History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine in Japan Vol. 2: Oni, Yōkai and Evil Spirits as Causes of Illness (日本医療科学の哲学と歴史 第２弾：病因としての鬼、妖怪、そして魔)
May 31, 2025
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In this paper, I will look at the broader perspective on medical theory and attitudes towards illness amongst the monastic doctors as well as the commoners prior to the importation of the Western science in pre-modern Japan. In particular, my interest is in the etiology of various types of sickness and how people in Japan dealt with the symptoms. It is of course not possible to speak of purely Japanese practice, since Chinese influence is everywhere seen. However, my study will show that Japanese Buddhist philosophy nevertheless developed distinct features unique to Japan, perhaps as a result of the synthesis of the Buddhism with the Japanese native religion of Shintoism. It is in this context that I will be discussing about the medical philosophy proper to Japan, which must have existed in order to account for sickness and beliefs unique to the culture that were not found in the continent. In doing so, I will focus on the supernatural yet real causes of illness according to the Shinto-Buddhist philosophy. In pre-modern period Japan, the causes of illness were explained in terms of Traditional Chinese medical philosophy, Taoism, and Buddhist medical theory. For example, Chigi智顗(538-597), the founder of Tien T’ai school and the author of Makashikan, a widely studied book exploring etiology, which asserted that there were six major causes of illness. They are 1) the imbalance of four elements, 2) excessive eating and drinking, 3) lifestyle related diseases, 4) daimon, 5) evil spirits, and 6) deeds in the previous life. Of these, the first three are natural causes and thereby can be treated with the medical knowledge. On the other hand, the latter three are supernatural causes and cannot be treated except spiritually, i.e. one must follow the path of the Buddha. I will focus in particular on the daimon and evil spirits in the field of medical thought in pre-modern Japan, and unveil the familiar concepts of Oni and Yōkai in light of medical context in the history of Japan, analyzing the ways in which these supernatural forces came into the medical philosophy in the Japanese monastic medicine. I will also attempt to clarify the much-debated ontology of Yōkai according to the most renowned Yōkaiologist, Enryō Inoue (1858-1919), who wrote meticulously about Yōkai phenomena in search for the True Yōkai in the early Meiji period. The difference between Yōkai and Yūrei (ghosts) is also briefly mentioned.
This paper will largely be divided into three parts, preceded by a brief preliminary remark. First, I will examine what Oni, Yōkai and evil spirits are, what their attributes include and what they have to do with the causes of illness. This part discusses the etiology in conjunction with a scientific exposition and a socio-historical exposition of the supernatural causes. Here is also expounded the philosophico-scientific exposition of Yōkai meticulously studied by the Yōkai Scholar and a Buddhist philosopher, Enryō Inoue. I will also introduce one representative modern folklorist’s research on Yōkai in comparison with the afore-mentioned Meiji period pioneer of Yōkai studies almost a century before. Inoue’s work on Yōkai has contributed to the field so much so that it is literally impossible not to talk about him when talking about Yōkai. I will then lay out the socio-cultural belief that the different demons were said to cause different illnesses, and each illness was attributed to a task-oriented deity or a spirit. Hence, the first part is subdivided into three segments. The second part is a philosophical exposition, in which a detailed analysis on the Buddhist doctrines that were introduced to Japan during the Heian Period in the beginning of the 9th century are examined, which sets the stage for the intellectuals of the time to explain these phenomena in terms of the Buddhist doctrines of Consciousnesses, which later became interfused with the native Shinto beliefs and Chinese Ying-Yang theory of medicine, creating Japan’s own philosophical system called Onmyōdō. However, Onmyōdō is more concerned with the natural science as in concoction of medicine or regulae for the dietary recommendations. Since my aim in this paper is to explain the supernatural aspect of the causation of illnesses, or rather the metaphysics of the soul, I will postpone the analysis of the Onmyōdō as the philosophical system, and here I shall only focus on the Buddhist philosophy of Consciousnesses. In the last part of this paper, having reflected upon the socio-cultural beliefs about the causes of illness and having examined the philosophical framework of the time, I will offer an interpretation of the causes of illness, as a synthesized version of the two, and conclude that what has usually been considered as distinct fields of study, i.e. socio-anthropology of evil spirits and the philosophy of Buddhism, are in fact deeply related to one another and the ontology of Yōkai and evil spirits cannot be fully explained without having a recourse to the fundamental system of Buddhist philosophy. Kappa, Zashiki Warashi, Tsukumo-gami, Tenjo-Name, Uji no Hashihime, Shuten-Doji and Onryō as Evil Spirits as well as others are mentioned in passing. Furthermore, Yōkai that has become increasingly popular with the spread of the pandemic around the year 2020, whose name is Amabie, will also be discussed as the repellant of illness in the conclusion. For it has been written and explained that the demons and evil spirits were thought of as causes of illness in Japanese literature, and everyone in Japan knows that demons and evil spirits would bring misfortunes and sickness, but it appears that not many have actually talked about this in light of philosophical reflections but only as a historical fact. People have taken for granted that these demons and evil spirits existed and then discussed what they would and could do. But upon reflecting on the contemporary philosophy, it seems the beliefs in the demons and particular monsters are rooted in the conception of consciousness as the cosmic force in the Buddhist literature. Furthermore, such demonstration of Yōkai phenomena and Buddhist philosophy as a unified framework that constitutes a holistic intellectual system would show how Japanese medical philosophy did not show any interests in the qualitative-quantitative dichotomous way of conceiving the medicine and nature as in the West, and hence no such thing as a ‘scientific revolution’ (dissatisfaction with the way things were explained) came into the scene.
Preliminary Remarks: Yōkai, Oni and Evil Spirits
According to the most widely read medical treatise written by Chigi, Makashikan, of the late 6th century, some of the main causes of illness include demons and evil spirits as well as the deeds done in the past life. In Japan, demons as well as evil spirits are said to belong to the larger category of what is called Yōkai. Yokai is written with the kanji characters that mean attractive, bewitching, suspicious 妖and 怪mysterious, creepy. It may be translated as monsters, demons or sometimes as goblins or evil spirits. In this way, Yōkai may be said to include all of these supernatural entities, though as we will see, some have acquired distinct attributes and popularity that they may be better expressed as Oni, Onryō or simply as evil spirits in general. These entities are said to enter from outside into the body from the five senses and torment people either physically or spiritually. One medical treatise of the time lists the causes of illness as due to the deeds done in the previous life, blasphemy against Buddha, gods of pestilence or fierce gods and departed souls as well as spirits of fox and Yōkai monsters. And this same treatise recommends recitation of sutras and exorcism as well as performing an Onmyō ceremonial rituals. In particular, chanting and reciting sutra were said to have the definitive effect in curing illness, so much so that the 13th century monk, Mujū 無住 (1227-1312), spoke that “even if you make a mistake reciting the sutra, as long as you believe in it, it has the power to cure even malaria,” suggesting that the placebo effect is a large factor in treatment. Hence, the same monk argued that “it is better to transcribe sutras and read them, hence accumulating good deeds, than to pay money to doctors who do not know anything about medicine. In fact, those quack doctors would not only be able to cure the illness but also make it worse.” Furthermore, yet another treatise specifically refers to the 15 types of demons that are task oriented and how each of them spreads particular illness and makes children sick.
Seeing in this light, Yōkai may be said to be beings that possess supranatural powers and cause phenomena or experiences in us that are inexplicable according to the modern science. These phenomena or experiences not only refer to the spirits that cause illness and misfortunes but also came to refer to the experiences of simply having seen animals that talk, encountered with aliens or been in a haunted house. These so-called Yōkai phenomena are oftentimes dismissed in our modern society as being unscientific or superstitions, i.e., that which is contrary to the scientific thinking. By the scientific reasoning, it is simply meant that a particular experience or an instance of phenomenon to be quantified and measured, and it yields the same outcome upon repeated experiments. If regularity and quantifiable phenomenon are what is lacking in classifying Yōkai as a scientific phenomenon, then Yōkai are not scientific phenomena. But that does not mean Yōkai beliefs are at the same time unreasonable or irrational. Just as many of us believe in ghosts or in karmic forces, these beliefs do nevertheless affect us and shape our understanding of the world as a cosmic entity. Further, the fact that these beliefs are held by rational people suggests that there is a rational explanation for why they believe in what they do. Just as people who believed in the existence of witches and feared them as imminent danger in Europe not too long ago in history for which there is a rational explanation, there must have been a similar mindset or a framework that allowed people to believe in the existence of Yōkai monsters as well as ghosts and demons in the past. Just because we cannot explain them with our science, it does not mean that the people living in a different place and time did not know what they were doing. It is my aim in this essay to shed light on the philosophical framework and sociological mindset of the period in history that we seem to dismiss as irrational and nonsensical, and explain that what seems unreal or unscientific to us does indeed have a sophisticated theoretical justification that warranted them rationality for their belief.
