5. Tengu

     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. In traditional art tengu are portrayed as human-like creatures with a bird's beak or a long and beak-like nose, wings and tail feathers 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.