Anyone who has seen a few Japanese horror movies knows that today’s yokai is, bar none, the scariest of them all. True, Kuchisake-onna or Hone-onna might appear more grotesque — but they’re just one-trick-ponies compared to the terror that is the onryo. Immortalized in countless paintings, woodblock prints, and movies like The Ring and Ju-On, the onryo is Japan’s vengeful ghost. The look we see today — long black hair, piercing eyes, white skin and burial kimono — originated in ancient kabuki ghost stories, and is one reason why this ghost is so expressive.

Both Japanese and Western ghosts usually have a powerful motive for their vengeance. But what makes an onryo so much scarier than its Western vengeful spiritual counterpart is that, while the Western ghost ceases to haunt once it is put to rest, an onryo appears and never goes away. There’s no concept of justice in an onryo’s revenge; in many stories the ghost will terrorize a village, murdering hundreds of poor, innocent souls in the most unimaginable fashions, but she rarely takes revenge on the actual cause of her unrest (usually a nasty husband). If Scooby and the Gang went to Tokyo to solve a mystery, they’d no doubt pull the rubber mask off old farmer Jenkins, call it a night, and then die in a horrible freak Mystery Machine accident, their bodies flayed and twisted into physically indescribable forms.

Onryo

There’s some confusion as to how to define yokai and bakemono in Japanese folklore, which one is a subset of the other, and whether or not yurei — ghosts — fit into either category or exist on their own. There doesn’t seem to be a clear definition of either term, but from my understanding of them I think that “yokai” is a pretty encompassing term that collectivizes all supernatural beings in folklore, Japanese and non-Japanese alike. Whether bakemono are a subset of that or just a related term, I don’t know, but I definitely think that yurei and their kin (like onryo and zashiki-warashi) fit in as a type of yokai, rather than stand alone.

Today’s yokai makes 30, and tomorrow is Halloween! Tomorrow will be my last yokai! Where do I go from the onryo, who made me lose so many hours of sleep?? Come back tomorrow to find out, and have a good Halloween! (And don’t be a jerk and pretend not to be home when the kids come trick-or-treating!)

It’s another scary woman today, but anyone who has seen Japanese horror movies knows that Japan makes the best scary women of all. Hone-onna, which means “bone woman,” is a kind of Japanese succubus. Her favorite modus operandi is to take the form of a beautiful woman and lure a man to bed with her. Then she reveals her skeletal form and sucks his soul away. Pretty freaky, huh?

Hone-onna

Today’s yokai is Nuppeppo, a bizarre little creature. He appears around midnight in deserted places — especially graveyards or temples. He appears as a chunk of dead, rotting flesh walking about on its own. For such a horrible, nauseating description, most of the images of him are borderline cute. I couldn’t stand for that — a chunk of walking, dead flesh needs to be grotesque — so I made it just a bit less cuddly, with varicose veins and little hairs and rotting teeth. It might still be soft enough to cuddle, but the smell should keep you at bay.

Nuppeppo

Here’s one more sea creature you don’t want to run into, Ningyo, the Japanese mermaid. Unlike the cute, sexy Disney version we’re all used to seeing by now, the Japanese mermaid is nothing to look at. Additionally, it can’t speak, has a very pleasant smell, and is supposed to grant immortality to those who eat it. Some of the ancient sketches are even more horrible-looking than mine below, but I’ll leave you to look them up. While you’re searching, you might also come across a number of pretty awful-looking abominations crafted by sewing two corpses together to display in temples throughout the country… It’s amazing what people will do, right?

Anyway, the stories about Japanese mermaids are generally not happy ones. They are often harbingers of bad luck, and fishermen who were unfortunate enough to catch a ningyo would quickly throw it back and hope nothing bad would happen to them.

There’s another story, from right here in good ol’ Fukui prefecture. A long time ago, in the southern half of the prefecture, then called Wakasa province, a fisherman caught a strange fish and decided to serve it up to his friends. One of the friends took a peek in the kitchen to see this odd fish and noticed it had a human face, so he warned the other friends not to eat it. So they all did the old napkin trick, and hid the fish, planning to throw it out later. However, one of them got really drunk, forgot to throw it out, and later gave it to his daughter. After she ate it, she stopped aging, and it’s said she lived in Obama city (that’s right, Obama!) until the ripe old age of 800, when she took her own life (after seeing her friends, husband, children, grandchildren, and so on all pass away).

Ningyo

Anyone want some sushi?

Today’s yokai is another request, and a good one at that! I’ve been painting a lot of cursed women, so it’s a fresh change to paint a cursed man.

This is Wanyudo, a horrible being from Hell, said to be the soul of a tyrant daimyo who was known for drawing them on an oxcart. Now he roams the road between Earth and Hell, stealing the souls of anyone unfortunate to get too close and dragging them back to hell. The wheel is a pretty important symbol in Buddhism, which may also carry other connotations about this demon’s eternal punishment.

I like this yokai because it’s so Dante-eqsue. I guess the image of Hell where tormented souls are forced to relive their own crimes is not just a Western thing. Very cool monster!

Wanyudo

A few people have asked me if I’ll be selling prints of these. The answer is most definitely yes! Not until November though… October is far too busy with painting yokai every day to make up prints of these, but some time in early- to mid-November, I’ll start putting prints up on my Etsy store. Thanks for your support!

Bgwak! There’s really not much to say about today’s yokai. The basan is a ghost-fire breathing chicken. There’s no mention of what this actually does, being ghost-fire, other than looking pretty dang spooky.

I think this is one yokai I was required to paint. It fits right in with the Chickens of the World series, so it would almost be wrong not to mention it. Plus, I really like the idea of a ghost-fire breathing chicken. It’s similar to another one of my favorite monsters, the English cockatrice, a chicken with a deadly gaze that can kill people in an instant, or turn them to stone. Seriously, who comes up with this stuff??

Basan

Like many of the fokloric animals in Japan, the jorogumo is a real kind of spider which became part of mythology and superstition. According to legends, when a spider reaches 400 years of age, she gains magical powers, including the ability to appear as a very beautiful woman. The stories of encounters with jorogumo are plentiful, and differ from town to town, but they’re all pretty fascinating.

In one story, a traveling samurai is invited by a beautiful woman into a shack to hear her play the biwa. As he listened to the music, she bound him up in her webs and then ate him.

In another story, a woodcutter was chopping wood near a waterfall inhabited by a jorogumo. He accidentally dropped his axe in the water, a beautiful woman appeared and returned it to him. She made him promise never to tell anyone that he saw her, and he kept the secret for a long time. However, one day he got drunk and told the story of what happened by the waterfall — he never woke up the next morning.

In yet another story, a jorogumo became a guardian of a pool in the woods, rescuing people from drowning. The locals erected a small shrine there and worship her as a goddess.

In any case, whether she’s good or evil — or neither — she certainly makes an awesome Halloween monster!

Jorogumo