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Patrons of Japanese restaurants often encounter fierce red masks depicting the sausage-nosed face of the tengu, a strange and unpredictable creature said to make its home deep in the mountains. Many believe that this bizarre combination of man and bird still haunts remote forests, its unreal wings conveying it great distances in a heartbeat, and its fearsome eyes shining with the mischief it still perpetrates upon unwary humans. They are said to enjoy spreading chaos and confusion in the human world, punishing the vain, annoying the powerful and rewarding the humble folk who can join in their nocturnal merrymaking without fear. Sometimes they kidnap people and leave them wandering through the woods in a state of dementia called tengu-kakushi, but sometimes they are called upon to help lost children find their way home.

Being shape-shifters, tengu are capable of assuming a variety of forms or casting various illusions to deceive humans, but their primoridal nature is definitely avian. They hatch from enormous eggs (despite almost always being male), and make their homes in the sugi (Cryptomeria) trees that make up much of Japan's forests. Although today they are often associated with crows, ravens, and the like (karasu can refer to any member of genus Corvus), the first bird they were identified with was apparently the black-eared kite, Milvus lineatus, a gregarious raptor Lafcadio Hearn noted for its insolent and brash behavior around humans.

In traditional art tengu are portrayed as human-like creatures with a bird's beak or a long and beak-like nose, wings and tailfeathers on their backs, and claws on their fingers and toes. Some of the more monstrous depictions give them scaled digits or lips, pointed ears, mouths full of sharp teeth, three-toed bird's feet, or somewhat bat-like webbed flight feathers. Like many demons, they are often associated with the color red.

Perhaps via confusion with the similarly-long-nosed Shinto deity Sarutahiko, tengu are also sometimes portrayed with a red face and sans any bird features. This image is particularly common in folk art, like the famous tengu masks that can be found in many Japanese restaurants.

Sometimes this is said to be the image of the dai-tengu or ō-tengu (great tengu), who is served by flocks of common tengu called as ko-tengu or karasu-tengu (little or crow tengu).

Closely associated with the tengu are the yamabushi or shugenja, a sect of ascetic warrior-monks who sought power and enlightenment by living in the harsh, unforgiving, and supernaturally-auspicious environment of the mountains. Sharing the tengu's remote home and bad reputation, the yamabushi inevitably became associated with the bird-goblins, and often hold their image sacred. So universal was this correlation that tengu are almost always depicted wearing the mountain-ascetic's small black cap and pom-pommed sash.

Other items tengu sometimes have on their person include a Buddhist monk's ringed staff (shakujō); feathered or straw cloaks that grant their wearers invisibility; tall, awkward-looking one-toothed geta sandals (nicknamed tengu geta); and feathered magic fans or a the leaf of the Aralia japonica plant, both of which are called ha-uchiwa. The hauchiwa is used either as a device to alter the length of the tengu's nose (making him less obviously inhuman), or to produce a ferocious, hurricane-like wind. The latter use is not surprising, as tengu were supposedly descended from the furious storm god Susano-o-No-Mikoto.

The origins of the tengu are somewhat obscured. They may be ultimately descended from ancient native bird dieties, but they have most likely had some foreign influence as well. The name tengu is derived from the Chinese tian-gou, and both are written with the same characters. The tian-gou was also a mischievous, mountain-dwelling entity, and while tian-gou means "heavenly dog" (apparently a reference to the fiery tail of a certain meteor), its physical descriptions are various. How much the tengu take from their Chinese namesake is not entirely clear, but at least one source describes a tian-gou with a bird's beak and wings and tangled hair. The tengu's shape may have also been influenced by the Hindu/Buddhist eagle deity Garuda, or the owl-like Chinese thunder god Lei Gong, both of whom it also resembles.

To Japanese Buddhists tengu were evil beings at first, fond of carrying off and devouring children and bent on leading Buddhist monks down the path to Hell. Numerous stories and picture scrolls told of priests defeating the bird-faced goblins and undoing their deceptive illusions. Sometimes the tengu were destroyed, reverting back to the form of a kite or a kestrel in death, but sometimes they were themselves converted to Buddhism.

