A yamamba of Hachijojima who both misleads and nurtures
Tecchi
Tekki / Tenji / Tenjime
A shape stands deep in the bamboo grass — is it stealing the path, or cradling a lost child? Only the long-breasted old woman's face turns quietly to watch.
Overview
Tecchi is a yamamba-type yokai told of on Hachijojima island, Tokyo, also known as Tekki, Tenji, or Tenjime. It is said to make people wander the mountain trails all night or vanish outright, yet it also raises lost children rather than harming them, embodying both menace and kindness at once.
Encounter
It is met on Hachijojima's mountain paths, thick with bamboo grass. Anyone who enters the mountains at night may be made to wander through the wrong places until dawn, or disappear entirely; yet a lost child has also been found alive in the mountains some twenty days later, said to have been cared for by Tecchi all the while.
Lore
Tecchi is told of as a yamamba-type yokai of Hachijojima, also called Tekki, Tenji, and Tenjime. The island's yamamba is also said to walk the mountains on one leg with a bamboo staff. Related accounts appear independently in Wikipedia's Yamamba entry, describing features such as sores on the body and breasts slung over both shoulders like a sash, and a tale of caring for a lost child for several days.
Traits
Its body is said to be covered in sores, with long, drooping breasts slung over both shoulders as it walks. It has the power to confound travelers and make them disappear, yet this is not rooted in malice alone — grown familiar, it will even carry fodder for the household. It is said to have kept a missing child alive in the mountains for some twenty days before returning them safely, a trait that marks it as something close to a mountain deity.
