The first is a four-chō senjafuda depicting a wooden votive plaque, itself depicting an oni known as Ibaraki Dōji ( wooden votive plaques in general are discussed on the “Origins and offerings” page). The three images below show oni in aspects close to what is conjured up by the English word “ogre.” So well known did this mask become that often female demons are drawn with faces identical to it, and many modern people use the term hannya to refer to female demons in general. In noh plays it’s used to portray women who have been transformed (usually by jealousy or rage) into monsters or demons such characters often carry a red and white striped staff known as an uchizue, meant to represent an oni’s weapon. In any case, the mask is often white or light-colored and has long horns, devilish eyes, and a wide, toothy smile. One theory is that the medieval craftsman who designed the mask went by the name Hannya, and so the mask was named after him. It comes into oni lore as the name of a type of mask used in noh plays. The word hannya ultimately derives from the Japanese name of the Buddhist Prajnaparamita sutras.
The slip on the right shows one significant variation or subcategory in oni iconography: the hannya. The slip on the left shows much the same type of oni: this one is green-skinned and has flamelike eyebrows and facial hair (perhaps they’re actual flames). Its bracelets and flowing scarf-like wrap are also items often seen on oni.
Female oni x human skin#
It’s wearing the skin of a lion or similar creature around its waist it also has shinguards that look to be made of the same material.
It shows a red-fleshed oni with horns, sharp teeth, sharp claws, and brawny build. The slip in the center above is in many ways typical. They’re usually shown dressed in loincloths or skirts made from the skins of tigers or other exotic animals. They often carry weapons an iron club is a favorite. They’re large and muscular and generally fierce-looking. They’re generally either red or blue/green (ao 青, a color concept that can encompass both blue and green). This page will explore the variety of ways oni manifest themselves in early modern yōkai lore, as seen in senjafuda.Īs noted above, oni are generally easy to identify. Finally, some gods are represented in the form of demons, which destabilizes any neat opposition we may want to find between good and evil, heaven and hell, high and low, in oni lore. In other words, there’s conceptual overlap between oni and ghosts, too. The concept gets even more elastic when we take into account the fact that some characters for “spirit” incorporate the character for oni, or even use it outright. In fact, the term oni is traditionally used as a catch-all term for all kinds of monsters in a sense, it’s almost a synonym for yōkai itself. But any artistic representation of that parade includes many, many monsters that don’t fit either of the above descriptions of oni. The word oni (in the character’s alternate reading of ki) is embedded in the traditional name of the night parade of a hundred demons, discussed extensively elsewhere on this site. But the concept of oni is even broader than that. Other oni are not just residents of hell, they’re its staff: jailers and torturers who administer the most macabre of punishments to sinners. Some oni are this-worldly monsters: big, toothy, and scary, but not denizens of hell. The concept of oni encompasses both of these figures. By contrast we tend to imagine ogres as earthly creatures: maybe big and lumbering and hostile, but not necessarily evil in a metaphysical way. We tend to associate demons with hell, the afterlife, sin and its punishment, and evil. Sometimes it’s translated “demon” and sometimes “ogre.” But for most English speakers, “demon” and “ogre” have very different connotations. This hard-to-define-ness comes out in the varying translations used for the word oni 鬼. These creatures are immediately identifiable (although there are a few visually distinctive varieties), but surprisingly hard to define. Oni are by far the most common yōkai in senjafuda (as seen in the UO collections), if only because what we’re calling oni comprise such a broad category.
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