Part I: Yōkaiology by Enryō Inoue and other folklorists
Yōkaiology, as Inoue correctly argues, emerges only when you can make distinctions between what belongs to physics and what belongs to metaphysics, and as a result, when you come to wish to know the cause of an effect, not just by being satisfied with seeing an effect. I will first introduce some Yōkai monsters and what they are said to do. There are a countless number of Yōkai monsters in the history of Japanese folklore, and it is neither possible nor necessary to discuss all of them for the purpose of this essay. I will here pick some of the major and minor Yōkai monsters for analysis rather arbitrarily, and I limit myself in talking about several prominent figures including Kappa, Zashiki-Warashi, Tsukumo-gami, Tenjō-Name, and Rokuro-Kubi et al. in detail.
In the Koshintō belief (the Ancient Way of the Gods), the souls were found in everything. Resulting from this animistic worldview was the belief that things either animate or inanimate, after having been used or lived for a long time, would become holy and be elevated to the status of the gods. These old things that become gods are then called “Tsukumogami” and they may bring you fortune or cause you harm, depending on how you have treated them. As it will be seen, gods in Shintoism are rather like deified spirits in that while they can be worshipped as guardian gods, they can also be feared as ill-disposed gods. This appears to be the general trend in describing Yōkai monsters, i.e., as those gods that have been neglected and forgotten, causing misfortunes to people so people would notice their presence once again so that they can be worshiped to be elevated to the level of gods. Some examples of these Tsukumogami may include the one-eyed one-footed umbrella and the human shaped cat. The former is said to sneak up on humans and lick them with its large oily tongue, while the latter is more pernicious in that it feeds on humans. Yet another Yōkai, Zashiki-Warashi has an appearance of a human child, usually aged from 3 to 15. It can take either gender, and when it is a boy it wears a black traditional kimono, and when it is a girl, it wears a red padded sleeves kimono jacket. They are heard playing in the tatami room or in the hallway by themselves usually during the nighttime, and when you go to the room where the child’s voice is coming from, you find nothing but the toys and footprints. In recent years, there have been reports that an employee in a building, when working until late at night, heard children’s voices and footsteps from upstairs, and when she went up to see who were there, she only found old toys on the floor and no one else in the building. This Yōkai, however, is said to bring fortune to the household in which it resides, and when Zashiki-Warashi leaves the house, the house becomes poor. Sekien Toriyama, the ukiyo-e artist, in the 18th century depicted yet another Yōkai that lives in an old house and leaves stains on the ceiling. This Yōkai, Tenjō-Name, appears when there is no one in the room and licks the ceiling to leave marks and disappears. One cannot help but wonder what it wants to do. But probably, some of the most popular Yōkai in the popular folklore are Rokuro-Kubi and Kappa. Rokuro-Kubi can be a male or a female, whose neck stretches or comes off completely to attack people at night and feed on them. It often comes off completely when one is asleep, and if the body is moved to elsewhere while the head is detached, the head cannot find its way back to the body and goes missing.Kappa too is a Yōkai that has a weakness. Kappa is often translated into English as a water imp. It is shaped like a human child and sometimes depicted with scales on its body. Its body is greenish and has a plate on its head. The plate is always wet with water and if it should dry out or gets broken, Kappa loses its power or dies. It has a small beak, a shell, and its hands are web-like. Its arms are connected in the body, and if you pull out one, the other one comes with it. It likes cucumbers and sumo wrestling. This is why we call sushi rolls with cucumbers, “Kappa-maki”. Kappa is usually said to take kids into the water and drown them. So parents in Japan would often tell their kids not to go near the water.
When looking at these Yōkai figures, one would immediately see that there are no universally shared characteristics in what they do. Not only is their ontological status ambiguous but also their social functions are obscure at best. Where do they come from? Do they generate from species to species? They must, if these witness accounts across centuries are to be trusted. Or perhaps they are immortal and the same individual keeps appearing throughout the history. One cannot help but ask what sort of purpose, if any, it serves to live for centuries by licking the ceilings of houses or playing with old toys, when there are video games and smartphones available. Indeed, the only social function they play seems to be that they frighten people. But why do they? The answer to this question may be found in more specific Yōkai that has its root in Buddhism. For Yōkai, after all, are a Shinto belief combined with Buddhist philosophy, which gives the intellectual framework for the native deities to thrive in accordance with the Buddhist teachings. Without understanding the Buddhist origin of the spirits, it is not possible to understand the reason for Yōkai’s continuing presence in Japanese intellectual history.
Before delving into the religious interpretation of Yōkai, however, it will be beneficial to explore the writings of the most prominent Yōkai scholar in Japan, Enryō Inoue amongst others, to understand the intellectual framework of Yōkai in society as Japanese understood it. For without mentioning Inoue, it is impossible to speak of Yōkai phenomena in its entirety.
Philosophico-Scientific Exposition by Enryō Inoue
Inoue argues that if you are brought up in the environment in which people speak of stories of Yōkai as if they are recounting real events, then you will develop a preconception about the existence of Yōkai without a shred of doubt. Hence, should you grow up being educated in such a society, you will necessarily think of Yōkai as substitutes for real phenomena whenever you come across things of unknown or of mysterious origins. This common-sense belief, in turn, further feeds into the societal conception that such things as Yōkai exist and are in fact real. Such a belief, then, facilitates you to imagine events or phenomena that cannot easily be accounted for rationally to be caused by Yōkai, loosely translated as mysterious beings. Hence Inoue argues that Yōkai in general do not exist objectively but only subjectively. This is one type of Yōkai that Inoue describes as a result of “fallacy,” or Kakai, (仮怪). What is necessary in Yōkaiology is to clarify the cause and effect and how soundly one must deduce the result from the corresponding cause.
In sum, Inoue argues that the following methods be applied before concluding that one has in fact faced Yōkai when such occasions arise.
“1) If you see Yōkai, such as Yūrei, do not be satisfied with what your senses perceive, but as long as possible, observe such a phenomenon with clear mind and cogitate if what you see corresponds to the logics and only then determine if such a phenomenon is to be defined as Yōkai. 2) if you happen to come across strange phenomenon, such as a meteorological anomaly, do not be satisfied with one time experience, but, if possible, observe such a phenomenon multiple times and contemplate on the necessary relationships between such a phenomenon and another factual event, such as a civil unrest, and only then should you confirm that the cause and effect is consistent. 3) if you have chanced upon an expected result such as a full recovery from an illness after an event, such as a ceremonial ritual, make sure if the same result may be obtained by performing another event that is utterly unrelated to a ceremonial ritual in order to establish the relationship between the cause and its effect. 4) if at one time (a long time ago) a divine punishment or a curse has resulted after an event, such as committing a murder, but in more recent time, the same crime has not incited the same punishment, never neglect to ask why there is a difference between the former case and the latter case in order to establish the relationship between the cause and its effect. 5) if in one region, a certain result, such as possession by a supernatural entity, occurs after performing a Kori (狐狸, i.e., Quija Board), yet the same result does not occur in another region, investigate the reasons why, in order to establish the relationship between the cause and its effect. 6) if you have performed a divination and even though the most of it is correct, for example, the prediction and the outcome have matched, some results did not come through, cogitate why only some and not all have come through in order to establish the relationship between the cause and its effect. Attempt to do these raised above with immaculate mind, and then what remains must of necessity be what we should call Yōkai.”
