Ōkubi

This article has multiple issues. Please help or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these template messages) This article does not cite any sources. Please help by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources:  –  ·  ·  · scholar · JSTOR (November 2011) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) The topic of this article may not meet Wikipedia's general notability guideline. Please help to demonstrate the notability of the topic by citing reliable secondary sources that are independent of the topic and provide significant coverage of it beyond a mere trivial mention. If notability cannot be shown, the article is likely to be merged, redirected, or deleted. Find sources:  –  ·  ·  · scholar · JSTOR (October 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in Japanese. (July 2019) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the Japanese article. Machine translation like DeepL or Google Translate is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 2,743 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Japanese Wikipedia article at [[:ja:大首]]; see its history for attribution. You should also add the template {{Translated|ja|大首}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation. (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

The ōkubi as illustrated by Toriyama Sekien.

In Japanese folklore, Ōkubi (大首) are giant heads of either men or women. An Ōkubi appearing in the sky is a sign of impending disaster, which may be a typhoon, earthquake, tsunami, or fire. These disasters are often attributed to the Ōkubi. Ōkubi are otherwise harmless and will disappear soon after the first sighting. They are thought to be sky spirits who protect the sky's or people who died during a natural disaster. They are said to protect people from the natural disasters and protect the sky from demonic sky spirits. It is said if one does not pay respect for the Ōkubi, they will be turned into sky spirits and their face will appear in the sky immediately. Those who do pay respect are said to get good fortune and gifts.

Appearance: Usually it is just their face as a woman's or man's face.

Stories: There are stories from certain provinces and prefectures. Sometimes these stories are passed down from elders to children. There is a certain Story from Iwake prefecture about a face of Ōkubi appearing in the sky when a tsunami was going to hit a small town. "It was stormy day in a small Japanese town". A tsunami was about hit while everybody had to stay in. But before then, A face of a beautiful woman appeared. One man shouted "It's An Ōkubi!. That meant the tsunami was about hit. It washed everything away and knocked over trees but nobody was hurt. Everyone paid respects to the Ōkubi for protecting them.

There is another story about a man who married an Ōkubi. On a misty, windy, blistering day, a man working in the mountains encountered a beautiful woman that approached him and said "Can I come and stay in your place"? The man accepted the woman's pleasing words. Later they got married and had a child. But one-day the woman said "I must return to the skies now".

This article relating to Japanese mythology is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by .

• v
• t