Saint Kasa Obake – Hand-Painted Icon of the Japanese Umbrella Spirit

This icon, painted by Blo Kirilov, offers a singular vision: a yokai made holy. The work depicts Kasa Obake, the legendary Japanese umbrella spirit, reimagined in the formal language of Orthodox iconography. A single, all-seeing eye peers out from beneath a deep blue umbrella, while a bright red tongue extends playfully downward. The creature’s solitary wooden leg suggests both instability and balance – a spirit caught between mischief and solemnity.

At the center, the silver halo elevates the absurd to the sacred, framing Kasa Obake not as a figure of fear or ridicule, but as an object of contemplation. The dark background envelops the figure in mystery, while the warm earth tones beneath suggest groundedness in a world of wandering spirits.

Kirilov's technique is both respectful and irreverent, merging Eastern European devotional aesthetics with Japanese folk surrealism. The inscriptions in both Cyrillic and Latin alphabets further emphasize the icon’s hybrid nature – not just a meeting of cultures, but a transformation of meaning.

This piece is more than illustration – it is a quiet icon of the absurd, a saint of forgotten things, of lost umbrellas and lingering glances. It asks: what does it mean to sanctify the strange? Can mischief itself be divine?

A work for collectors who seek the uncanny, the cross-cultural, and the quietly subversive.