However, it is clear that when one sees what one deems as a Yōkai, not only is there time enough to do all the calculations but it is unreasonable to ask such a person to be “clear minded.” Inoue’s restriction does not end here. He continues that “however, there still remains doubt, for what an individual confirms as concrete may turn out to be incorrect when subjected to some other third person’s judgment, and furthermore, what is confirmed as true now may turn out to be proven false later.” So even if one performs such a meticulous methodology in identifying Yōkai, it all comes down to what has been brought up in the beginning of this segment: Yōkai is born out of habituation in education, i.e., the society in which people believe in the existence of Yōkai. Inoue therefore argues that if he were to say a few words on the relationship between custom and Yōkai, what people say are Yōkai are only the result of habituation. Whoever sees or hears of mysterious and nondescript experiences, then they all call them Yōkai. In other words, if they see or hear something that they are not used to perceiving, that thing is defined as Yōkai. Inoue goes on to argue that “[w]hat I mean by Yōkai is mostly explained by appealing to the union of concepts,” and that there are recollections and conceptions of images. The former is to recollect the images of the things once perceived, which requires sense perceptions and memory. This can be rephrased as an association of images. Association of images is in other words the union of ideas. Ideas are that which are composed of images internally analyzed of the once perceived images either through sense perceptions or through conceptions. The conception is a composition of images. It is similar to recollection albeit it differs in a significant way that the conception takes parts of images from different resources and reconstruct them in such a way that it creates a new image, such as an animal that flies by adding an image of wings to an image of a human being. In this way, he skillfully explains that “first, speaking of the union of sense-perceptions, if one perceives something that one is not used to seeing, then such an object would give rise to the concept of Yōkai in one’s mind.” As an example, he illustrates his point in the following manner. “[I]n case of seeing a demonic skeleton, if one perceives a timber frame to be demonic, the timber frame ceases to be a mere timber frame for him. Such conception of Yōkai is evoked especially the object is seen at night and it is hard to tell what exactly it is. The ghosts (Yūrei) are for the most part born in this way. However, this is nothing but an association of information from sense perceptions.” Undoubtedly, this can only occur when one has already been immersed in the society in which it believes in things such as Yōkai and Yūrei, as described before. Hence, the Yōkai of external origin must of necessity be born in collaboration with the concepts already in mind, as they are the phenomena of the union of the concepts of sense perceptions and of ideas. Ordinarily, we come to understand concepts by way of stimulations caused by the external world sent to the brain through sense perceptions. However, in the case of Yōkai phenomena, it so often happens that “what is in mind, a concept, becomes manifest in the external world via sensation. Such a phenomenon is usually categorized as hallucination or delusions, just like when you hear voice where there is no voice, or when you see a figure where there is no matter.”
It is important to keep in mind, however, that here Inoue is talking about Yōkai that is Kakai (i.e., false Yōkai) and Inoue himself firmly believes that there is such a thing as a real Yōkai whose Yōkai-hood must be granted as that which cannot be explained in science and as that which warrants a supernatural existence. His view on real Yōkai will be explained in detail as he gets rid of the falsely created Yōkai. False Yōkai are created as emotional imaginations play a pivotal role. He elucidates in the chapter in which he discusses desire, arguing that emotions are not necessarily in accordance with reason, and that “although people desire to hear scary stories as such, they never want to be in those situations themselves. They simply want to hear them from curiosity. Yet, it is still a fact that they tend to desire to see Yōkai, and this inclination propels them to create false Yōkai as projections of their desire.”
Having discussed false Yōkai being largely created by emotions and the environment in which one grew up, he makes a distinction between the finite desire and the infinite desire. The finite desire is that of desire for wealth and fame, wanting to have a family and wishing for treasure and so on. The infinite desire, however, is nothing but religion. For instance, those who wish to live in the blissful life after death have abandoned the finite desire and have faith in the infinite desire of the future. On the contrary, wishing for wealth in this world or seeing fortune tellers, seeking for divination and palm reading for health and security must be said to originate from the finite desire. Therefore, he argues, the latter is classified as the finite desire and equated with false Yōkai whereas religion as the infinite desire and reveals real Yōkai, which he calls Shinkai.
More Recent Folklorist on Yōkai Phenomenon
A similar argument is made by a folklorist and a Yōkaiologist, Kazuhiko Komatsu in recent years in alignment with Inoue that Komastu argues that different kinds of Yōkai appear depending on the societal view of the villages and towns specific to certain regions, which he calls “micro-cosmology”. For instance, adults would tell kids not to come home late because if they do, a certain Yōkai closely associated with the geography of the area, such as mountains or sea, would come and take them away (into the mountain or into the sea, depending). While kids grew up being told there are such beings that would kidnap the kids into Yōkai’s habitats, adults would tell them those stories not based on the actual sighting of specific Yōkai but on the actual criminal cases of kidnappings in the areas in order to scare the kids that something beyond our control would snatch them away, rather than telling them to be careful because shady people commit crimes targeting kids. This is because if kids know who are behind the disappearance of other kids, they might think they would not be so stupid as to fall into a prey of actual human beings, disobeying their parents and play outside until late, but if they are told that some supernatural beings will take them away, they have no means of escaping from being the victims, so they become scared and will come home, obeying their parents. In such stories, Yōkai are used to cover up and prevent actual crimes from happening, but this alone could not explain why there are Yōkai such as Ceiling Licker, as it poses no threat to children at all. According to Komatsu, Inoue’s scientific endeavour to rid of Yōkai as mere superstitions can be seen in many of Inoue’s own anecdotes, where Inoue discusses about the famous story of mysterious sounds made at night by raccoon dogs in northern Japan region. In this story, there is a house where racoon dogs are said to produce sounds by using concussion idiophones (Hyōshigi) and nobody dares to approach the house, calling it haunted. Inoue himself went to the said house and heard the sound at night but did not believe that they were made by raccoon dogs and ventured further into the back of the house, when he found that the true cause of this sound was nothing but water drops from snow hitting on the bamboo stick. Inoue proved that while in daytime, these water drops are dissipated and become inaudible to human ears due to people chattering but the sound is clearly heard only at night when everyone is asleep. Here Komatsu argues with Inoue that the illusions are caused by the mentality of the regionality or simply by the environment in which people lived and the kinds of deeds people did that may have harboured the certain belief systems, i.e., in this case, that raccoon dogs as mischievous “spirits” was the regional belief, that is, the very micro-cosmology that Komatsu speaks of. Further, both Komatsu and Inoue take into account of the dark places or isolated places for modern people as places people tend to experience or create Yōkai related stories. These accounts are abundantly explained in much of the same way by Inoue in Inoue’s book on Shinkai. Komatsu similarly argues with Inoue that something is deemed to be Yōkai when its cause is not known, but as soon as the cause of the phenomenon is explained scientifically, it creases to be Yōkai, leaving only that which cannot be explained with modern scientific enquiries as true Yōkai.
Yet another strikingly similar argument with Inoue is put forth by Komatsu. Komatsu’s understanding of Yōkai that it can be categorized in two ways on the basis of historical documents. Many of them were written in Heian period, such as Eiga Monogatari, in which one kind of Yōkai is termed as Mononoke, denoting the earthly souls that possess us and make us sick. This type of Yōkai transcends our human understanding, but this can be cured by exorcism performed by esoteric monks. The other type is termed as Kaminoke, denoting the souls that possess us and also make us sick, but this type has its origin in gods and hence transcends our human understanding as well. The difference is that Kaminoke cannot be cured by ordinary exorcism but by only with the help of Onmyōji, an expert on Ying Yang theory. In this sense, the division of Yōkai into souls of two distinct origin – one is terrestrial (knowable by exorcism) and the other celestial (unknowable and divine) – is at least exactly the same understanding as how Inoue understood Yōkai as – one is false and verifiable by scientific enquiry, while the other is true and beyond the reach of reason.
