Age: 23 Birthday: November 12 Height: 175cm Blood Type: A A man who is also able to see spirits. He is a famous actor and exorcist and has a lizard birthmark that moves around on his body. He has the ability to manipulate paper dolls and has three youkai under his command. Natsume tends to disapprove of his forceful exorcism methods.
Natsume's friend from class. He is funny and easy-going, with a slightly perverted side. He has a crush on Taki Tooru, but thinks that she and Natsume are going out.
Age: 15 Birthday: September 17 Height: 171cm Blood Type: O Another student who had recently moved into the area. He is sickly and quite susceptible to illnesses. Like Natsume Takashi, he is able to detect spirits, but to a lesser degree limited to seeing merely shadows and sensing slight presence of spirits. He wants to help Natsume in anyway he can, but is afraid that he will just be a burden because of his weak ability.
Age: 15 Birthday: May 15 Height: 160 cm Blood Type: O Tohru Taki is a female student at Natsume's school. She was first "discovered" by one of Natsume's friends, Nishimura who had heard rumors of her beauty and became entranced, he still maintains an obvious crush on her even though Natsume holds most of her attention. Taki is introduced into the story as a shy, silent girl. Later, the reason for this is because she was cursed by a yokai; the last 13 names said by her will be eaten by him at the end of a one year period. The yokai also throws her into an impossible gamble for her life which he does not honor even when she wins. Taki is generally a happy, extroverted and optimistic girl. She is shown to have a peculiar taste in cuteness, as is shown when she hugs Nyanko-sensei, calling him cute. Like Tanuma, she tries to help Natsume in any way she can, but is usually prevented from doing so because Natsume worries about their involvement with yokai. Even though Taki herself has too little spirit energy to see yokai, she does have the knowledge of drawing yokai circles, discovered by her grandfather. The circle, once drawn, gives any human the ability to see yokai who step within the radius of the circle. The circle does not require any spirit energy to create and activate, so anyone could possible draw it if they know how to. But due to it being complicated in looks, Taki is presummably the only one able to draw it without the need of a guide.
A mysterious feline spirit. Madara was sealed in a shrine until he was accidentally released by Natsume. Because Madara was trapped in a material form for so long, Madara ordinary takes on the shape of a maneki neko (lucky cat), leading Natsume to nickname him Nyanko-sensei. In this form, other people can see him, leading for Natsume having to ask his guardians if he could keep him as a pet. Madara is a powerful spirit, who protects Natsume from others and teaches him spells on occasion, in return for Natsume's promise to give him the Book of Friends when he dies. They often fight each other, which leads to Natsume punching Madara on the face and knocking him out. Despite his protests of not being a cat, he likes to play with cat toys. Nyanko's design is based on a lucky cat statue Midorikawa was given as a child. In the anime, Natsume is more respectful to Madara.
A huge powerful bull youkai with many followers. He acknowledges that Natsume Takashi is a worthy holder of the Book of Friends and offers himself as Natsume's bodyguard in place of the "useless" Madara.