cannot stop stealing — the curse started as a habit, and the habit remains.

INTERACTIONS: Travelers and merchants see Dodomeki on Edo roads and in town markets. They have lost coins, not lives, so the danger is medium rather than deadly. Buddhist priests can change her: in one tale, the sermons of Saint Chitoku come to her and she changes her ways. Sutras and prayer ward off her theft.

OTHER FORMS: An older legend is about Todomeki, a giant oni at the horse graveyard near Utsunomiya in Shimotsuke. Fujiwara no Hidesato sends an arrow into its brightest eye, and the demon breathes fire and poison fumes before it leaves the field. Four hundred years later the same spirit returns as a young woman who comes to a temple to get back her lost blood. Some sources mix up Dodomeki with Hyakume, a different many-eyed yokai.