Hiderigami

Hiderigami in Illustrated One Hundred Demons from the Present and the Past

'Hiderigami' or Hanba (旱魃 or 日照り神, "god of drought") or 旱魃Template:Or 旱魃

 was a monster from Chinese legends, and is now a mythical species of yōkai in Japanese folklore that holds the power to cause droughts.

Description

In early Qin to Han, the Hanba appears in a female form, with characteristics of a young woman in black clothes. Doubling as a god and a monster, people associated it with the god of drought, and drove it away with sunshine, flood, and tigers, in order to drive away drought for rain.

From mid-Han to early Ming, the goddess image has slowly switched to a ghostly appearance. The reason for it is because the worship for nature from early Qin to Han has slowly died down, thus the god side has gradually been denied in people, hence the more evil image.

After mid-Ming, the ghost image has evolved to the zombie image. At late Qing, the myth that hanba that can change to hou has appeared.

According to a quote from Bencao Gangmu in the Edo period encyclopedia Wakan Sansai Zue, the Hiderigami is "from sixty to ninety centimeters long, has eyes on the top of its head, and moves quickly like the wind."

In Toriyama Sekien's Illustrated One Hundred Demons from the Present and the Past, it is referred to as Hiderigami (魃, "drought") or Kanbo (旱母, "drought mother") and is drawn as a beast with one arm and one eye.

In China

In China, the same entity is called Batsu (魃).