Later Buddhism and Shintoism resolved their differences, resulting in syncretism between the native gods and the imported Indian ones. Perhaps via association with the protective deity Karura (Garuda's Japanese name), the tengu's destructive behavior was downgraded to mere mischief, and they were even reputed to protect shrines and temples and help families find their lost offspring. The comically suggestive connotations of the bird-man's long nose may also have taken the edge off the creatures.

Tengu could still be very dangerous to those who threatened their homes or insulted them - as they were extremely arrogant beings by nature. In some traditions, tengu were the reincarnations of haughty priests or samurai who had misused their power, and in their current life they particularly detested pomposity and pretentiousness in humans. Long noses are still a symbol of conceit in Japan, just as similar anatomy in the West represents Pinnochio-esque untruthfulness, and tengu ni naru (turning into a tengu) is an expression indicating someone has become too full of themselves.

These goblins may deserve their high opinions of themselves, however, as tengu are credited with a vast array of supernatural powers. Along with shape-shifting, tengu are said to be capable of teleporting instantly from one place to another, and of speaking telepathically to humans without moving their mouths or beaks. They are also famed for their skills in martial arts, and are said to have trained the ninja, taught samurai, schooled famous heroes in kendō and possessed the founder of aikidō.

The tengu are still feared and revered by many people even today. Their wild-eyed faces can be found everywhere in Japan, and numerous montane shrines and temples are guarded by their sword-wielding images, embodying the human desire to stay on the good side of the mighty and unpredictable spirit of the mountains.

Oni are devil-like demons with long nails, wild hair, a fierce look and two horns on their forehead . They wear tiger skins and can fly. Oni hunt for the souls of those who did evil things in their lives. In a nutshell, a guy one would not like to encounter in the darkness!

The Oni character is a deep-rooted aspect of Japanese culture. Japanese children grow up with tales of Oni. In medieval times, people living on distant islands were considered as oni. And during the time of the Japanese seclusion from the rest of the world and during war times, foreigners were looked at as Oni.

Like the tengu, foxes were both divine and mischievous beings, adept at shapeshifting and illusion and often accused of possessing and misleading humans.

The fox refines its talents over the years and acquires wisdom with age, and it was thought that a fox lucky enough to survive fifty or a hundred years would then be sufficiently skilled in magic to transform into a person. As a sign of its seniority, a long-lived fox would develop an extra tail with each passing century, until it possessed nine and had become impossibly powerful and clever.

Foxes were thought to live lives much like people, and in art they often interact with each other in a partially anthropomorphic form, standing on two legs and wearing clothes. But to enter the world of humans they had to look completely like them, as foxes caught trying to trick people with disguises would be severely punished, and often wound up in soup. A fox wishing to transform itsself had many special techniques at its disposal, such as placing a human skull on top of its head and praying to the Big Dipper. A careless fox might still leave elements of its anatomy unchanged beneath its clothes, usually a tail but sometimes fur and paws as well, and sometimes it was thus discovered.

The most famous kitsune stories involve foxes that transform themselves into beautiful women, usually for devious purposes but sometimes out of love. Foxes in human form would even sometimes marry human men and have children, who would manifest their supernatural vulpine heritage in unusual strength, charisma, or spiritual power. Famous men such as the great onmyouji Abe no Seimei were often said to be the sons of fox wives.

Foxes have also become very closely associated and even confused with the kami Inari, the ambiguously-gendered god/goddess of rice and the harvest, and are often thought to be his/her messengers or incarnations. Depictions of foxes have largely replaced anthropomorphic images of Inari at his/her many shrines, which are guarded by a pair of stone foxes instead of the usual Chinese lions. Offerings of abura-age (fried, sweetened tofu), thought to be a favorite of foxes, are often made to this kami.

Various ranks of foxes are said to exist; at the bottom is the yako or nogitsune, the ordinary, earthly "field fox", above that are the kiko (air or spirit fox), and the kuuko (sky or emptiness fox); and the highest of all is the tenko or amagitsune, the fox of heaven, sometimes considered to be the same being as the great tengu. The nogitsune, as the only kind of fox that does not serve Inari, is also the only type that can harm a human being, but these wild foxes can still sometimes reach their full nine-tailed potential, as in the tale of the wicked Tamamo-No-Mae, who through her deadliness and illusionary beauty became perhaps the most famous fox in all of Japanese folklore.