Kappa

A small water-dwelling spirit of the Japanese tradition, recorded across the rivers, ponds, and irrigation channels of rural Japan. The figure was given the body of a child, the beak of a turtle, scaled green skin, and on the crown of the head a saucer-shaped depression that held water. Davis (1912) records that the loss of this water by spilling rendered the figure powerless. The *kappa* drowned bathers and pulled horses into the water by the legs, drawing from the victim a fabled organ called the *shirikodama*. Yanagita's regional folklore record places the figure in nearly every district of Japan under one name or another.

The household defence in the older accounts was the cucumber, on which the kappa’s name was inscribed and which was thrown into the water as offering. Where the offering was kept, drowning was held to be averted. The figure is still kept in summer warning-signs at certain Japanese rivers, the body painted green, the saucer painted full.