The aobōzu is depicted in the Gazu Hyakki Yakō as a one-eyed buddhist priest standing next to a thatched hut, however as there is no explanation of the image, the aobōzu's specific characteristics remain unknown.[2]
It is believed that the aobōzu is the direct inspiration for the one-eyed priest hitotsume-kozō that is present in many yōkai drawings, such as Sawaki Suushi's Hyakkai-Zukan published in 1737.[3] There is also a theory that because the kanji ao (青) in its name also means inexperienced, it was depicted as a priest who has not studied enough.[4]
Hitotsume-kozō (一つ目小僧, "one-eyed boys") are monsters (obake) found in Japanese folklore. They are roughly the size of ten-year-old children, but otherwise resemble bald Buddhist priests. Their most distinctive feature, however, is a single, giant eye peering from the center of the face, along with a long tongue, much like a Tsukomogami monster.
Hitotsume-kozō are relatively harmless creatures, content to run about frightening human beings or telling loud people to be quiet (they enjoy silence). However, many people consider an encounter with a one-eyed goblin to be a bad omen. For this reason, the superstitious often leave bamboo baskets in front of their houses, as these are reputed to repel the creatures. A reason for this may be that, in seeing the basket's many holes, the hitotsume-kozō will see the basket as having many eyes, and run away jealous and ashamed at only having one.
Tsukumogami (付喪神, "artifact spirit") are a type of Japanese spirit. According to the Tsukumogami-emaki, tsukumogami originate from items or artifacts that have reached their 100th birthday and thus become alive and aware. Any object of this age, from swords to toys, can become a tsukumogami. Tsukumogami are considered spirits and supernatural beings, as opposed to enchanted items.
Tsukumogami vary radically in appearance, depending on the type of item they originated from as well as the condition that item was in. Some, such as tsukumogami originating from paper lanterns or broken sandals, can have tears which become eyes and sharp teeth, thus giving a horrifying visage. Others, such as worn prayer beads or teacups, may merely manifest faces and appendages, giving a warm and friendly appearance.
Though by and large tsukumogami are harmless and at most tend to play occasional pranks on unsuspecting victims, as shown in the Otogizōshi they do have the capacity for anger and will band together to take revenge on those who are wasteful or throw them away thoughtlessly. To prevent this, to this day some jinja ceremonies, such as the Hari Kuyō, are performed to console broken and unusable items.
It is said that modern items cannot become tsukumogami; the reason for this is that tsukumogami are said to be repelled by electricity.[1] Additionally, few modern items are used for the 100-year-span that it takes for an artifact to gain a soul.
An abumi-guchi (鐙口, lit. "stirrup mouth") is a strange, furry yōkai, or Japanese monster, that is illustrated in Sekien Toriyama's Gazu Hyakki Tsurezure Bukuro. It is a type of tsukumogami formed from a stirrup, usually one that once belonged to a fallen soldier. It is said that the abumi-guchi will wait where it lies for the fallen soldier to return.
Abura-akago (油赤子, "oil baby") is a creature illustrated in Toriyama Sekien's Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki,(Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki (今昔画図続百鬼?, "The Illustrated One Hundred Demons from the Present and the Past") is the second book of Japanese artist Toriyama Sekien's famous Gazu Hyakki Yakō series, published ca. 1781. These books are supernatural bestiaries, collections of ghosts, spirits, spooks and monsters, many of which Toriyama based on literature, folklore, other artwork. These works have had a profound influence on subsequent yōkai imagery in Japan.) as an infant spirit lapping oil out of an andon lamp.
Sekien's accompanying notes describe it:
- In the eighth town of Ōtsu in Ōmi ("Afumi") Province there exists a flying ball-like fire. (近江国 （あふみのくに） 大津の八町に玉のごとくの火飛行 （ひぎやう） する事あり。)
- The natives say that long ago in the village of Shiga there was a person who stole oil, and every night he stole the oil from the Jizō of the Ōtsu crossroads, but when this person died his soul became a flame and even now they grow accustomed to this errant fire. (土人云、むかし志賀の里に油をうるものあり、夜毎に大津辻の地蔵の油をぬすみけるが、その者死て魂魄炎となりて今に迷ひの火となれるとぞ。)
- If it is so then the baby which licks the oil is this person's rebirth. (しからば油をなむる赤子は此ものの再生せしにや。)
Aka Manto (Red Cape) is a Japanese urban legend about a malicious spirit who haunts public and school toilets, who will ask you if you want red paper or blue paper. In some version he will ask you if you want a red or blue cape. Often described as a beautiful man in life and hounded constantly by admirers, he now wears a mask to hide his face.
