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The Kamaitachi Youkai
Aug. 3rd, 2013 05:12 pm鎌鼬 (かまいたち)
Sickle Weasel
Sometimes a person walking in the mountains will be beset by a ferocious wind, and only later will they discover the deep but painless gashes made in their skin as if by some very sharp instrument.
This is said to be the work of the kamai-tachi, a weasel-like creature that rides in a whirlwind, and is equipped with very sharp sickle-like claws with which to attack humans. They usually assault a victim as a team, where the first knocks down the victim, the second slashes him with its teeth, and the third heals the wound.
In Gifu prefecture, the kamaitachi is said to work in teams of three, the first rushing upon and stunning the victim, the second cutting with its claws, and the third applying medicine that eliminates pain and stifles the bleeding.
There are several conceptions of how it looked or operated, but the most common is one of a trio of weasels with sharp claws, riding on a gust of wind and cutting people's skin on the legs. According to this interpretation, the first weasel knocked the unsuspecting victim down, the second cut the victim's flesh and the third applied medication to the wounds, so that at the time the victim realised what was happening they were left only with painful wounds that weren't bleeding. Sometimes the three are described as brothers, sometimes as triplets. This account can be traced back to Toriyama Sekien, who was presumably also the first to imagine the apparition to have the form of a weasel. The weasel was a typical Toriyama pun - one of the folk names for the apparition was kamaetachi (構え太刀), meaning "attacking" which he changed slightly to mean "sickle weasel".
info from The Obakemono Project, Encyclopedia Mythica, Wikipedia,
