Once upon a time, mukashi mukashi, there lived a beautiful woman in Yotsuya named Oiwa. A ronin (a masterless samurai) named Iemon wanted to marry Oiwa, but her father knew of Iemon’s misdeeds and refused to allow it.
Determined to win his bride, Iemon had OIwa’s father killed, and vowed to find the “bandits” who committed the crime. Oiwa agreed to marry Iemon, and for a time she was happy and devoted to him.
After giving birth to a son, Oiwa grew very weak and sick. Forced to support his wife and child, Iemon came to hate her, eventually falling in love with another woman named Oume. Oume was the granddaughter of a wealthy doctor, and if Iemon could only marry her, his troubles would be over.
So Iemon decided to kill OIwa by poisoning her. Giving her a poison (that may or may not have been from Oume’s grandfather, depending on the telling) that he claimed would restore her strength, Iemon watched in horror as the poison disfigured Oiwa – making her eye droop, her skin scar and bleed, and chunks of her hair fall out – but didn’t kill her.
Angry that Oiwa survived the poison and was terrible to look at, Iemon hired a man to rape Oiwa so he would be granted a divorce from her. However, the hired rapist could not rape Oiwa because she was too ugly. Showing Oiwa her reflection in a mirror, she flew into a mad rage and attacked the man with a sword.
However Oiwa ended up falling and cutting her own throat with the sword. Before dying, she also killed her son so he would not grow up with Iemon, and with her last breath she cursed her husband.
Iemon nailed Oiwa and her servant Kohei (who Iemon murdered when Kohei found out about Iemon’s plans) to a door and threw them into the river. Finally Iemon and Oume could be married.
But on the wedding day, Iemon was plagued by visions of Oiwa, at one point cutting her head off only to find that he had, in actuality, beheaded Oume.
For the rest of his days, Iemon was plagued by Oiwa’s spirit. Wherever he went, her face followed him, most famously appearing in a paper lantern. At one point, Iemon went to the mountains and decided to go fishing, but instead of pulling a fish from the river, he pulled out the door with Oiwa and Kohei nailed to it.
Iemon met his end when he encountered Oiwa’s brother (or another man he wronged, again depending on the telling) who killed him out of revenge and pity.
But Oiwa does not rest. So furious by the wrongs done to her, Oiwa continues to exact her revenge on those who dare tell her story without her permission. Tragedies are said to befall theater, film, or television companies that do not visit her grave at Myogo-ji in Sugamo, Tokyo to ask for her blessing. Her grave says she died February 22, 1636.
I can only hope she has a soft spot for Internet writers.
While we cannot be sure how much of Oiwa’s story is true – it is likely the combination of a few local stories about murdered women and scheming servants – it is her tale that largely serves as the basis for the onryo in Japanese ghost stories and horror.
An onryo is an angry ghost, almost always a woman, who was wronged in life and comes back to seek vengeance. Stronger than when alive, onryo seek vengeance not only on those that directly deserve their wrath, but also on anyone who crosses their path. Their rage rarely subsides, often subjecting the focus of their ire to a long life of torment.
Throughout Japanese folklore there are numerous instances of angry lady onryo; women whose lives were cut short due to cruel, lustful, dishonest men.
In another of Japan’s famous onryo stories, the beautiful (always beautiful, because what is more sympathetic than a “beautiful” woman wronged?) servant girl Okiku of Himeji Castle refused to become the mistress of a samurai named Aoyama. Frustrated by her disdain for him, he tricked her into believing she had lost one of her master’s expensive plates.
Counting the plates over and over again, “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine…” Okiku was baffled over the missing dish. She could be put to death for such a mistake.
Aoyama told Okiku that if she became his lover he would have her spared, but Okiku maintained her refusal. “No,” she told him.
Enraged Aoyama ordered Okiku beaten and dunked into the castle well, where he would pull her out to beat her before submerging her again. When she still would not agree to be his lover, he killed her and tossed her body into the well.
From then on the ghost of Okiku would rise from the well and wander the castle at night, counting to nine, looking for the missing plate, and torturing Aoyama. But her vengeance was not just for Aoyama, anybody who heard her counting would fall ill, and anyone who heard her count all the way to nine would die. Eventually Okiku was put to rest when a priest counted “Ten!” for her, giving Okiku the relief of finding that missing plate.
And though Okiku’s tale is not as eternal as Oiwa’s, it still comments on a fear of wronged women in Japan, perhaps even just a fear of women. Women are expendable, BUT OH GOD WHAT IF THEY BECOME A GHOST? Will they hold us accountable?
In societies and cultures where women have largely been subjugated throughout history, the vengeful ghost is a way for women to gain the power and yes, anger they are denied in life.
It is only in death that Japanese women, and women in many other Asian cultures, can take control of their own fate and existence. In death, as a ghost, women get to take control of their identities, passionately pursuing their own needs as opposed to the needs of men. So of course they are depicted as monstrous.
In Indonesian folklore there is the sundel bolong. Said to be either a woman who was raped and conceived a child, later dying in childbirth, or a prostitute who was abused by men then murdered. She is a beautiful spirit who seduces men then kills and/or castrates them. Her distinguishing feature is a gaping hole in her back that is hidden by her long black hair.
The Indian shaakini is the ghost of a woman who died early in her marriage, most often because of dowry disputes, and most likely by the woman’s in-laws. Similarly there is the daakini who is a woman ghost who died early in her marriage, often at the hands of her husband. And while both ghosts seek vengeance by haunting the people who wronged them, many do not consider them especially fearsome.
The yakshi of south Indian Kerala folklore, on the other hand, is more dangerous. She is a ghost that died a violent death likely because an upper class man broke her heart and betrayed her. Her vengeance comes in the form of drinking men’s blood. Floating above the tops of trees, she lures men to her, kills them, drains them of blood, then leaves their bones at the bottom of her tree.
And while many ghosts in Chinese culture aren’t quite as vengeful or violent as other female spirits from other Asian traditions, there is a pattern of Chinese women forced to roam the earth as spirits because of lost loves or lack of love from men. These women may not be vengeful, but they are condemned to haunt the living because of not fulfilling their role in a patriarchal society. In death they are allowed a persistence, an insistence, that they could not enact when alive in Chinese culture.
Of course there is the nu gui or “woman ghost” that seems to be a popular archetype in Chinese ghostlore. She is the sort of catch-all vengeful lady ghost that checks all the boxes.
Wronged by a man? Check.
Violent death? Check.
Beautiful woman who seduces men only to punish them? Check.
In a version of the nu gui telling, a family might dress a wronged or murdered daughter in red instead of funereal white so as to entice her spirit to become a nu gui and get revenge.
But no matter where a woman ghost haunts, there’s no avoiding the fact that their presence, their stories, largely created by or recorded by men, speak to a cultural acknowledgement that women are wronged. It happens. Story after story tells of a murdered, raped, beaten, abused, maimed, shamed woman and yet nothing changed for decades or centuries. Or it still hasn’t changed.
There is the duality of the cautionary tale – don’t be horrible and murder your wife – and the shrugged what-you-gonna-do “WOMEN ARE CRAZY” trope.
Vengeful women ghosts are both the creation of and the doom of men.
So can these legends enact feminist change in not just the way women are portrayed in stories, but the way women are treated in life?
Or do we have to take a cue from Oiwa and become monstrous and bloodthirsty to be taken seriously?
I’m definitely not saying that women should go “full-onryo” at any point in life (or death), but perhaps there is some small nugget to be gleaned from Oiwa’s unencumbered determination and single-mindedness.
It took dying for these Asian women to gain power and identity. Let’s hope that remains the stuff of legends.