Atlas Obscura and Epic Magazine have teamed up for Monster Mythology, an ongoing series about things that go bump in the night around the world—their origins, their evolution, their modern cultural relevance.
A dead woman, her face disfigured by poisoned makeup, returns to take revenge on the husband who murdered her. A samurai is beheaded in a failed rebellion, his head put on display in a town square, where it bellows for the return of his body. In the wake of a nobleman’s exile and death, pestilence and disease spread throughout a kingdom, as rainstorms flood the cities, lightning strikes the palace, and the emperor’s sons die, one by one.
The Japanese tradition of ghost stories is rich with tales of yurei, roughly translating to “dim spirits”—among them, the onryō, or “vengeful spirits.” They recur again and again in the Japanese narrative tradition, from ancient poetic epics, to stirring theatrical productions, to modern, international horror blockbusters.
Wrathful ghosts, to be terribly feared, onryō are driven by the desire to get even for some perceived wrong, going so far as to cause natural disasters to get their way. This desire for revenge and consignment to a kind of purgatory distinguishes the onryō in the canon of Japanese ghost lore.
Onryō stories are supernatural, but they often deal with real royal machinations, corrosive jealousy, and crimes of passion, culminating in a cosmic rage that transcends life and death. These tales have been recorded as early as the eighth century. The disastrous relocation of Japan’s capital then by Emperor Kammu, for example, followed the sovereign’s false accusation of disloyalty against his brother, resulting in the brother’s exile and death. According to onryō legend, Kammu’s move of his court from Nara to Nagaoka, and 10 years later, from Nagaoka to Kyoto, were elaborate attempts to escape the wrath of his brother’s spirit.