Oni and Evil Spirits
I will now examine Oni and evil spirits as causes of illness. Oni is often translated as demons in English, but more strictly speaking, Oni has the same connotation as the Greek word for gods, i.e., daimon. Its essential characteristics do not involve goodness or badness, but only that of powerfulness. Daimons can be good or bad depending upon how we interpret their actions. This is the notion of Oni we have in Japan, for sometimes Oni are seen as harbingers of wealth and fortune. I will deem this notion of Oni as only subjectively true, and according to the Buddhist tradition, Oni are to be always feared as “dreadful supernatural beings emerging from the abyss of Buddhist hell to terrify wicked mortals [and] their grotesque and savage demeanor and form [should] instill instant fear” in us. Further, Oni are described as at one time one-eyed giant who sucks the human’s vital energy and devours humans, or at another time as having one or two horns protruding from their scalps, as having the third eye in the center of the forehead, and as wearing a loincloth of fresh tiger skin. Above all, the most common attributes of Oni are their cannibalistic nature and their ability to transform themselves into anything. It is indeed the Yōkai with utmost negative association. In fact, we can see that a lot of illnesses were attributed to the gatherings of Oni from antiquity. For example, in the “Explanation of the Dharani Teachings on the Guardian Gods of the Children” (仏説護諸童子陀羅尼経所説) written in the 6th century, as mentioned earlier, fifteen different Oni were described that are said to make kids sick. These Oni appear as various animals or demon-gods and possess the children. For instance, one Oni takes the shape of a snake, and makes a child belch incessantly as to suffocate him. Another Oni appears as a lion and makes a child vomit. And yet another appears as a bird-like man and causes the possessed kid’s shoulders to shake. The other symptoms caused by the Oni’s possession include baby colic, diarrhea, high fever, dizziness, foaming in the mouth and crunching fists and so on. There were also Oni that spread epidemics, and depressions or mental illness too were attributed to the Oni’s doings. In the 15th century, various studies were conducted in order to identify which Oni is responsible for which illness or epidemics. Although Oni were oftentimes depicted as having some kind of physical appearances, they were often depicted as such simply to render them visibility. For example, in Onmyōdō, Oni referred specifically to the immaterial evil spirits that caused human infirmity. Their invisibility was, in fact, a predominant feature of Oni in their very early stage and it was their invisibility that made them dreadful to us, because there was no way of defending ourselves against what we could not see. Insofar as the Oni refer to the immaterial evil spirits, there does not seem to be much difference between Oni and Ma, which is the evil spirits proper that is listed as the distinct cause of illness from Oni in Makashikan. What is different indeed lies not in their supposed appearances, but in the way in which they affect human health. For Oni enters into the body from the five senses to those who wish ill of others and try to do evil deeds and physically torment them, whereas the evil spirits proper will corrupt apperception and strip away the wisdom to attain Buddhahood. Further, they stir up the ill will in people and destroy the good deeds. In other words, Oni cause physical harm to people, whereas Ma causes spiritual harm. Moreover, whereas Oni choose to cause harm to those who are harmful to the others, Ma will come into people’s body when in the midst of their religious training as soon as they allow a room for accepting any desires by thinking of impure thoughts. They are on a spiritual, psychological level, attached to the clothes people desire or food people take in, and they enter into one’s body when they gladly accept those desires and are taken in by them. So according to this tradition, vengeful spirits and ghosts who cause harm to people or who scare them cannot be classified as evil spirits but rather Oni or more broadly as Yōkai, for they do not impinge upon people’s effort to attain Buddhahood. Nevertheless, both Oni and Ma are treatable by the Buddhist purification methods, and this is why exorcisms were often recommended in addition to the recitation of Buddhist sutras.
We now know what I mean by Yōkai, Oni and evil spirits – we also know that they affect us in various different ways. Some seem to exist to scare us and make us recognize the gods who have long been neglected, while others are there to keep an eye on who amongst us have ill intentions and desires to harm others. Yet others try to hinder us from attaining Buddhahood, the most famous of which is Tengu, luring us with material goods and pleasures of life. What I want to focus on now is precisely what happens in us when these external enemies come to affect us. In order to understand why we see Yōkai monsters around us, we will need to understand the mechanisms of how Oni are said to attack us. This is because Oni appears to be more closely connected with us than many of the Yōkai monsters, for as we have seen, although some Yōkai come to hunt us, either with the rolling head that feeds on human flesh or by abducting kids into the abyss of the water late at night, but many of them are relatively harmless and mind their own businesses. The head of Rokuro-Kubi is not always conscious of attacking any particular persons but only subconsciously aware of its actions. This is why a manservant at a certain temple asked the monk in one morning, ‘Has my head come to visit last night?’ The monk responded that a person’s head came to his chest as he slept, and he grabbed it and threw it out. The manservant replied that he had a habit of losing his head and asked that for fear of causing the monk more trouble, he would like to take a leave.Kappa, too, does not go out of his way to drown children but captures only those who come near the water after dark. Oni, on the other hand, seeks out people with malicious intent, and possesses them to make them sick or severely injure them. From this, I argue that Yōkai monsters are rather like variations of Oni – distant relatives, as it were. Just like Oni, Yōkai too were feared as vindictive spirits, as we see from some of the older accounts of spiritual Yōkai in Shoku-Nihongi 続日本紀 (797) and Makura no Soushi 枕草子(1001) in Heian period. But after the Heian period, Oni came to dominate the role of vengeful spirits and Yōkai came to be set aside to refer to some innocuous yet mysterious phenomena that could not be attributed to the sheer negativity portrayed in Oni. This is probably because Oni is a Buddhist concept that came to Japan along with the Chinese philosophy, whereas Yōkai developed out of a native Shinto concept of animism and only shares the qualitative similarity with Oni. With the spread of Onmyōdō in Heian period, Oni came to symbolize the fearful and the illness, and Yōkai phenomena were confined to the rather minor role of Tsukumogami and the other mysterious events. It was only during the Edo period that, with the gradual disappearance of strong belief in Onmyōdō, the concept of Oni that is deep rooted in such a doctrine too came to be dismantled, and what was left were the mysterious but rather innocuous phenomena supposedly attributed to the shapeless Yōkai and invisible spirits. Because the core beliefs about Yōkai as the fearful spirits were passed onto Oni, and Oni played in large part the role of spreading illness, understanding the cause and the essence of Oni would necessarily clarify what the intellectual basis for the belief and acceptance of such entity. For this, we will now look at the development in Chinese Buddhist philosophy on consciousness, which was largely studied in Japan. In particular, I will focus on the two Buddhist schools that had a tremendous influence on the later development of Buddhism in Japan that I believe would help shed light on the rational acceptance of supernatural entities as the agents of illness.
Part II: Buddhist Philosophy of Consciousness
The first school I discuss is called the Consciousness-Only School, which represented the major development of Mahayana philosophy in India, and this school prepares the way for understanding the T’ien T’ai School, which was introduced to Japan by Saichō in 806. As was mentioned earlier, T’ien T’ai School was established by Chigi in the 6th century in China, and one of his most-studied treatises on Buddhist practice, Makashikan, or the Great Concentration and Insight, lists Oni and Evil Spirits as the causes of illness. T’ien T’ai philosophy is best known for its idea of three thousand worlds immanent in a single instant of thought. What this means, however, is best illustrated with the understanding of dharmas and differing levels of Truth. And the understanding of consciousness in Buddhist philosophy, I believe, will also explain the roles played by Oni and evil spirits as the causes of illness in Japanese society.
