Subject
Oni 鬼
Usually given in English as demon or ogre. The oldest tale collections keep their oni in the register of things that happened, and one of them states flatly that a parent grown very old will become an oni and try to eat even their own children. The best-known oni of all, Shuten-dōji of Mount Ōe, is drawn not as a beast but as a host.
Notes
- Oni, Yamauba, and the Other Man-Eaters In English they are ogres and mountain witches. The old records give the same appetite to a mother, a prince, a preacher, and the people one ridge over.
- Who Made Shuten-dōji Japan's best-known demon has a biography — a temple boy driven from mountain to mountain by the great saints — and nobody agrees which mountain he ended on.
- The Arm Was Not Cut at the Rashōmon Japan's most famous demon-arm story is set at a ruined gate. The oldest surviving text puts it on a bridge, and the demon in it has no name.
- Hyakki Yagyō Was a Day You Stayed Indoors Before it was a painted procession it was a word a frightened man reached for, a set of forbidden dates, and an address in Kyoto people called the demon hall.
- The Oldest Ghost in Kyoto Predates Kyoto Lightning killed a man sheltering under a pine, before the capital existed. Three centuries later the corner where it stood was still called the demon hall.
- She Went Into the Hills Alone to Give Birth A servant with no family and no husband planned to bear her child in the hills and die there unnoticed. An old woman took her in and was kind for three days.
Volume
Japanese Horror Folktales Collection
HITOKUI
Tales of the Man Eaters
Twenty Japanese tales of man-eaters — and of the moment when hunger stops being human.
Included with Kindle Unlimited