IPPONDATARA

Lore

Ippondatara (本踏鞴) translates literally as “forge press.” The yokai’s very name ties its essence to the grueling craft of blacksmithing, while its chosen haunts—high mountain passes once lined with ore pits and crude smelters—set the scene. There the legend of a one-legged, one-eyed spirit that appears only once a year first took shape.

The classic description stresses two anatomical anomalies: a single massive leg and one huge eye. Folklore paints them as occupational injuries—an eye seared blind from staring into a white-hot furnace, a leg wasted by decades of stamping the bellows pedal. The creature moves in great hops and lumbering tumbles; every thrust shakes the ground, leaving the distinctive print of a single foot. Almost always it carries an enormous smith’s hammer, sometimes rimmed in flame.