The central doctrine of the Consciousness-Only School is that of eight Consciousnesses. According to this school, the mind or the consciousness is divided into eight functions and consists of the five sense-consciousnesses of touch, taste, sight, hearing and smell; one sense-center consciousness that organizes sense data and forms conceptions of objects; one though-center consciousness, which wills and reasons on a self-centered basis, and one store-house consciousness (alaya). These Consciousnesses are in perpetual change, involving threefold transformation. The first of which happens at the storehouse consciousness, where the ‘seeds’ or effects of good and evil deeds, which exist from time immemorial are stored, that become the energy to produce the external manifestation such as ideas and images of things existing. This consciousness brings these seeds into manifestation spontaneously through contacts with the other consciousnesses. Although it itself is indifferent to its associations, the storehouse consciousness is constantly affected and perfumed or influenced by incoming perceptions and cognitions by these external manifestations. In this way, “the three dharmas (the seeds, manifestations and perfuming) turn on and on, simultaneously acting as cause and effect.” This transformation in the storehouse consciousness is not external nor does it come to an end, and is thought to be a perpetual transformation from time immemorial. There was never a time at which there was no consciousness nor will the consciousness remain the same at any point in time. Indeed, the Consciousness-Only School argues that there has always been consciousness transforming without interruption and explains that it is like a violent torrent and “the basis of the constructions in the four realms which form the substance of existence, the five stages of transmigration, and the four kinds of living beings, and its nature is so firm that it holds the seeds without losing them,” and as the violent torrent continues for a long time, “some sentient beings will float and others will sink.” This is important, as it means the four realms of substance (Earth, Water, Air, and Fire), the five stages of transmigration (the hells, those of ghosts, animals, human beings and heavenly beings) and the four kinds of living beings (those produced from the womb, from eggs, from moisture and through metamorphosis) are all combined in this consciousness and they constantly influence, or perfume, each other to produce manifestations.
The second transformation of consciousness involves the thought-center consciousness, and perpetually takes the storehouse consciousness as an object and is always accompanied by the four evil defilements of self-delusion, self-view, self-conceit and self-love. In the first transformation, we saw the storehouse consciousness as pure consciousness itself with perceptions flowing in and out and producing something while the consciousness itself remained indifferent to any of the seeds, manifestations and perfuming. But here at the second transformation, we see the emergence of self in consciousness. As soon as one cognizes oneself as a thinking subject, self-view exists, which is the belief that exists, “erroneously imagining certain dharmas to be the self that are not the self.” At the same time, self-delusion, or ignorance and lack of understanding of the character of the self emerges. Where there was the principle of non-self in the storehouse consciousness, now self-conceit gives rise to doubt about the possibility of non-self. It produces a sense of pride in the self in feeling of superiority and self-love develops a deep attachment to what is clung to as the self. Through this perpetual transformation, the sentient beings are bound to the cycle of life and death, and the “four defilements constantly arise and pollute the inner minds and cause the six other transforming consciousnesses to be continuously defiled.”
The third transformation of consciousness consists of the last six Consciousnesses all together. They are the Consciousnesses of touch, sight, hearing, smell and taste with the binding sense-center consciousness, and they discriminate the spheres of objects. Because their job is to discriminate sphere of objects only, it is important to note that they too are neither good nor evil in themselves. The difference between the common five Consciousnesses and the sense-center consciousness is that whereas the each of the five has its own sphere of objects, the sense-center consciousness takes the external world as a whole as its object. What is interesting is that while all three transformations take place at the same time and influence each other, and therefore are governed by cause and effect, each transformation is hierarchically organized in that without the thought-center consciousness, there is no grasping of an idea of any external manifestation. Nor would there be any conceptual activity and identification of the self independently of the external world had there been no storehouse consciousness. It all depends on the alaya and it is only through the root consciousness of alaya, can the five sense Consciousnesses manifest themselves in accordance with various causes. Because all depends upon the storehouse consciousness, it is argued that everything is consciousness only and inseparable from consciousness. The word “only”, the Treatise explains, is intended not to deny however that “there are mental qualities, dharmas and so forth inseparable from consciousness.” Further, what follows from this is that because dharmas and manifestations are not separated from minds, sentient beings become pure or impure in accordance with the mind. This is again explained and supported in the Four Wisdoms of bodhisattvas that the contradictory Consciousnesses are but characters, meaning the same thing perceived by ghosts, human beings and deities appear differently to them in accordance with their past deeds. If there was an external sphere as actually existing, how could this be possible? Such is only possible if consciousness takes non-being as its object. Indeed, “he who has realized the freedom and the ease of mind can change and transform earth into gold without fail according to his desires[, but] if there really was an external sphere, how can these transformations be possible?” Here, the Treatise uses an instance in alchemy to support the view that there really is not an external world independently of our consciousness and argues that an apparent transmutation of base metals into precious ones is nothing but a manifestation caused by mental qualities. Although external spheres are apprehended by the consciousness, its externality is still erroneously formed and created by the sense-center consciousness, and these objective spheres that are immediately apprehended are in fact the perceived portions of the Consciousnesses themselves. It is only in this sense that we say they exist externally. But because we know that the colour and so forth that the sense-center consciousness conceives as external and real are erroneously imagined to be existent, we say also that they are nonexistent. In this way, the Consciousness-Only School steers “far away from the two extremes of holding that dharmas are real (although they have no nature of their own) or holding that dharmas are unreal (although they function as causes and effects),” and establishes the Middle Path, which the school holds it to be the correct view. Only through this Middle Path can we differentiate the three kinds of dharmas, avoids being deceived by the worldly existence and discern what has the real existence. For when we know the Middle Path, we can immediately see what is conceived by the vast imagination through juxtapositions of external manifestations, such as horns of a rabbit and unicorns, and recognize that these are purely illusory, being qualities of the mind, and have only false existence. Similarly, those dharmas that depend on others for productions, such as capsizing of the boat in the sea, have purely temporary and dependent existence, and hence have no nature of their own. So the school holds that only the reality that transcends all specific characters and represents Thusness has the true existence and is the Ultimate Reality. Such reality is only realizable “when through discipline and enlightenment the pure seeds in the storehouse consciousness are cultivated and the impure aspect of the storehouse is overcome.” It is only when one is not enlightened does one see horns of a rabbit, a unicorn or a walking umbrella that are purely illusory and therefore have only false existence. Further, some beings may be said to depend on each other for their existence, such as the capsizing of a boat. Suppose a boat was capsized in the sea. And further suppose that this was caused by the successive waves hitting the boat. In this case, the chief condition of the wave is the combination of the wind and water in the sea in such a way that produced a wave. This wave is further followed by succeeding waves enough to capsize the boat. There is the chief constitutive condition, which is wind and water; the immediate condition, which is the following waves; the objective condition, which is the boat on the water; and the upheaving condition, which is the last wave that brings all conditions to the climax, i.e., upsets the boat. This series of event is apparently caused and as a result the boat is capsized, but its causes only have dependent and thus temporary existence, for the capsizing of the boat cannot happen unless all causes are present at the same time. The process of enlightenment resembles that of being in a dream. For, just as we do not know that we are in a dream while sleeping, we do not become aware of the fact that the sphere of objects is unreal before we reach the state of true awakening, and we would be perpetually in the midst of a dream.
Having examined the Consciousness-Only School, I will now look at the philosophy of T’ien T’ai School. In the Consciousness-Only School, the Middle Path is identified with Thusness that transcends all specific characters and hence it attempts to arrive at the middle ground between realism and nihilism. T’ien T’ai philosophy, on the other hand, aims to synthesize the both realms in which transcendence (noumenon) and immanence (phenomenon) are harmonized, producing the perfect harmony of the Three Levels of Truth: the Truth of Emptiness, the Temporary Truth, and the Truth of the Mean. The first two levels of truth have already been discussed; namely, that all dharmas are empty because they have no nature of their own but depend on causes for their production (the Truth of Emptiness) and that the dharmas are nonetheless produced and do possess temporary and dependent existence (the Temporary Truth). The third level of Truth is the combination of the first two, that is, it is the very nature of dharmas that they are both empty and temporary (the Truth of the Mean). By not taking on the middle ground between the emptiness and temporary truth, as the Consciousness-Only School did, but rather combining the two into its philosophical system, T’ien T’ai School was able to include all that there is, without making any distinctions between the external manifestations that are qualities of the mind and the internal activities of the pure consciousness in which the production of seeds and perfuming the manifestations perpetually took place. In this way, T’ien T’ai School achieved what is called the three thousand worlds of immanent in an instance of thought. In the realm of the Temporary Truth, there exists ten realms: Buddhas, bodhisattvas, Buddha-for-themselves, direct disciples of the Buddha, heavenly beings, spirits, human beings, departed beings, beasts, and deprived men. In each of these realms involves the other realms as well. So, in the realm of Buddha, all the other realms are included, and in the realm of heavenly beings, all the other realms are included, and so on, making it one hundred realms. Each of these realms in turn possesses the ten characters of Thusness: character, nature, substance, energy, activity, cause, condition, effect, retribution, and being ultimate from beginning to end. Each of these then possesses living beings, of space and of aggregates (matter, sensation, thought, disposition, and consciousness), which resulting in the three thousand worlds and the totality of manifested reality. It is the world as the totality of all the worlds. All these realms are so interpenetrated that they are said to be immanent in a single instant of thought. These are not produced by any mind, nor are they included in an instant of though, but rather “all the possible worlds are so much identified that they are involved in every moment of thought.” Unlike the Consciousness-Only School, where the world is the consciousness itself, in T’ien T’ai philosophy, all phenomena are manifestations of the Mind and each manifestation is the Mind in its totality. As has been mentioned, because this philosophy involves all, and since everything involves everything else, it implies the doctrine of universal salvation. All beings possess Buddha-nature and are therefore capable of salvation. And this salvation is achieved through the method of concentration and insight, or Makashikan. Namely, by recognizing the three levels of Truth just discussed.
