Oni (mythology) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Japanese folklore

The folklore of Japan is heavily influenced by both Shinto and Buddhism, the two primary religions in the country. It often involves humorous or bizarre characters and situations and also includes an assortment of supernatural beings, such as bodhisattva, kami , yōkai , yūrei ,...

, variously translated as demon

Demon

call - 1347 531 7769 for more infoIn Ancient Near Eastern religions as well as in the Abrahamic traditions, including ancient and medieval Christian demonology, a demon is considered an "unclean spirit" which may cause demonic possession, to be addressed with an act of exorcism...

s, devil

Devil

The Devil is believed in many religions and cultures to be a powerful, supernatural entity that is the personification of evil and the enemy of God and humankind. The nature of the role varies greatly...

s, ogre

Ogre

An ogre is a large, cruel, monstrous, and hideous humanoid monster, featured in mythology, folklore, and fiction. Ogres are often depicted in fairy tales and folklore as feeding on human beings, and have appeared in many classic works of literature...

s or troll

Troll

A troll is a supernatural being in Norse mythology and Scandinavian folklore. In origin, the term troll was a generally negative synonym for a jötunn , a being in Norse mythology...

s. They are popular characters in Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese art

Japanese art

Japanese art covers a wide range of art styles and media, including ancient pottery, sculpture in wood and bronze, ink painting on silk and paper and more recently manga, cartoon, along with a myriad of other types of works of art...

, literature

Japanese literature

Early works of Japanese literature were heavily influenced by cultural contact with China and Chinese literature, often written in Classical Chinese. Indian literature also had an influence through the diffusion of Buddhism in Japan...

and theatre

Theatre of Japan

Traditional Japanese theatre includes kabuki, noh and bunraku.-Traditional form of theater:There are four major forms of traditional Japanese theater that are famous around the world. These are Noh, Kyogen, Kabuki, and Bunraku, or puppet theater....

.

Depictions of oni vary widely but usually portray them as hideous, gigantic creatures with sharp claw

Claw

A claw is a curved, pointed appendage, found at the end of a toe or finger in most mammals, birds, and some reptiles. However, the word "claw" is also often used in reference to an invertebrate. Somewhat similar fine hooked structures are found in arthropods such as beetles and spiders, at the end...

s, wild hair, and two long horns

Horn (anatomy)

A horn is a pointed projection of the skin on the head of various animals, consisting of a covering of horn surrounding a core of living bone. True horns are found mainly among the ruminant artiodactyls, in the families Antilocapridae and Bovidae...

growing from their heads. They are humanoid

Humanoid

A humanoid is something that has an appearance resembling a human being. The term first appeared in 1912 to refer to fossils which were morphologically similar to, but not identical with, those of the human skeleton. Although this usage was common in the sciences for much of the 20th century, it...

for the most part, but occasionally, they are shown with unnatural features such as odd numbers of eyes or extra fingers and toes. Their skin may be any number of colors, but red and blue are particularly common.

They are often depicted wearing tiger

Tiger

The tiger is the largest cat species, reaching a total body length of up to and weighing up to . Their most recognizable feature is a pattern of dark vertical stripes on reddish-orange fur with lighter underparts...

-skin loincloth

Loincloth

A loincloth is a one-piece male garment, sometimes kept in place by a belt, which covers the genitals and, at least partially, the buttocks.-History and types:Loincloths are being and have been worn:*in societies where no other clothing is needed or wanted...

s and carrying iron clubs, called . This image leads to the expression , 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.

Origins

The word "oni" is sometimes speculated to be derived from on, the on'yomi reading of a character meaning to hide or conceal, as oni were originally invisible spirit
Spirit
The English word spirit has many differing meanings and connotations, most of them relating to a non-corporeal substance contrasted with the material body.The spirit of a living thing usually refers to or explains its consciousness.The notions of a person's "spirit" and "soul" often also overlap,...

s 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 meaning "ghost
Ghost
In traditional belief and fiction, a ghost is the soul or spirit of a deceased person or animal that can appear, in visible form or other manifestation, to the living. Descriptions of the apparition of ghosts vary widely from an invisible presence to translucent or barely visible wispy shapes, to...

" came to be used for these formless creatures.

The invisible oni eventually became anthropomorphized
Anthropomorphism
Anthropomorphism is any attribution of human characteristics to animals, non-living things, phenomena, material states, objects or abstract concepts, such as organizations, governments, spirits or deities. The term was coined in the mid 1700s...

and took on its modern, ogre-like form, partly via syncretism
Syncretism
Syncretism is the combining of different beliefs, often while melding practices of various schools of thought. The term means "combining", but see below for the origin of the word...

with creatures imported by Buddhism
Buddhism
Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...

, such as the Indian rakshasa

Rakshasa

A Rakshasa or alternatively rakshas, is a race of mythological humanoid beings or unrighteous spirit in Hindu and Buddhist religion...

and yaksha

Yaksha

Yaksha is the name of a broad class of nature-spirits, usually benevolent, who are caretakers of the natural treasures hidden in the earth and tree roots. They appear in Hindu, Jain and Buddhist mythology. The feminine form of the word is ' or Yakshini .In Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist mythology,...

, the hungry ghost
Hungry ghost
Hungry ghost is a Western translation of Chinese , a concept in Chinese Buddhism and Chinese traditional religion representing beings who are driven by intense emotional needs in an animalistic way....

s called gaki, and the devilish underlings of Enma-Ō
Yama
Yama , also known as Yamarāja in India and Nepal, Shinje in Tibet, Yanluowang or simply Yan in China, Yeomla Daewang in South Korea and Enma Dai-Ō in Japan, is the lord of death, in Hinduism and then adopted into Buddhism and then further into Chinese mythology and Japanese mythology. First...

who punish sinners in Jigoku
Di Yu
Diyu is the realm of the dead or "hell" in Chinese mythology. It is loosely based on a combination of the Buddhist concept of Naraka, traditional Chinese beliefs about the afterlife and a variety of popular expansions and re-interpretations of these two traditions.Diyu is typically depicted as an...

