In Japanese folklore, the yokai described as a giant skeleton made from the bones of famine victims is the gashadokuro.
The gashadokuro is a gigantic skeletal spirit assembled from the bones of people who died in battle or from starvation. It is commonly imagined as more than ten metres tall, with its size and hollow clattering making it an especially dramatic figure in modern presentations of Japanese yōkai.
According to popular descriptions, a gashadokuro roams at night and attacks humans. Its teeth may produce a warning clacking sound often represented as “gachi gachi.” Some accounts say it becomes active around 2 a.m. and possesses unusual powers such as invisibility or near-indestructibility, though these details are not consistently supported by older Japanese sources.
The creature is often linked to stories of accumulated resentment among the unburied dead. One famous modern legend connects its creation with Takiyasha-hime, who supposedly summoned a skeleton from battlefield bones after the death of her father, Taira no Masakado. It is not a tsukumogami, which is an object transformed into a spirit, nor a kasa-obake, the umbrella yokai.