III: The Etiology of Illness by Supernatural Entities
We have seen that Yōkai, Oni and evil spirits are said to cause fear and illness. We have also seen what the Buddhist philosophy teaches us what this world really is. It is nothing but the consciousness, and the apparent external phenomena are but mental qualities and manifestations of one’s own mind. It is how the mind perceives the floating manifestations arising from imagination. The kinds of manifestation one sees, then, differ from person to person, as the Four Wisdoms of the Consciousness-Only School explains. What we see with our consciousness is dictated by what we do and what we eat. If there is an imbalance in our constituent elements, we become deluded and fall into an easy prey by Oni. Our weakened body will not resist the intrusion of various daimons and the very fact that we become ill serves as a warning and a reminder that we need to be more mindful of our dietary restriction. Similarly, we become sick due to the deeds we did in our previous life, for the soul of such individual is tainted, and the manifestations of the consciousness too will become muddied with malignant seeds. Indeed, illness was such an essential feature of what it is to be a human that many monks conceived the state of illness as dharma, and taught that one should use the illness as the object of our consciousness and observe it with the wisdom arising from the immobile faith. It is the times of illness, monks argued, when one attains enlightenment. Through such means, then, one should discover the reasons as well as the meanings that such illness has brought to him, and search for the treatment, and attain enlightenment by experiencing the entire process as the totality. So Chigi as well as other monks often perceived illness as an opportunity to reflect oneself and the others around him, and this attitude was known as “Byōsoku-Bosatsu” 病即菩薩, or the attainment of Buddhahood in sickness. Especially amongst the T’ien T’ai monks in Japan, they preferred to consult with Mahā-prajñāpāramitā-śāstra 大智度論, authored by Nāgārjuna 龍樹, and argued that illness are either caused by the past deeds or by kleshas, i.e. worldly desires. In both physical and spiritual illness, the true cause is said to be in the kleshas煩悩. Once kleshas get activated, it will cause imbalance in the body and bring disharmony in the life rhythm, causing one to be sick. The treatment, therefore, is to actually recognize what is causing the kleshas, and avoid having an attachment arising from the imagination, and further to understand that everything is in a state of flux and nothing is absolute. Things in this world exist as dependent on one another and constantly changing. When you understand this, you will recover from illness. Similarly, Komatsu argues that when a person does something bad, he starts feeling guilty and becomes convinced anyone may harm him because of what he did. This sense of insecurity and fear in turn cultivate the Yokai in his mind. In other words, it is this very fear he feels himself that causes him to fall ill, while attributing the cause for his illness to the evil spirits of the other people. A very similar explanation is offered by Inoue as well, for he states that Yōkai as well as Yūrei are “not created by fear only, but in tandem with it, various conceptions and philosophy play a role. Yūrei are most affected by the psychological states of the agent that they are dependent on them. If a person has caused suffering to in the past, or he has received grudge because of his deeds, the Yōkai he creates is so fearsome that he might go mentally ill. If he knows who it may be that holds grudge against him, he may even see the ghost of that person. It is hence obvious that there is a clear correlation between the agent’s psychological states and the possible creation of the said Yūrei.”
When looked at this way, it is natural to perceive Buddha as the wise doctor and sutra as the medicine, as they were often spoken of as such. Monks then offer the words of Buddha by prescribing the patients the spells or citation of sutras. Indeed, there is an account of medical practice in Japan given by a Jesuit missionary in the 16th century, which reads that
In Japan, when you become sick, a doctor comes and takes the pulse, perform an acupuncture on stomach, back and arms. Although they do not perform bloodletting, they follow dietary restrictions that are contrary to our customs, and take in medicine. They also pray to Buddha and gods, make others observe dharma, have monks read them sutras, and call in exorcists who can perform sorcery.
These monks whose job it is to exorcise were called Genza験者. How this was performed was that they would summon the protector daimons, who then would enter into the sick person. These protector daimons would chase away the Yōkai or evil spirits that possessed the sick, which in turn is transferred to another body called Yorimashi憑座. Yorimashi are persons or objects capable of attracting spirits, giving them the physical space to occupy. Once this is done, the protector daimon would once again chase away the evil spirits from Yorimashi to complete the exorcism. There is, of course, this problem of where the spirits would go afterwards. This is not really explained, but granting that all phenomena are mental qualities, evil spirits thrive well in sick person’s mind most comfortably. But once transferred to the healthy subject, the mind of Yorimashi is presumably strong and resistant, so the evil spirits will be driven away from such a subject relatively easily. Once separated from a subject, they lose the consciousness in which they inhere, and disappear into Emptiness.
Yōkai then are the mental manifestations of one’s own kleshas and how one deals with the external world as such. This is why there are a countless number of different kinds of Yōkai and none seems to appear in bulk but always individually – i.e., those who are chased after by Rokuro-Kubi are not on the same night attacked by Kappa and see Tenjō-Name when he comes home. And when many Yōkai are depicted, they always appear simultaneously with the other types of Yōkai monsters, as in Hyakki Yagyō 百鬼夜行, or Night Parade of One Hundred Demons, throughout Japanese history. In this case, they do not attack specific individuals but walk around at night perhaps representing the kleshas of the phenomenal world. In the case of Oni, however, is rather different, for they represent the evil deeds in the generality. This is why they all share the generic features and they all exist for one purpose, i.e., to cause physical harm to those with malicious intent in order to prevent them from attaining the Buddhahood. Evil spirits further differ from both Yōkai and Oni in that Yōkai and Oni may appear to ordinary people but evil spirits are normally reserved for those monks who are about to attain Buddhahood but fell prey to the worldly desires in the midst of their training, as we have seen from the account given by Chigi in Makashikan. In this respect, evil spirits may be more pernicious, for they also prey on the Buddhist monks, or those who learn to attain Buddhahood. Perhaps, these evil spirits are so persistent in nature that even with the exorcism using Yorimashi, they may remain independently of anyone’s mind, and it may possess a consciousness of its own. Such evil spirits may materialize and bring about misfortunes of natural disasters, as in the case of the vengeful spirit of Sugawara no Michizane (845-903). Michizane’s vengeful spirit is a famous example of Onryō 怨霊 causing a catastrophic damage to the Heian capital in the 10th century. Michizane, a skilled statesman and a poet, was disgraced, demoted and sent to an exile by jealous Fujiwara leaders. Soon after he died in exile in Kyūshū in 903, the Palace at the capital was struck by lightning, and “week after week the capital was drenched by rainstorms and shaken by thunderbolts,” followed by “the violent death of prominent men and the constant outbreak of fires.” These misfortunes continued successively and were of such a magnitude that it was attributed to the vengeful spirit of Michizane. Even after restoring him to the office and ranks he had held during his lifetime and all his official documents sentencing him to exile were destroyed, the calamities continued. In 942, finally an oracle was decreed that a shrine should be erected, where Michizane was to be worshipped as a deity. The calamities finally stopped, and this shrine, Kitano Tenmangū, is still popularly visited by the Japanese in Kyoto to this day, and he was given a title as Tenjin, the Heavenly Deity, in 986. This is a case where the carrier of the evil spirit was never exorcised, nor was he a practicing Buddhist, but not having been exorcised, one could imagine that such a wrathful spirit may grow on to discharge its negative energy until it rested on the shrine which was built to calm the anger of the spirit. Here, I am merely offering a possible interpretation of how such vengeful spirits of aristocrats in the absence of subjects to inhere in could have caused destructions and political instability. But this explanation also well accords with the Shinto belief that daimons become gods when worshipped and become Yōkai when neglected. In fact, we do see quite often that evil spirits appear from time to time after the death of the subjects throughout literature and history. It appears that this happens when the grudge of the living subject is so strong that the manifestation of malicious mental qualities becomes attached to this world and somewhat materialized sometimes as Oni and