(Hell).

Demon Gate

Another source for the oni's image is a concept from China and Onmyōdō
Onmyodo
is a traditional Japanese esoteric cosmology, a mixture of natural science and occultism. It is based on the Chinese philosophies of Wu Xing and Yin and yang, introduced into Japan at the turn of the 6th century, and accepted as a practical system of divination...

. 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 onis bovine horns and cat-like fangs, claws, and tiger-skin loincloth developed as a visual depiction of this term.

Temple

Temple

A temple is a structure reserved for religious or spiritual activities, such as prayer and sacrifice, or analogous rites. A templum constituted a sacred precinct as defined by a priest, or augur. It has the same root as the word "template," a plan in preparation of the building that was marked out...

s 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

Mount Hiei

is a mountain to the northeast of Kyoto, lying on the border between the Kyoto and Shiga prefectures, Japan.The temple of Enryaku-ji, the first outpost of the Japanese Tiantai sect of Buddhism, was founded atop Mount Hiei by Saichō in 788. Both Nichiren and Honen studied at the temple before...

northeast of the center of Kyoto

Kyoto

is a city in the central part of the island of Honshū, Japan. It has a population close to 1.5 million. Formerly the imperial capital of Japan, it is now the capital of Kyoto Prefecture, as well as a major part of the Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto metropolitan area.-History:...

, and Kaneiji, in that direction from Edo Castle

Edo Castle

, also known as , is a flatland castle that was built in 1457 by Ōta Dōkan. It is located in Chiyoda in Tokyo, then known as Edo, Toshima District, Musashi Province. Tokugawa Ieyasu established the Tokugawa shogunate here. It was the residence of the shogun and location of the shogunate, and also...

, are examples. The Japanese capital itself moved northeast from Nagaoka

Nagaoka-kyo

was the capital of Japan from 784 to 794. Its location was reported as Otokuni District, Yamashiro Province, and Nagaokakyō, Kyoto, which took its name from the capital...

to Kyoto

Kyoto

in the 8th century.

Traditional culture

Some villages hold yearly ceremonies to drive away oni, particularly at the beginning of Spring. During the Setsubun

Setsubun

is the day before the beginning of spring in Japan. The name literally means "seasonal division", but usually the term refers to the spring Setsubun, properly called Risshun celebrated yearly on February 3 as part of the...

festival, people throw soybean

Soybean

The soybean or soya bean is a species of legume native to East Asia, widely grown for its edible bean which has numerous uses...

s outside their homes and shout . Monkey

Monkey

A monkey is a primate, either an Old World monkey or a New World monkey. There are about 260 known living species of monkey. Many are arboreal, although there are species that live primarily on the ground, such as baboons. Monkeys are generally considered to be intelligent. Unlike apes, monkeys...

statues are also thought to guard against oni, since the Japanese

Japanese language

is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...

word for monkey, saru, is a homophone

Homophone

A homophone is a word that is pronounced the same as another word but differs in meaning. The words may be spelled the same, such as rose and rose , or differently, such as carat, caret, and carrot, or to, two, and too. Homophones that are spelled the same are also both homographs and homonyms...

for the word for "leaving". Folklore has it that holly

Holly

Ilex) is a genus of 400 to 600 species of flowering plants in the family Aquifoliaceae, and the only living genus in that family. The species are evergreen and deciduous trees, shrubs, and climbers from tropics to temperate zones world wide....

can be used to guard against Oni. In Japanese versions of the game tag

Tag (game)

Tag is a playground game played worldwide that involves one or more players chasing other players in an attempt to tag or touch them, usually with their fingers. There are many variations...

, the player who is "it" is instead called the "oni".

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 parade

Parade

A parade is a procession of people, usually organized along a street, often in costume, and often accompanied by marching bands, floats or sometimes large balloons. Parades are held for a wide range of reasons, but are usually celebrations of some kind...

s to ward off any bad luck

Bad Luck

Bad Luck may refer to:* Harmful or negative luck* Bad Luck , a 1960 film directed by Andrzej Munk* "Bad Luck" * "Bad Luck" * Bad Luck, an album by Trophy Scars...

, for example. Japanese buildings sometimes include oni-faced roof tiles called , which are thought to ward away bad luck, much as gargoyle

Gargoyle

In architecture, a gargoyle is a carved stone grotesque, usually made of granite, with a spout designed to convey water from a roof and away from the side of a building thereby preventing rainwater from running down masonry walls and eroding the mortar between...

s in Western tradition.

Oni are prominently featured in the Japanese children's story Momotaro
Momotaro
is a popular hero from Japanese folklore. His name literally means Peach Tarō; as Tarō is a common Japanese boy's name, it is often translated as Peach Boy...

(Peach Boy), and the book The Funny Little Woman
The Funny Little Woman
The Funny Little Woman is a book by Arlene Mosel and illustrated by Blair Lent. Released by Dutton Press, it was the recipient of the Caldecott Medal for illustration in 1973.The Funny Little Woman is a traditional Japanese tale...

.

Many Japanese idioms and proverbs also make reference to oni. For example, the expression 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 and .
It is also well known in japan a game named , 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.

External links

Article on Oni at The Obakemono Project

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Origins

Demon Gate

Traditional culture

See also

External links