Nowadays, Japanese culture is a unique phenomenon that represents an exceptional synthesis of traditions and modernity. Postmodern Japanese art, especially literature and theatre, widely use traditional folklore motifs and plots presenting their new interpretation and adjusting them to the realities of the modern world. Among the most popular motifs are the stories and legends about resentful women who became demons. Though legends belong to different time periods, in most of them, women transformed into ghosts or monsters longing for revenging for their suffering from gender, age, or social inequality. Two the most frequently addressed images are a yamamba who originates from the medieval Japanese folklore and Oiwa who is mentioned in legends of the seventeenth century and whose story serves as a basis for numerous kabuki-dramas.
In Japanese folklore, shame and jealousy are among the most important factors that make female demons so dangerous and aggressive. One of the demons whose existence is entirely based on such emotions is a yamamba. This female demon is traditionally described as an ugly old woman with long white hair and wrinkled skin who lives in the mountains and devours children and adults to her hut. In the medieval version of the legend, the yamamba is an evil demon who invites a young pregnant woman to her house and then plans to eat her newborn baby. However, in the later versions, this demon often represents a nurturing mother, a wife of a mountain god, who gives birth to divine children. Though the story of this demon is interpreted in different ways, according to Norico T. Reider, first, the yamamba was a woman who survived her own children and, disliked by her grandchildren, was forced to leave her house and to find a shelter in the mountains. There, suffering from loneliness and anger, she turned into an evil demon. This story reveals the conflict of generations and the problem of trust: being betrayed and rejected by her dearest people, the woman cannot maintain control over her negative emotions, and they turn her into a demon from inside.
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Another popular demonic image often applied to in postmodern Japanese art is a ghost called Oiwa. The first mention of this creature occurs in the folklore of the seventeenth century and, since that time, this story has become one of the most popular Japanese legends in the world. In the early modern period, its plot was often used as a basis for most performances in kabuki-theatre. The legend of Oiwa’s turning into a demon is based on the story of love and domestic violence. Being a young and beautiful woman, Oiwa, met Iemon, a cruel and aggressive man. Since the woman’s father was against their marriage, Iemon killed the old man. Though Oiwa did not love Iemon, she was forced to marry him since he promised the young woman to avenge her father’s murder. After the marriage, Iemon turned out to be a lazy and abusive person: not willing to work and having no money he planned to marry another wealthy woman who was madly in love with him. Since, according to the law, he had no right to have two wives, he abused Oiwa and “mentally tortured his wife to death.” After her death, Oiwa turned into a ghost that “returns repeatedly to drive Iemon and others responsible for her sufferings to their deaths.”
Oiwa is often depicted with her body drenched in blood and carrying a baby in her arms. In one of the legend’s versions, Iemon together with his lover Oume tried to poison Oiwa with the help Oume’s grandfather and gave her some ointment which disfigured her face. Having seen her reflection in the mirror, she went mad and killed herself with a sword of her husband. As Michiko Iwasaka and Barre Toelken claim, “the legend of Oiwa is not simply about a disfigures female ghost but rather a dramatization of Japanese attitudes on marital obligations, betrayal of family, and selfishness, as well as an enactment of otherwise abstract ideas about spirits and their emotional condition.” Generally, this legend touches upon the problem of gender inequality and the discriminated position of women in society. In the seventeenth century in Japan, women had almost no rights and were often forced to suffer from constant abuse and violence. In a certain sense, such legends in those times were a way for Japanese women to protect themselves and stand for their rights: they presupposed that in case a man abused his wife, he had to be ready that she could follow and torture him after her death. In the modern world, these motives still signify women’s fight for equality and symbolize women’s supernatural powers.
All the things considered, Japanese legends about demonized women have become a rich source of inspiration for many contemporary artists and writers. One of the most famous female demons in Japanese culture is the yamamba – a cannibal demon who lives in the mountains and lures people to her hut to eat them. Nevertheless, in different variants of the legend, she is also described as a symbol of motherhood and fertility. Another demonic image that is easily recognized not only in Japan but the whole world is Oiwa, a woman who was tortured to death by her husband and turned into a ghost to take revenge. Both these stories touch upon important social issues, such as gender and social discrimination that are still relevant in the modern society, regardless of the fact that most legends originated many centuries ago.
- Iwasaka, Michiko, and Barre Toelken. “Japanese Death Legends and Vernacular Culture.” In Ghosts and the Japanese, 43-124. University Press of Colorado, 1994.
- Reider, Norico T. Japanese Demon Lore. Oni from Ancient Times to the Present. Utah: Utah State University Press, 2010.
- Shimazaki, Satoko. “The End of the “World”: Tsuruya Naboku IV’s Female Ghosts and Late-Tokugawa Kabuki.” Monumenta Nipponica 66, no. 2 (2011): 209-46.