If you're sitting on the toilet (usually the last stall), a mysterious voice will ask you if you want red paper or blue paper. If you answer red paper, you will be sliced apart till your clothes are stained red. If you choose blue paper, you will be strangled till your face turns blue. Any attempt to trick Aka Manto by asking for a different colour will result in you being dragged to the netherworld. The only correct answer to say is 'No paper'.
Aka Manto is sometimes referred to as Aoi Manto (Blue Cape).
Sometimes the voice will ask you if you want a cape rather than paper. If you agree to red, the skin on your back is ripped off to resemble a red cape. If you ask for blue, all the blood is drained from your body.
One popular version of the story changes the choice from red paper to a red vest:
A police man and woman were called to a school after a student reported hearing a male voice in the girl's bathroom. The police woman went to the bathroom while her male partner waited outside. When inside the stall a voice asked “Shall we put on the red vest?” The police man outside, who was listening at the door, heard his partner answer “Yes”. A sudden scream and loud thud followed. When the policeman opened the bathroom door, he found the police woman decapitated. Her blood had soaked into her vest, turning it red.
Another version of the story says that if you ask for yellow paper, you have your head forced into the toilet you've just used.
Akabeko (赤べこ Akabeko, red cow) is a traditional toy from the Aizu region of Japan. The toy is made from two pieces of papier-mâché-covered wood, shaped and painted to look like a red cow or ox. One piece represents the cow's head and neck and the other its body. The head and neck hangs from a string and fits into the hollow body. When the toy is moved, the head thus bobs up and down and side to side.
Aizu legend claims that the toys are based on a real cow that lived in the 9th century and showed its devotion to Buddha by willing its soul away or by refusing to leave the site of a temple it had helped to construct. The earliest akabeko toys were created in the late 16th or early 17th century. Over time, people came to believe that the toys could ward off smallpox and other illnesses. Akabeko has become one of Fukushima Prefecture's most famous crafts and a symbol of the Aizu region.
According to an Aizu-area legend recorded by Thomas Madden, akabeko toys are based on a real cow that lived in AD 807. At that time, a monk named Tokuichi was supervising the construction of Enzō-ji, a temple in Yanaizu. Upon the temple's completion, a red ox that had been used to haul timber to the site gave its spirit to Buddha, and its flesh immediately turned to stone. Another version of the tale claims that the cow instead refused to leave the temple grounds after construction had been completed and became a permanent fixture there. The red cow was called akabeko (赤べこ akabeko, beko is Aizu dialect for cow) and became a symbol of zealous devotion to the Buddha.[1]
Akabeko toys date to the late 16th or early 17th century. Toyotomi Hideyoshi had solidified his power over Japan, and he sent his representative, Gamō Ujisato, to be the lord of the Aizu region in 1590. At his new post, Ujisato heard the story of akabeko and ordered his court artisans, who had accompanied him from Kyoto, to create a toy based on the red cow. These early papier-mâché akabeko introduced most of the basic elements for which the toy is known.[1]
In the same period, Japan suffered a smallpox outbreak. People in Aizu noticed that children who owned akabeko toys did not seem to catch the illness.[1] The akabeko's red color may have enhanced this association, since red amulets are thought to protect against that illness.[2][3] Akabeko toys became very popular as charms to ward off sickness, a superstition that persists in modern times. The toy has since become one of the few crafts from Fukushima Prefecture to be known all over Japan[1] and a symbol of the Aizu area.[4]
An Akashita (赤舌, lit. "red tongue") is a yōkai that appeared in Toriyama Sekien's Gazu Hyakki Yakō. It is drawn as a beast with clawed hands and a hairy face, with most of its body hidden in a black cloud over a floodgate. In its open mouth is a large tongue. Sekien did not attach an explanatory note, so it is not certain whether he intended it as an original creation, but it may be related to the shakuzetsujin (赤舌神, lit. "red-tongued god") which guards the western gate of Jupiter. It may also be related to the shakuzetsunichi (赤舌日), a day of bad luck in Onmyōdō.