Onryō. Such spirits remain in the phenomenal world and frequently visit specific individuals. Thus, Komatsu also argues that while jealousy and irrational emotions residing in the unconsciousness may be restrained by the codes of ethics ordinarily, when opportunities arise, Yōkai that lives in this unconsciousness breaks out its boundary and tries to control people. This uncontrollable emotion can oftentimes hurt people and become dangerous to other people as well. It starts with hatred or jealousy, which grows into the demonic will when unrestrained, and then to demonic activity, which finally leads to making the subject a demon with an appearance of demon. This is best evidenced by the story of the princess under Uji Bridge 宇治の橋姫. There are various versions of this story, but one that appears in the Tale of Heike 平家物語 tells a story of a certain princess who was overly jealous of another woman. She visited the altar of the gods in Kibune and asked the deity to turn her into a demon so she could kill the other woman. She was given an oracle telling her to change her appearance and go to the riverbank at Uji. So she went, having tied up her hair into five sections and shaped them into five horns. She also painted her face in red ink, put an iron tripod on her head and held three torches in her mouth. She sat and submerged herself in water at the riverbank. After twenty-one days, she turned into a living Oni and went out abducting and killing people whom she had grudge against. This theme of abduction by Oni is a common narrative in the ancient writings. Shuten-Dōji 酒呑童子, the Oni said to be the master of all other Oni, too abducted people in the capital and fed on the flesh and blood of the abducted. In most cases, the abduction occurs as a result of cheating and betrayal, a blasphemy against Buddhist teachings. In the case of Shuten-Dōji too, the 13-year-old daughter of the retired emperor’s councilor was abducted because the councilor “failed to keep a promise to Kannon when [he] sought her blessing for the birth of the child,” and the diviner who figured out her whereabouts advised the councilor to appeal to Kannon with the appropriate prayers in order to get his daughter back, and it was only with the aid of the deities and Buddha that Shuten-Dōji was defeated.
IV: Conclusion
In this paper, I have explained the socio-historical origin of the spirits and Yōkai phenomena as well as the Buddhist origin of Oni and evil spirits and how they are said to affect us and make us sick, i.e., by failing to observe the Buddhist teachings and turning away from enlightenment. Furthermore, Yōkai and Yūrei (ghosts) are constantly identified as belonging to the same category, albeit with varying explanations. However, it seems after the Edo period, these supernatural entities gradually came to walk on their own, as it were, and Yōkai as effects of the manifestation of consciousness remained and were then depicted, clothed with material appearance. These entities seem to have lost their philosophical justification for their existence, and instead, obtained an independent reality in modern day Japan. While their existence continues to both amuse and frighten us, I think it is also important to understand that these entities posed imminent danger for the people in the past with good reasons. In Buddhism, it is said that there are four kinds of beings: those produced from wombs, from eggs, from moisture and through metamorphosis. What does it mean for something to come to be through metamorphosis? I believe that this refers to the psychological manifestations of the consciousness of the Buddhist philosophy. In this sense, although they do not generate from species to species in the natural means of generation, Yōkai and other supernatural beings are certainly granted their being-hood in this world. They are not merely imaginary beings but they too are the members of the “one thousand worlds” of immanence in a single instant of thought. That is why the long neck of Rokuro-Kubi was also explained in terms of ectoplasm, where the soul is said to escape from the body and becomes materialized, and it was believed that the neck is connected with the body through a spiritual thread. Buddhist philosophy also explains the regularity of the phenomena by means of the characters of dharmas and their seeds. For it does seem strange that we have many accounts of the same Yōkai with the said characteristics from time to time if all these phenomena are merely attributable to the distinct and individual consciousness. But such problem is easily dissolved by appealing to the doctrine of the causality in Consciousness-Only School that regularity is simply characters of dharmas and as such involves the process of mutual cause and effect, i.e., perfuming. In this process, “certain seeds regularly perfume in a certain way, and therefore people with similar seeds in them are perfumed in the same way.”
This explains why a long-forgotten certain Yōkai, Amabié, regained its fame during the COVID pandemic in 2020 as a result of the perfuming, as if it were a recollection from the past when the similar pandemical situations had presented themselves. Amabié, popularized by various Yōkai manga artists in recent years, including but not exclusive to Shigeru Mizuki, also has its root in the Edo period. According to the original source preserved in the library at Kyōto University, a shiny creature rose above in the now-Kumamoto prefecture in Kyūshū Island, Japan, every night in the middle of April in 1846. The public servant was summoned to check what it could be, only to be told by the said creature that “I am called Amabié that lives underwater. You will have six years of a good harvest, but at the same time, a pandemic will spread. People shall be spared if they see the drawings of me,” and disappeared into the sea.Amabié is depicted as having a long hair and a body covered with scales with three legs. It has a beak like a bird and resembles a mermaid. What is of importance is that smallpox was spread in the year of 1843, just as Amabié had predicted. However, as Tōgō cogently suggests, Amabié was probably drawn after the fact that smallpox began to spread in order to sell the drawings as a charm to repel the infectious disease. Tōgō’s reasoning is that there had been deadly infectious diseases occurring almost every year in the 18th century Japan as the contacts with the foreign countries accelerated. When dysentery spread in 1805 and in 1819, similar drawings with similar stories had been sold, although the shape of the Yōkai depicted slightly differed. From this fact, he traces the origin of Amabié as 1805, since that was the first time a similar mermaid like creature was said to appear from the sea and predicted a good harvest as well as a pandemic. The drawings of this type of Yōkai appealed to the populace who desperately needed a cure and security from illness.
The way perfuming manifests in our world, therefore, is by means of the kleshas. Certain conditions must meet for it to happen, as in the case of the Four Causes mentioned earlier with the capsizing of a boat example. In order to see Kappa, for instance, one must be situated in such and such an environment that manifestations are perfumed in the similar way so as to have a reason to fear such creature. Further, one must be near a pond or a river, and not in the center of downtown or in a bathroom stall in an old school. These are all preconditions that influence the seeds in certain ways. So, it is futile to say, as Komatsu warns us perhaps jokingly, that in order to avoid getting attacked by Yōkai spirits, one must simply avoid encountering one. Nor is it possible to follow his advice not to go outside at night because at the moment when we decide to go outside, our consciousness is not yet properly warned that no effort can be made to change the course of perfuming. However, it is possible to avoid going to places where they cause you to feel fearful, such as graveyards or abandoned buildings, because the perfuming of the manifestations is not the same as a soft-determinism. Suppose I am at home in the evening, and realize that I need to get some milk at the store. Although it is not possible to change the desire to go out to buy the milk, I can decide not to take the route that makes me go through the graveyard or the route that leads me into a dark alley just because it is a shortcut to the store. Similarly, once I find myself in an abandoned building, I can either stay or leave the area at will because essentially it is my own consciousness that shapes the external manifestations and the internal activities of perfuming in bringing about a particular course of action.
At the same time, precisely because it is our own consciousness that determines the phenomena and the activity of the soul, it is even possible for anyone who holds grudge against someone or jealous of someone to send out, without his knowing, the vengeful spirits of his own or even of his pets to those he has in mind, and direct these spirits to possess them to make them ill or cause them misfortunes. If the Buddhist philosophy teaches anything about prevention and treatment of the illness, it is that we should never be so attached to the material world and worldly desires that we would feel the need to cling onto the present, but rather be unattached to the mundane world and, like Buddha, we should be like the lotus flower floating on the water. For “if the mind is attached to something, it is bound to it and cannot be emancipated from birth and old age, sickness and death, sorrow and grief, and suffering and distress.”
