The earliest record of a gashadokuro goes back over 1000 years to a bloody rebellion against the central government by a samurai named Taira no Masakado. His daughter Takiyasha hime was a famous sorceress. When Masako was eventually killed for his revolt, his daughter continued his cause. Using her black magic, she summoned a great skeleton from the bodies of dead soldiers to attack the city of Kyōto. Her monster is depicted in a famous print by Utagawa Kuniyoshi.
There's a rather famous woodblock triptych by Japanese artist Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1798–1861) entitled Takiyasha the Witch and the Skeleton Spectre (c.1844), showing a mythical episode in which the emperor's official, Mitsukuni, comes to search for surviving conspirators.
Skeletons seem the sort of thing Lewis or Johnny might run into. I almost wish Lewis had run into a large one after the kuchisake-onna, just to give it some variety. I also wonder how familiar Edward Gorey was with Japanese woodblock prints. The skeleton also reminds me of the stop-motion “living skeleton” created by Ray Harryhausen and featured in both films The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad as well as Jason and the Argonauts.
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