Tonight’s story is a variation on a folktale that is famous all over the world. The Tale of the Peony Lantern has been featured in A-Yokai-A-Day before, and also appears on yokai.com. It’s inspired Toriyama Sekien to create the yokai hone onna, who also has appeared in A-Yokai-A-Day before.
This version is clearly based on that story, with a few differences. Instead of a Peony Lantern (牡丹灯; botan dō), we have a Peony Hall (牡丹堂; botan dō); pronounced identically in Japanese. Although the story still roughly follows the same storyline, it’s an interesting change. The ending is basically the same, and it’s so startling that it is clear why this story has remained so popular for such a long time and over such a wide geographical area.
Interestingly, this is also the only story in Shokoku hyakumonogatari that does not take place in Japan.
The Obsession of the Woman from Peony Hall
In ancient China there was a temple called Peony Hall. When a person died, their remains were placed in a box and peonies were painted on its sides, and these boxes were brought to Peony Hall and stacked on top of each other.
One man who lost his wife was so overcome with grief that for many days he went to Peony Hall every night and recited nenbutsu.
One night, a young woman wearing a gong around her neck came to Peony Hall to recite nenbutsu. The man found this strange, and asked her, “Why would a woman come to a place like this?”
The woman explained, “I was separated from my husband by death, and so…”
Then she began to cry. After that, the two of them stood up and wandered together among the graves, here and there, chanting nenbutsu. They returned every night and did the same thing. Eventually they developed deep feelings for each other, and they confessed their love and went back to the man’s house together. After night fell, they were drinking sake and merrymaking, when a neighbor peeked in at them only to see that the man was sitting across from a woman’s skull and drinking with it.
The neighbor was astonished, and the following day he spoke to the man and told him what he had seen. The man was shocked. He waited for evening to come, and when the woman came back, he saw that she was indeed a skull! The man was so horrified that he shut himself in his home for three years, which he spent fasting and purifying himself.
After three years, the man stepped outside for a diversion and tried to catch a small bird. While he was chasing after a sparrow, it flew into Peony Hall to hide. The man was seen following the bird up to the entrance of Peony Hall, but a moment later he disappeared. His servants were astonished. They searched among the boxes stacked up in Peony Hall, where they found a box that was smeared with blood. When they looked inside the box, inside they found a woman’s skeleton gripping the man’s head in her jaws. Though three years had passed, the woman’s obsession caught the man at least.