Taku Shinmura, Medical History in Japanese Buddhism or 日本仏教の医療史, 34-36. All translations from the original Japanese bibliography are mine, unless indicated otherwise.
To be exact, Onmyōdō covers a large scope in the Eastern philosophy that it does deal with metaphysics and exorcism as well, but it is too large a scale to be discussed here and talking about it will only be a distraction from what this thesis is about. I hope I will be excused to focus on the Shintō-Buddhist ideology in this chapter.
Taku Shinmura, 36-37.
See Nihon-Ryōiki (日本霊異記) [circa. 9th AD], Konjaku-Monogatarishū (今昔物語集) [circa. 13th AD] cited in Shinmura, 30.
Shinmura, 15.
Mujū paraphrased in Shinmura, 20.
See Bussetsugosho Dōjidaranikyō (仏説護諸童子陀羅尼経所説) [circa. 15thAD] cited in Shinmura, 30.
Enryō Inoue, Yōkaigaku-Zenshū: vol.1(妖怪学全集 第１巻, or The Complete Works of Yōkaiology vol.1), ed., Tōyō University Inoue Enryō Memorial Studies Centre (Japan: KASHIWASHOBO Publishing Co., Ltd., 1999), 86.
Haruo Suwa also explains in his book that the root of the such belief may also be derived from T’ien-T’ai philosophy, whose philosophy is explained in the later chapter. See his Reikon no Bunkashi (霊魂の文化史, or The Cultural History of the Soul), 147.
Kazuhiko Komatsu, Yōkai-gaku no Kiso Chishiki (妖怪学の基礎知識, or The Basic Knowledge of Yōkaiology), 50.
See Komatsu, Yōkaigaku Shinkō, 39, where the umbrella Yōkai is mentioned as the god that can either be a well-disposed god or an ill-disposed god. For another malicious characteristics of this Yōkai, see also http://yokai.com/karakasakozou/. Sekien Toriyama, Gazu-Hyakki Yagyō Zenga-shū 画図百鬼夜行全画集, 207, describes this Yōkai as that which makes it rain.
Minoru Harada, Mononoke no Shōtai (もののけの正体, or The Truth Identity of Yōkai), 72-74. Or see also http://yokai.com/nekomata/. Toriyama, Gazu-Hyakki Yagyō Zenga-shū 画図百鬼夜行全画集, 17.
A staff member of an English conversation school in Japan, personal communication, August 2004.
Kazuhiko Komatsu, Yōkai-gaku Shinko (妖怪学新考, or New Methodology in Yōkaiology）, 82-83. Also see Haruo Suwa, Reikon no Bunkashi (霊魂の文化史, or The Cultural History of the Soul), 122-123.
Sekien Toriyama, Gazu-Hyakki Yagyō Zenga-shū 画図百鬼夜行全画集, 205. See also Komatsu, Yōkai-gaku Shinkō, 62.
Lafcadio Hearn, or also known as Yakumo Koizumi, “Rokuro-Kubi” in Kwaidan, 31-35. Kaibutsu-ron, cited in Sasama Yashihiko, Nihon Mikakunin Seibutsu Jiten (日本未確認生物事典, or Japanese Encyclopedia of Cryptids), 72-74. Toriyama, 42.
Suwa, 83-87. Harada, 45-47. Toriyama, Gazu-Hyakki Yagyō Zenga-shū 画図百鬼夜行全画集, 18.
Enryō Inoue, Yōkai-gaku Zenshū Vol.1, ed., Tōyō University Inoue Enryō Memorial Studies Centre (Japan: KASHIWASHOBO Publishing Co., Ltd., 1999), 96. As we will see, Yūrei, or ghosts, assumes the same status as Yōkai for most Yōkai scholars. See my footnotes, 69 and 78.
Ibid., 59 and 101.
仮怪 is a natural phenomenon that can be explained scientifically.
Ibid., 105-107. Translation mine.
Ibid., 107.
Ibid., 151.
Ibid., 154.
Ibid., 120-121. 192-193
Ibid. 154-155.
Ibid., 212, 251.
Ibid. 191-192, 199.
Ibid., 199-200. Shinkai literally means “real Yōkai”
Komatsu, Yōkaigaku-Shinkō, 61-76.
Ibid., 124-125. See also Inoue, Yōkaigaku-Zenshū, vol.1, p.255-256 “on false-alarm of hearing”
Ibid., 139-140. See also Inoue, Yōkaigaku-Zenshū, vol.1, p.262 “on false-alarm of sense perceptions”
Inoue, Yōkaigaku-Zenshū, vol. 5, p.347-509.
See Komatsu, Yōkaigaku-Shinkō, 161, where he uses an actual historical example to illustrate this point.
Ibid., 200-201. Mononoke (物の怪) as Yōkai of human world in contrast to Kaminoke (神の怪) as Yōkai of godly world.
Noriko T. Reider, Japanese Demon Lore: Oni from Ancient Times to the Present, 1, 3.
Ibid., 7.
Ibid. 27-35.
Shinmura, 30.
See Shinmura, 31. The documents published in 1473 and in 1480 are mentioned as evidence of this.
Reider, 13.
Again, see Shinmura, 36.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Kazuhiko Komatsu, Yōkaigaku no Kiso Chishiki, 90. Toriyama, 12.
Shōkyoku Shibata, Kanbon: Yōkai-Hakubutsukan (完本 妖怪博物館), cited from Shōsai-Hikki(蕉斎筆記), 29-30.
Translated by Wing-Tsit Chan. “Buddhist Idealism: Hsuan-Tsang of the Consciousness-Only School” in A Sourcebook in Chinese Philosophy, 371.
Ibid., 380f.
Ibid., 382.
Ibid., 383.
Ibid.
Ibid., 385. See 15., “Sometimes the senses manifest themselves together, and sometimes not, just as waves manifest themselves depending on water conditions.”
Ibid., 386.
Ibid., 388.
Ibid., 390.
Ibid., 387.
Ibid., 372.
Ibid., 372f. wind and water making a wave, succession of waves, a boat in the sea, capsizing the boat…
Ibid., 373.
Ibid., 391.
Ibid., “The T’ien T’ai Philosophy of Perfect Harmony,” 396.
Ibid., 396f.
Ibid., 397.
Shinmura, 11.
Ibid.
Ibid., 37.
Ibid., 37f.
Komatsu, Yokaigaku Shinko, 44f.
Inoue, Zynshū Vol.1, 179. Translation mine. Yūrei is a ghost and treated as Yōkai by both Inoue and Komatsu.
Ibid., quoted from Shinmura, Medical History in Japanese Buddhism, 19. Translation mine.
Ibid, 14.
Ibid., see 36.
George Sansom, A History of Japan to 1334, 215.
Ibid., 215f.
Komatsu, Yokaigaku Shinko, 44. Toriyama, 80.
Ibid., 180. See also Reider, Japanese Demon Lore, 54.
Reider, 186f. Toriyama, 79.
Komatsu, Yokaigaku Shinko, 16-17. Here, Komatsu summarizes that although Kunio Yanagida, a prominent folklorist who specialized in Yōkai phenomena, makes a distinction between Yōkai and Yūrei, it is generally agreed upon in modern times among scholars that Yūrei belongs to the same concept as that of Yōkai. See also Komatsu, Yōkaigaku no Kiso Chishiki, 81, where he explains that when made distinctions, it is usually of when and where Yūrei appears. The difference is never elucidated in terms of the essence, or say, substantially, but only in terms of functionally. Yōkai, as Yanagida says, always appear at the designated places and time, i.e., at the riverbanks, or in the mountains, etc… whereas Yūrei appears to the targeted person with malicious intent to revenge, et al.
A Source book in Chinese Philosophy, 382f.
Sourcebook of Chinese Philosophy, 390.
Ryū Tōgō, Yamai to Yōkai (病と妖怪, or Illness and Yōkai), 7 and 19.
Ibid., 10-13.
Ibid., 18.
Ibid., 19-20, 35.
Ibid., 34.
Komastu, Yōkaigaku-Shinkō, 45.
Ibid., 205.
Sourcebook, 367f
Ibid.
