The second-to-last entry in the first volume of Toriyama Sekien's Gazu Hyakki Yakō is a monster found nowhere else. The serpentine spirit floats into view from behind a sliding door, with what appears to be a segmented exoskeleton, two pincered arms, and a bird-billed face. Based on the amikiri's beak, scissor-like hands, and similar-sounding name, as well as Sekien's fondness for borrowing imagery from Kanō-school artists, it isn't unreasonable to speculate that this creature is based on the interpretation of the kamikiri from the Yōkai Zumaki (妖怪図巻), painted some two hundred years before by Kanō Motonobu (狩野元信). ¹

Sekien left no explanation for this little beast, but modern yōkai compendia often describe it as a creature that appears when no one is around and cuts mosquito nets and nets hung out to dry. This extrapolation from the amikiri's name seems to have originated in Fujisawa Morihiko's (藤澤衛彦) 1930 book Yōkai Gadan Zenshū (妖怪画談全集, Complete Collection of Discussions on Monster Art), and was later disseminated by Mizuki Shigeru.²


Citations
1. Toriyama, Sekien 鳥山石燕. Atsunobu Inada 稲田篤信 and Naohi Tanaka 田中直日, ed. Gazu Hyakki Yakō 画図百鬼夜行. Tokyo: Kokusho Publication Society, 1992. p 41.
2. "Amikiri." Fujisawa Morihiko and Toriyama Sekien. April 18, 2003. Accessed Dec. 23, 2007.