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The story
On 5ch’s Hello! Project chat board “Morning Coffee,” a user posed the question: “There’s a female yokai called Yamanba (Mountain Hag), so why isn’t there a male version called ‘Yamanji’?” — sparking a full-blown yokai discussion. It turned out a male yokai called “Yama-jijii” (Mountain Old Man) does exist, as shown by a Wikipedia excerpt someone posted, but it was pointed out that he’s far less well-known than Yamanba and nowhere near as fierce in temperament. The conversation then expanded into the theory that one-eyed, one-legged yokai designs were modeled on the craftsmen communities who worked tatara ironmaking in the mountains, turning into a lively bit of folklore chat.
What people said
Is it because men don't turn into monsters?
No Yamanji, but there is "Fujiyamacho" (a pun blending "Fuji-yama" with "macho")
but no "Ultraman Who Left"
When men get old, they turn into a cute little granny type.
When women get old, they turn into monsters.
Old women are tough as nails.
She's less like someone banished to the mountains for a crime or to cut down on mouths to feed, and more like an old granny left behind in a depopulated mountain village.
Go back further in history and even blacksmiths got treated as oni.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Ehon_atsumegusa_Yamachichi.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Tosa_Yama-chichi.jpg
Whoa, that one-eyed, one-legged look really does seem based on the groups who mined iron sand in the mountains.
Things like the Ippon-datara (a one-legged yokai), the one-eyed Hyottoko (the squint-eyed "fire man" mask), and the club-wielding oni — there are actually quite a few theories that these were modeled on iron-working communities.
Why would people digging up iron sand end up with one leg?
Remember the tatara ironworks in Princess Mononoke?
The tatara is the foot-pumped bellows used to blow air into the furnace.
Pumping it too much could wreck one leg — or alternatively, people born with a weak leg were the ones put to work at the tatara.
Playing dumb about Yama-jijii like that…
Searched it with AI and it's actually true lol
Apparently the leading theory is that it's modeled on the brutal working conditions of tatara smiths.
Oh, thanks lol
Just ran my own AI search too
Thought it had to be a joke, but it's actually true lol
Background and Key Points of This Topic
This is actually a topic folklore studies touch on too. A male yokai called “Yama-jijii” (Mountain Old Man) does exist, but he’s far less well-known than Yamanba, and he’s usually portrayed as mild-mannered — more often the one getting tricked by people than the other way around. The theory raised in the thread — that one-eyed, one-legged yokai like the “Ippon-datara” were modeled on the craftsmen communities who worked tatara ironmaking in the mountains — is a fairly well-known hypothesis that’s long circulated in folklore studies, but it remains just one theory, not settled academic fact. Likewise, the “oni = foreigners” theory is one of the popular legends that spread from the Edo period onward amid wariness of Russia’s southward expansion, and it has no historical proof behind it. Note that the latter half of the thread devolved into mutual sniping at specific posters, so this article has been edited down to just the parts relevant to the folklore discussion.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hello! Project) thread “Yamanba Exists, So Why Doesn’t Yamanji?“
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