Kamikiri (髪切り, hair-cutter) or Kurokamikiri (黒髪切, black hair-cutter) is a Japanese yōkai said to secretly cut people's hair on the head. They were rumored from time to time in the urban areas of the Edo Period, and can sporadically be seen in the records from the 17th to the 19th centuries.

In the Shokoku Rijidan, a collection of stories (setsuwa) compiled in the Kanpō years (1741-1743) of the Edo Period, there is written a tale about how near the beginning of Genroku, at Matsusaka, Ise Province (now Matsusaka, Mie Prefecture), and at Konya, Edo, (now Chiyoda, Tokyo, Tokyo), strange paranormal incidents about how people's hair, both male and female, would suddenly be cut off from their motoyui (元結, a hair-tying string) as they were walking along on roads at night. Those people would not notice this at all, and the cut-off hair would fall down on the road still tied up. A similar paranormal incident is recorded to have occurred in the essay Hannichi Kanwa (半日閑話) by Ōta Nanpo at Shitaya in Edo (now Taitō, Tokyo) and in Kohinata (now Bunkyō, Tokyo), and it says that females servants employed at shops and residences would be victims of this.

In Meiji 7 (1874), in Hongō, Tokyo, on the 3rd street at the Suzuki residence, a female servant named "Gin" was a victim of this kamikiri phenomenon, and this was also reported in the newspaper (Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun) at that time. On March 10, some time after 9PM, when Gin was going to the residence's lavatory, she felt a chilly presence and then suddenly had her tied up hair cut, making it very messy. Gin was so startled, she rushed to a nearby home and fainted. The people of that house looked after Gin and listened to what happened, and when they looked around that lavatory, they found the cut-off hair on the floor. Eventually, Gin fell into an illness, and was accepted back by her parents. It became rumored that "in that bathroom, a kamikiri appeared," and it is said that nobody ever tried to go in there ever since.

Although many documents state that its true identity is unknown, there are legends that can be roughly divided between ones that suppose it was the work of a fox (Kitsune), and ones that suppose it is the work of an insect, the kamikiri-mushi (hair-cutting insect).

In the late Edo Period, the folk encyclopedia Kiyū Shōran (嬉遊笑覧) writes that in Kan'ei 14 (1637), the kamikiri was the work of an insect called the "kamikiri-mushi" (hair-cutting insect). This kamikiri-mushi is thought to refer not to the actual kamikirimushi, but rather an imagined insect, and it was said that an insect with razor teeth and scissor hands would lurk under the roof. Paintings depicting this kamikiri-mushi would be sold as amulets to ward off evil spirits, and it became a trend to wear paper charms on one's self with the poem "if the hair of a shrine parishioner of a great god shall be cut, let it be a round cloth wig" (千早振神の氏子の髪なれば切とも切れじ玉のかづらを, "chihayaburu; kami no ujiko no; kami nareba; kiritomo kireji; tama no kazura wo").

All published appearances of from before January 1, )-(95)}} are public domain in the US.

Some notable appearances are listed below:

* Shokoku Rijidan
* Hannichi Kanwa
* Kiyū Shōran

* "Kamikiri", when written as 紙切り, means "paper silhouette cutout" or "paper knife". It is also the name for the traditional Japanese art of papercutting, performed on stage to a live audience.
* The Longhorn beetle is called カミキリムシ (kamikiri-mushi) in Japanese.
* There are characters in [https://naruto.fandom.com/wiki/Kamikiri Naruto] and [https://myheroacademia.fandom.com/wiki/Togaru_Kamakiri My Hero Academia] named after the Kamikiri.

*[https://myths-in-media.fandom.com/wiki/Kamikiri Myhts in Media Wiki]
*[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamikiri_(haircutting) Wikipedia]
*[https://yokai.com/kamikiri/?srsltid=AfmBOopJX5VBu0urTeP2M6xX2SpGiqw4x6ybPI15bPOZUAJeSgDvD9q7 Yokai.com]
Category:Japanese Characters
Category:Yōkai
Category:Folklore Characters
Category:Unknown Creator
Category:Unknown Debuts
Category:Monster Characters
Category:Insect Themed Characters
Category:Video Game Characters
Category:Icchibanketsu Characters
Category:Jobmania: Eternal Dungeon Characters
Category:GeGeGe no Kitaro Characters
Category:Naruto Characters
Category:Manga / Anime Characters
Category:Final Fantasy Characters
Category:Yu-Gi-Oh! Monster
Category:TCG Characters