Oni or Akki(鬼) are creatures from Japanese folklore, variously translated as demons, devils, ogres or trolls. They are popular characters in Japanese art, literature and theatre.[1]
Depictions of oni vary widely but usually portray them as hideous, gigantic creatures with sharp claws, wild hair, and two long horns growing from their heads.[2] They are humanoid for the most part, but occasionally, they are shown with unnatural features such as odd numbers of eyes or extra fingers and toes.[3] Their skin may be any number of colors, but red and blue are particularly common.[4][5]
They are often depicted wearing tiger-skin loincloths and carrying iron clubs, called kanabō (金棒). This image leads to the expression "oni with an iron club" (鬼に金棒 oni-ni-kanabō), that is, to be invincible or undefeatable. It can also be used in the sense of "strong beyond strong", or having one's natural quality enhanced or supplemented by the use of some tool.[6][7]
he word "oni" is sometimes speculated to be derived from on, the on'yomi reading of a character (隠) meaning to hide or conceal, as oni were originally invisible spirits or gods which caused disasters, disease, and other unpleasant things. These nebulous beings could also take on a variety of forms to deceive (and often devour) humans. Thus the Chinese character 鬼 (Mandarin Pinyin: kuí; Jyutping: gwai2) meaning "ghost" came to be used for these formless creatures.
The invisible oni eventually became anthropomorphized and took on its modern, ogre-like form, partly via syncretism with creatures imported by Buddhism, such as the Indian rakshasa and yaksha, the hungry ghosts called gaki, and the devilish underlings of Enma-Ō who punish sinners in Jigoku (Hell).
Another source for the oni's image is a concept from China and Onmyōdō. The northeast direction was once termed the kimon (鬼門, "demon gate"), and was considered an unlucky direction through which evil spirits passed. Based on the assignment of the twelve zodiac animals to the cardinal directions, the kimon was also known as the ushitora (丑寅), or "ox tiger" direction, and the oni's bovine horns and cat-like fangs, claws, and tiger-skin loincloth developed as a visual depiction of this term.[8]
Temples are often built facing that direction, and Japanese buildings sometimes have L-shaped indentions at the northeast to ward oni away. Enryakuji, on Mount Hiei northeast of the center of Kyoto, and Kaneiji, in that direction from Edo Castle, are examples. The Japanese capital itself moved northeast from Nagaoka to Kyoto in the 8th century.[9]
ome villages hold yearly ceremonies to drive away oni, particularly at the beginning of Spring. During the Setsubun festival, people throw soybeans outside their homes and shout "Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi!" ("鬼は外！福は内！", " Oni go out! Blessings come in!").[10] Monkey statues are also thought to guard against oni, since the Japanese word for monkey, saru, is a homophone for the word for "leaving". Folklore has it that holly can be used to guard against Oni.[11] In Japanese versions of the game tag, the player who is "it" is instead called the "oni".[12]
In more recent times, oni have lost some of their original wickedness and sometimes take on a more protective function. Men in oni costumes often lead Japanese parades to ward off any bad luck, for example. Japanese buildings sometimes include oni-faced roof tiles called onigawara (鬼瓦), which are thought to ward away bad luck, much as gargoyles in Western tradition.[13]
Oni are prominently featured in the Japanese children's story Momotaro (Peach Boy), and the book The Funny Little Woman.
Many Japanese idioms and proverbs also make reference to oni. For example, the expression oya ni ninu ko wa oni no ko (親に似ぬ子は鬼の子) means literally "a child that does not resemble its parents is the child of an oni," but it is used idiomatically to refer to the fact that all children naturally take after their parents, and in the odd case that a child appears not to do so, it might be because the child's true biological parents are not the ones who are raising the child. Depending on the context in which it is used, it can have connotations of "children who do not act like their parents are not true human beings," and may be used by a parent to chastise a misbehaving child. Variants of this expression include oya ni ninu ko wa onigo (親に似ぬ子は鬼子) and oya ni ninu ko wa onikko (親に似ぬ子は鬼っ子).[14] It is also well known in japan a game named kakure oni (隠れ鬼), or more commonly kakurenbo, that means chase the demon and it is the same as the hide and seek game that kids in western countries play.
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