Hyōsube () is a Japanese yōkai. There are legends about them in many areas such as Saga Prefecture and Miyazaki Prefecture. It is a child-sized river monster from Kyūshū that lives in underwater caves. It prefers to come out at night and loves to eat eggplants. It is a cousin of the supernatural yōkai in kappa folklore. Origin They are said to be the companions of kappa, and they have alternate names of kappa and gawappa in the Saga Prefecture and gaataro in the Nagasaki Prefecture, but it is also said that legends about them are even older than ones about kappa. They are said to have originated from Binzhushen (兵主神), the later name for Chiyou, and there are considered to be legends of them together with the Hata clan among other returnees. Originally revered as battle gods, in Japan they eventually came to acquire faith as food gods, and they are currently enshrined in places like Yasu, Shiga Prefecture and Tanba, Hyōgo Prefecture where there are shrines called Hyōzu Jinja (兵主神社). There are several hypotheses on the origin of their name, and besides the later mentioned Hyōbu-taifu (兵部大輔), it is also said they got their name from the "hyou hyou" (flapping) sounds they cry out when going back and forth along mountain streams during Higan. Legends by area In Katei 3 (1237), the military commander Tachibana no Kiminari moved from Iyo Province (now Ehime Prefecture) to Take, Saga Prefecture and constructed a shrine on the summit of the mountain behind Shiomi Jinja, but his follow Hyōsube (兵主部) was also said to have moved to the Shiomi river, and nowadays the god enshrined at Shiomi Jinja is considered to be Shibuy's follower, Hyōsube. Also, in the past during Kasuga Jinja's construction, the artisans at that time used a secret method to give life to a doll which provided labor in the shrine's construction, but after the shrine's completion, the unneeded doll was thrown away into a river and turned into a kappa to cause harm to people, and the First assistant to the Minister (Hyōbu-taifu), Shimada Maru quelled it, which is why it is said that the kappa has come to be called Hyōsube. The chief priest of Shiomi Jinja, the Mōri family, and to ward off water disasters and kappa, there is the phrase "Hyōsube, forget not the promise, the one who stands at this river is a child