Fuguruma-yōbi 文車妖妃

Fuguruma-yōbi (文車妖妃), the “Letter-Carriage Enchantress,” is a refined and melancholic spirit born from the lingering emotions and unread passions contained within old love letters and scrolls.

Meaning and Origin

The name means Fu (Letter/Writing), Guruma (Cart), Yō (Bewitching/Strange), and Hi (Queen/Consort). It translates to “The Strange Queen of the Book Cart.”

Its origin is the artistic imagination of Toriyama Sekien, appearing in his Hyakki Tsurezure Bukuro. The concept is a pun based on the Tsurezuregusa (Essays in Idleness). Fuguruma-yōbi is a Tsukumogami that arises from the Fuguruma—the small, wheeled carts used to move heavy scrolls and letters in the palaces of the Heian period. She is born not from the paper itself, but from the Accumulated Sentiment (Nen) of the thousands of love letters and secret messages that were once stored in the cart.

Characteristics

Fuguruma-yōbi appears as a high-ranking noblewoman dressed in the tattered, ink-stained robes of a court lady. Her face is often described as “oni-like” but with an air of tragic elegance. She is usually depicted holding a long, unfurling scroll, which she reads with a mournful expression.

Her primary characteristic is her Literary Melancholy. She is a spirit of “Attached Emotions.” She exists in dark corridors or libraries, silently reading and re-reading the forgotten letters of the dead. She doesn’t attack physically, but her presence fills the room with a heavy sense of Obsession and Longing. It is said that if you hear the sound of a small cart rolling down a hallway at night, it is the Fuguruma-yōbi searching for a new letter to add to her collection. She represents the idea that our words and emotions can outlive our bodies, becoming a weight that some objects are forced to carry forever.

Legends

Because she is a “literary” Yokai, her legends often involve scholars and poets. One story tells of a monk who found an old book cart in the ruins of a burned palace. He brought it to his temple to store his sutras.

That night, he saw a beautiful woman sitting on the cart, weeping. She was reading a letter that had been stuck in a secret compartment—a letter from a princess to a lover who had died in battle 300 years ago. The monk, realizing the spirit was the embodiment of that unrequited love, performed a ritual to release the princess’s soul. The cart immediately fell apart into rot. This legend suggests that some “haunted” objects aren’t trying to scare us; they are simply trapped by the stories they contain, waiting for someone to finally read the last page.