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In Japanese fairy tales what is evil is Oni. Oni is feared, avoided, and conquered. The oldest example of Oni is in one of the ancient collections of myths, Kojiki, There it is a terrible giant with one eye and one foot. Folklorists say that Oni is reminiscent of a figure of the smith, perhaps referring to those who had brought bronze from the Asian continent to ancient Japan. So Oni is deeply related to the STRANGER from the sea (since we live in a small island...). Sometime in the old literature, such as Tales of Genji by Lady Murasaki, there appears a female Oni; and, in this case, she is an incarnation of evil, envy, and jealousy in our mind. We human beings can turn into Oni when our darkest self is too strong for our self control. This "oni" is from Shoto's Revenge on the Ogre Retold by Kazuko Inada and Illustrated by Yakeo Kawabata. "Shoto" is a dialect of the Okayama prefecture meaning Japanese Bunting. Jizo is originally a bodhisattva who guards children and the weak. There are a lot of stone images of Jizo at the country wayside in Japan and they are very familiar figures for us.
In the famous traditional fairy tales (many examples are made into picture books), Oni is conquered by our hero. Usually Oni has a human shape but is much larger and has two horns on the head, half naked but wears a animal skin around the waist, which is clearly a sign of otherness. The image of Oni sometimes overlaps with that of a foreigner from China or Korea, even with a image of westerner who has red hair and drinks blood-red wine. In other words it stands for all things which are strange and foreign, and savage, a symbol of an outsider which must be conquered in order to keep the safety of OUR community. As such, it is easily slipped into imperialistic ideology. Naita Aka Oni (Red Ogre's Tears) written by Hirosuke Hamada in 1933. (The picture book version illustrated by Toshio Kajiyama, was published more recently.) This is the earliest story to treat Oni as an alienated being and describes his effort to communicate with human beings. But Aka Oni (red oni) won the villagers' friendship at the sacrifice of his fellow Ao Oni (blue oni). On this point this story is sometimes criticized. In this picture book version, the ending seems to me somehow ambiguous. At the last page, we don't know whether Aka Oni returns to his house and people or if he follows after Ao Oni. (The old story book version clearly indicated he returns to his people.) Someko to Oni (Someko and Oni) written by Ryusuke Saito, illustrated by Jiro Takidaira. Someko is a girl's name. This looks like a literary fairy tale, and subverts the conventional relationship between the weak and the powerful. Oni as a strong, evil being is totally powerless before the radical innocence of a girl who wants to play. But, in a sense, she is also an alienated in a busy, grown up world. From Onita's Hat by Kimiko Aman. Illustrated by Chihiro Iwasaki, this is an example of modern fantasy based on our custom of scattering parched beans to drive away Oni, the evil, on the evening of February 3rd, Setsubun.
Even in our daily life, Oni is a familiar word for us. On February 3rd, we usually scatter peas to dispel the evil spirit, which is called Oni. It is considered as the last day of winter, so Oni here is an equivalent of the spirit of the dark, cold winter. And in children's play such as hide-and-seek, "IT" is called Oni. When you say "a mother like an Oni," it means a cruel, heartless mother. In the modern fairy tales, however, some writers try to describe our possibility to communicate this total OTHER. I can find such examples in picture books for children, and in almost all the cases, it is a girl who tries it. So it relates to the gender problem too. In these examples Oni is overlapped with the outsider of the children's community and related to the problems of the bully in schools.
Thus, Oni suggests many issues to be discussed: otherness, national identity, one's darker half, scapegoat, outsider, bully, desperate attempts to communicate with "NOT-US." From Oni Who Tugged an Island by Akio Yamashita. Illustrated by Toshio Kajiyama, this is an example of a literary fairy tale, inspired by a local legend . From Issunboushi, by Momoko Ishii. Illustrated by Fukii Akino is a very famous fairytale in the traditional mode, published in the U.S. as Japanese Tom Thumb. The pictures of Oni attacked by and running away from the little boy are used as an explanation of the concept of "conquering." Created July 9, 1997 and is continously revisedSCILS, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey |
