Well we’ve made it. Tonight is Halloween, and thus the final A-Yokai-A-Day post for 2022. I hope you’ve enjoyed these thirty one stories from Shokoku hyakumonogatari. I saved a particularly creepy one for tonight, our last story.

This yōkai is a pretty interesting one. In some ways it resembles a nuribotoke, but it has its own unique qualities as well. It also resembles in some way the buddhist mummies found in some East Asian countries, which are a bit scary in their own right.

It’s also one of the most terrifying descriptions of a ghost that I’ve read in so few words. For a book written in 1677, the horror in this one feels so fresh and vivid, and it’s easy to imagine it in a modern scary movie.

Happy Halloween everyone!

The Painted Corpse Wife of Bungo Province

There was a certain man in Bungo Province. His wife was seventeen years old and famous for her beauty, and the two of them had a great relationship. During pillow talk, this man always said to his wife, “If you die before I do, I will never marry again.”

Yet, one day his wife became sick with a cold and died. In her last moments she said to her husband, “If you feel pity for me, then there is no need to bury me or cremate me. Instead, rip open my bellow and take out my innards, fill me with rice, then paint my body with fourteen coats of lacquer. Build a small chapel and place me inside, put a gong in my hand, then come pray before me every morning and evening.” Then she died.

The man complied with her final wishes. He opened her belly, filled her with rice, coated her with lacquer, built a chapel and placed her inside. For two years he prayed before her and did not take a new wife. However, a friend eventually convinced him to remarry.

The new wife repeatedly begged the man for a divorce. He tried this and that to soothe her, but she would not listen. “In any case, I will not stay in this house with you,” she said, and then left.

Afterwards, the man took wife after wife, but every one of them said the same thing, and returned back to their families. Thinking this was no ordinary thing, the man made prayers and offerings in an attempt to exorcise whatever curse was following him. Then he married yet another woman.

This time, it seemed as if his prayers were answered. The new wife stayed with him for fifty or sixty days without incident.

Then, one evening when the man was out with his friends, his wife and her handmaids gathered in the house to talk. Late at night, the sound of a hand gong could be heard out front. Everyone grew nervous, and as they listened the sound grew closer and closer, until they could hear it inside of the house. Terrified, the women tightened the lock on the door and shrunk back. They heard the sound of the sliding doors being opened one after the other, until there was only a single door between them. Then a woman’s voice said:

“Open this door.”

But everyone was too afraid to say anything.

The voice spoke again: “It doesn’t matter whether you open the door or not. I will leave for now. But I will come back again and speak with you. And whatever you do, do not tell my husband of my visit. If you tell him, you will lose your life.”

Then the gong rang, and the woman left.

It was such a terrible experience that they had to have a peek though the doors. They saw a woman of seventeen or eighteen, utterly black from her face to her feet, carrying a hand gong. The women were so scared that they could hardly wait for the husband to come home. When he did, however, they remembered the woman’s words. They spoke nothing of that night to him.

However, the next day, the man’s wife told him that she wanted a divorce.

The man was perplexed. “Why all of a sudden do you say such a thing?”

The woman explained everything that had happened the previous night. The husband dismissed her concerns, saying, “That must have been a kitsune.”

“Please give me a divorce!” she said.

The husband tried this and that and eventually soothed her nerves, but after four or five days he had to leave on business again. That night, the sound of a hand gong was once again heard outside the house.

“Oh no!” thought the wife, and she locked the doors.

Then a woman’s voice said, “Open this door. Open it.”

The wife and her handmaids trembled in fear. Then all of a sudden, the handmaids became extremely drowsy, and they all fell asleep in unison. Only the wife was left awake. The sliding doors slid open one by one. Peeking into the next room, the wife saw the woman standing there, painted black, her long hair reaching all the way to the floor and shaking back and forth. She was glaring right at the wife.

“Aah, what a pity. I told you before not to tell my husband of my visit, but you told him so soon afterwards! You detestable wretch!”

As soon as she said this, she leaped at the wife, twisted her neck right off, and left.

The husband heard that something had happened, and he returned home. When he asked what happened, the wife’s handmaids told him everything.

The husband was shocked. He went to the chapel out front and looked inside. There, in front of the lacquered body of his first wife, was the head of his current wife.

“Oh, you bitch!” he said. And he pulled the painted woman down from the altar.

The blackened woman opened her eyes and bit open her husband’s throat, killing him.

Tonight’s yōkai is once again referred to by the generic word henge. Essentially it’s a shape-shifter, although we don’t know what its true form is. However, I find this story somewhat interesting in that it has two supernatural explanations at the end.

One of them deals with a prohibition against women entering certain places (usually sacred mountains). The reasoning behind this relates to kegare, a belief in a kind of spiritual impurity or defilement.

The other supernatural explanation is about a magical sword forged by a legendary swordsmith. We’ve seen this already a couple of times this month (here and here), which let’s us understand just how important these swords were in folklore. In Japan, a sword is not simply a piece of metal to defend yourself with. It’s also a talisman that protects a family like a guardian deity. So it’s no surprise that swords pop up from time to time in yōkai stories, or that a famous sword might keep yōkai at bay just by its existence.

The Farmer in Kumano Whose Wife was Taken by a Henge

A farmer living near Kumano, feeling hard-pressed to pay his annual tribute, gathered his wife and children, and ran away into the wilderness. Before long, the road grew dark, so they were forced to spend the night in a roadside temple. Suddenly a woman appeared out of nowhere.

“Where did all of you come from?” she asked.

The farmer was pleased, thinking this woman was looking for some company. “I am a farmer from this area, but for various reasons we had to leave,” he said.

“In that case, please live here. You can gather leaves and make a fire,” said the woman.

The farmer was pleased and went off to gather leaves. After that the woman grabbed his wife and disappeared.

When the farmer returned, he could not find his wife. He heard her voice screaming from the top of the mountains. Thinking that some henge had transformed into the woman from earlier and absconded with his wife, he went off in the direction of the voice. However, the mountains were deep, and he could not find the spot where her screams were coming from.

While he searched, the dawn began to break. He frantically searched here and there, and he came across a cedar tree. His wife’s body was torn in two halves, hanging from a branch twenty feet above the ground. Seeing this, the farmer screamed and cried, but there was nothing he could do.

Then a lone man approached him.

“What are you grieving about?” he inquired.

The farmer told him everything that had happened.

“What a tragedy! If you hand me the swords you are carrying, I will take down the body from the tree and give it to you,” said the man.

The farmer was grateful. He gave the man his katana, but said, “I will keep my wakizashi.”

“In that case, I’ll try to take her down,” said the man, and he slid up the tree. Then he tore the farmer’s wife into little pieces and ate her, cackling.

“If you had given me your wakizashi, I would have done this to you too!”

Then he flew up into the sky and disappeared.

The farmer was so perplexed that he asked the locals about it. They said to him, “That temple is one in which women are forbidden to enter. That must be why such a thing happened.”

The farmer’s wakizashi had protected him because it was forged by Sanjō Kokaji.

Tonight’s yōkai is another serpent like the one we saw a couple of weeks ago. Contrary to my normal pattern of leaving yōkai names untranslated, I use English words like snake or serpent in these stories because the Japanese terminology is often inconsistent. In yōkai stories, the word for serpent is usually 大蛇, which can be pronounced daija, ōhebi, or orochi. The word means giant snake, but to add even more confusion it is often used as a analogy for a dragon, which can be written 龍 or 竜 and can be pronounced ryū or tatsu. What’s more, the terms are often mixed around in the same story, making it confusing as to whether the creature in question is a giant snake or a dragon.

The truth is that in folklore, there’s not much difference. With our modern understanding of biology, giant snakes and dragons are clearly two different things. But lines are not as clearly drawn between animals in Japanese folklore. You may be familiar with a folkloric creature called like the mami, which is sometimes a tanuki, sometimes a mujina, and sometimes its own thing altogether. Old mami can evolve into nodeppō, which spit bats from their mouths, and bats can evolve into nobusuma, which can later evolve into yamachichi or momonjii. Yōkai biology is less like a family tree and more like a tangled ball of yarn.

One of the things I like to say when talking about yōkai stories is that we must accept that they are contradictory and unknowable by nature. And that’s something we just have to accept to enjoy them. So is it a giant snake or is it a dragon? Yes, it is.

How Unshō, a Monk from Shima Province, Escaped from a Poisonous Serpent

When a monk named Unshō was traveling on pilgrimage from Kumano to Shima Province, he discovered a cave with a beautiful seaside view. He took up a temporary residence in this cave to practice asceticism, dutifully reciting the nenbutsu everything morning and evening. However, there was an overwhelming stink of fish emanating from deep within the cave.

Unshō was frightened by the smell. Then suddenly, while reading a sutra and reciting prayers, an enormous serpent emerged from the depths of the cave. It opened its mouth wide as if to devour Unshō. However, upon hearing the sutra and nenbutsu, it closed its mouth and lowered its head, then retreated back into the cave.

Unshō resumed his prayers and recitations. Shortly after, a man wearing an ancient kimono and head-dress emerged from the cave, approached Unshō, and bowed.

“I am the lord of this cave. I have lived here for tens of thousands of years. I have preyed upon men and beasts in uncountable numbers. Now that a noble monk has come here and I have heard the voice of the Buddha, all of my evil thoughts have been extinguished. The rain that falls tonight is my tears of joy. Let it be proof of the greatness of my form. Henceforth, I will turn from my evil ways and follow the Buddha’s path with gratitude.”

Saying this, the man put his head to the ground, thanked the monk, and disappeared.

Tonight’s story talks about a maō. This word is made up of two kanji: 魔 (ma; demon, devil, evil spirit) and 王 (ō; king). It’s a generic term that doesn’t refer to a specific yōkai, but is reserved for only the strongest and worst of supernatural forces. The ones so powerful that they rule as kings and are served by legions of lesser spirits.

In this story, our maō is mentioned as being one of the demon kings of the sixth heaven. This part of Buddhist cosmology is often called the deva realm in English. It is the highest heaven and the most pleasurable realm in the cosmos. The residents of this realm are the most powerful beings in the cosmos, and they are ruled by their passions and desires. Anything they want, they can have. They want for nothing. Drinking and feasting, sex, music, slaughter; every pleasure known and unknown to man is at their fingertips.

But all that pleasure comes with a price. They are not immortal and must eventually die after aeons of living in utmost pleasure. When they finally die, because their lives were governed by desires (and not just any desires—the strongest desires in the cosmos!), they have wracked up so much bad karma that they plunge into the deepest hells for their next life or several lifetimes.

So where do maō fit in all of this? And why would a god from heavenly want to bother a monk to prevent him from passing on peacefully?

Well, just because a being lives in heaven doesn’t make them automatically good. The inhabitants of this “heaven” could individually be called gods, demons, devils, angels, and so on. Some are benevolent and righteous, while others simply revel in murdering, killing, raping, torturing, slaughtering, and making war. (Ashura are a good example of this, although technically they live in the fifth realm, not the sixth). They make friends and enemies just as humans do, only on a much more passionate scale. They hold grudges like no other, and they have all the power of the cosmos to enact their revenge, so they like to get creatively vindictive.

Hopefully that provides a bit of context for tonight’s tale.

The Maō Who Turned into a Woman to Hinder a Monk’s Passing

Near the temple of Katsuoji in Settsu Province lived a noble monk. Now the path of sexual desire is hard for even birds and beasts to resist, so this monk kept a woman as a secret lover for many years. However, one day the monk began to consider how terrible it would be for one who follows the path of Buddha to become tainted by mundane pleasures and fall into hell in the next life. He consulted with a fellow monk, repented his actions, and once again dedicated himself to following Buddha’s path with a pure body and mind. However, the woman could not let go of him, and from time to time she came to see him.

The monk was annoyed by this, and he fell ill with anxiety. The only thing he could think of was to ask a friend: “If that woman comes to see me, make up some lie and send her away.”

Sure enough, she came and inquired about the monk. His friend told her, “That monk left last night on an ascetic pilgrimage.” The woman was disheartened and left.

After that, the monk’s illness grew more and more severe, and he finally died.

Because she had been so close to him, the monk’s friends called the woman and explained the circumstances of the monk’s death to her. However, she did not seem the least bit grieved.

“This monk has been my enemy for five hundred lifetimes. When he became a monk and tried to attain Buddhahood, I prevented him from doing so by transforming into many things. If I were here at his time of death, I would not have let him go so peacefully!”

Overflowing with rage, she transformed into a 20-foot tall kijin. Her eyes shone like the sun and moon, and flames shot out from her mouth. She screamed in a loud voice and ascended up into the sky. For a while the clouds flashed, and then she disappeared.

This is what Buddha was talking about when he said that the demon kings of the sixth heaven try to trick sentient beings away from the proper path