What looks like a reptile-amphibian hybrid, has a dish shaped skull, smells like fish, is child-like and out to steal your crops and drown your livestock? The Japanese water yokai, Kappa.

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Bibliography
Akutagawa, Ryunosuke. Kappa, trans. Seiichi Shiojiri. Greenwood Press, 1970.

Amos, Timothy. Caste in Early Modern Japan: Danzaemon and the Edo Outcaste Order. Routledge, 2019.

Cornyetz, Nina. “Heterosexualizing the Bishōnen: Ambivalence in Izumi Kyōka’s Yōken Kibun.” The Journal of Japanese Studies, vol. 47, no. 2, 2021, pp. 381–40.

Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, 1600-1900. Columbia University Press, 2002.

Foster, Michael Dylan. Pandemonium and Parade: Japanese Monsters and the Culture of Yokai. University of California Press, 2008.

Foster, Michael Dylan. The Book of Yokai. University of California Press, 2015.

Foster, Michael Dylan. “The metamorphosis of the kappa: a transformation of folklore and folklorism in Japan.” Asian Folklore Studies, vol. 57, issue 1, April 1998.

Shamoon, Deborah. “The Yokai in the Database: Supernatural Creatures and Folklore in Manga and Anime.” Marvels & Tales, vol. 27, no. 2, 2013, pp. 276–289.

Tozaki, T., et al. “Genetic diversity and relationships among native Japanese horse breeds, the Japanese Thoroughbred and horses outside of Japan using genome-wide SNP data.” Animal Genetics, vol. 50, issue 5, October 2019, pp. 449–459.