This index defines one of the primary conceptual domains of Japanese folklore. It documents collective phenomena, animated objects (tsukumogami), and abstract folkloric entities that do not exist merely as individual monsters, but as embodiments of accumulated belief, neglect, fear, memory, and communal imagination.
Rather than depicting singular creatures, the beings collected here represent how Japanese folklore transforms social anxiety, forgotten objects, repetitive customs, and collective experience into vivid supernatural imagery. They reveal folklore as a system that encodes abstract ideas into narrative form.
This domain functions as the conceptual foundation of Japanese folklore, linking material culture, ritual cycles, and communal psychology into a unified mythic structure.