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Bestiary of Cryptids & Legendary CreaturesOni are fearsome beings of Japanese stories, religion and art, often shown with horns, sharp teeth and powerful bodies.
Also recorded as 鬼
The cook carries a human limb toward the mountain hall. Raikō’s men grip their hidden swords, then greet him politely and ask to see his master. In William Elliot Griffis’s Shuten Dōji tale, the rescuers must persuade their hosts to welcome the very men who have come to kill them. [13]
Read the manuscriptOni often have horns, sharp teeth and formidable strength, but their work varies. Some are ogre-like enemies encountered in this world; others punish the dead in Buddhist hell. The Japanese name accommodates both. As scholar Glynne Walley explains, the English words ogre and demon emphasize different parts of that range. [1]
Noriko T. Reider traces oni through Japanese, Chinese, Buddhist and onmyōdō traditions, including the divination and cosmological practices associated with the latter. Shuten Dōji’s mountain belongs to this varied history: Mount Ōe is its familiar location, while other versions place the host on Mount Ibuki. Reider also examines the ambiguities of his opposition to imperial authority. [2][1]
Two English retellings give the encounters that follow their separate voices. Griffis presents translations, condensations and sketches of Japanese material in Japanese Fairy World; Yei Theodora Ozaki addresses young Western readers in Japanese Fairy Tales. Their stories preserve different expeditions, enemies and endings. The mountain banquet comes from Griffis, and the boy’s island raid from Ozaki. [13][12]
In Griffis’s Raiko and the Shi-ten Doji, the emperor orders Raikō and his companions to destroy the oni and release their captives. The men conceal armour beneath common clothes and helmets beneath enormous straw hats, disguising themselves as wandering priests. They cross the pathless Tango mountains, felling a tree for a bridge and making a ladder from vines. Near the stronghold, a captive washing bloodstained clothes warns them away and points to the bones of earlier victims. They reveal their purpose and ask her help in reaching the den. [13]
An oni cook carrying a human limb brings the visitors inside, anticipating that they will become food. The cave contains a spacious hall with clean mats and silk hangings. Shuten Dōji, red and round, sits on luxurious cushions beside a golden armrest. His hair is cut like a child’s, with small horns just showing through it. Captive women attend him and his companions. The warriors excuse themselves from eating the human flesh. As the hosts drink and grow noisy, Raikō performs a dance that delights them. He then offers sake sweetened by a sleeping potion bought in the capital. [13]
When the oni fall asleep, Raikō signals his companions and tells the captive women to leave the room. The men kill the sleeping adversaries, then approach their chief. Raikō’s sword lengthens when he discovers it is too short for the neck. The severed head flies upward; its horns grow, and it circles the room seven times before attacking him. Its teeth pierce his straw hat and bite into the helmet beneath. The effort exhausts the head, which falls to the floor. His companions raise their fallen leader and find him unhurt. [13]
The warriors finish the smaller demons, divide the treasure, burn the castle, and bury the victims’ bones beneath a memorial stone. They bring the captives back to Kyoto and restore them to their families. Raikō receives court rank and command of the garrison. Griffis ends with houses relieved of mourning: the dead have a marked resting place, and the living come home.
Both expeditions need knowledge held by captives. The mountain party reaches a woman beside bloodstained washing; the island party finds two women doing the same work. The rescuers have weapons and courage, but the prisoners know the way in. In Ozaki’s account, the narrow back entrance defeats the apparent strength of the castle’s walls and gates. [13][12]
Griffis gives the mountain stronghold a view of Kyoto’s pagodas, temple roofs and castle towers. The city whose families have lost their children is visible from the den. At the end the company descends with the survivors, leaving a memorial above the buried bones. The return joins people to homes still waiting for them; the stone marks those who cannot make that journey. [13]
Reider’s translation of the Shibukawa version gives Shuten Dōji a changing appearance and an iron chamber. The Smithsonian’s second-scroll label likewise connects his transformation with drinking. Griffis places the supernatural reversal after the sleeping potion and sword have apparently settled the encounter: a severed head remains capable of attack. The threat survives in a different form and at a different point in each telling. [3][6][13]
In Kimie Itakura’s interview, historian Koyama Satoko points to a report in the Nihon shoki, the official history completed in 720. It describes islanders on Sado fearing that newcomers were oni. Koyama’s discussion makes the label’s human consequences explicit: unfamiliar people could be treated as monsters. She also traces changing images, noting that horns did not appear on every pictured oni and that the familiar metal club became established in Edo-period art. [4]
A surviving Edo-period oni mask in the Smithsonian collection is made of painted wood and hair. Its label suggests use in tsuina or oni yarai, a ceremony to expel evil before the New Year. It also proposes that the eyes once carried gilt metal. Those details remain qualified reconstructions. The carved face survives, while the precise way it moved through a ceremony—and the brightness with which its eyes caught the light—must be inferred from the object. [10]
Two oni carry a genuine dora gong in a late nineteenth-century object at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Metal, wood, lacquer and colour form the ensemble. The museum describes it as a display piece, possibly made for the European export market. Its carriers have an imposing sculptural job, but the instrument they support is playable. Their strange bodies draw attention to something a human hand can make sound. [5]
Walley distinguishes the oni attending Buddhist hell from Enma, the judge who presides there. Enma is not himself an oni, even when his red face and the figures surrounding him encourage a visual resemblance. Divine figures can also share the fierce body. A common appearance does not give them identical duties. [1]
The Smithsonian’s eighteenth-century Beshimi mask makes a related distinction tangible. Carved from cypress, it is a hanging donation mask with a faint donor inscription, intended to ward off evil spirits. It was not made to be worn. The museum describes the dance-drama Beshimi as fierce but ultimately benevolent, its closed mouth differing from conspicuous demon teeth. A threatening face can protect the place where it hangs. This particular object belongs beside the oni comparison without turning every Beshimi or Noh mask into an oni. [11]
At Setsubun, roasted beans and an oni mask bring misfortune within throwing distance. Japan Society describes household participation and temple events in which calls send oni out and welcome good fortune in. A person wearing the mask gives the words and handfuls of beans a moving target. The observance lets participants act out the departure of what they hope to leave behind. [8]
Food continues the wish after the expulsion. Elizabeth Andoh’s 2014 account describes eating one bean for each year of age; Japan Society’s explanation gives age plus one. The two accounts agree on the seasonal hope while differing in that small household reckoning. Andoh also treats the oni as undesirable influences, making the chase an action against misfortune as well as a confrontation with a represented creature. [7][8]
Kyōsai’s 1889 Throwing Beans, discussed by the Smithsonian, makes seasonal expulsion festive. Another playful change appears in the small senjafuda prints studied by Walley: for an exchange meeting on February 3, 1925, oni play go, mend clothing, wash and relax. The familiar workers of hell have ordinary domestic tasks and leisure. Their bodies remain recognizable even while their employment changes. [9][1]
Itakura’s interview also records a harsher reuse. During the Russo-Japanese War, picture books showed Momotarō subduing Russian oni. In World War II, American and British enemies acquired the same label; the 1945 animation Momotarō’s Divine Sea Warriors pictured its island oni as Westerners with single horns. A childhood conqueror and his monstrous adversaries had become instruments for representing living opponents. Koyama’s historical warning concerns that move from an imagined creature to a human target. [4]
The two stories leave different enemies behind: Griffis destroys the mountain host, while Ozaki takes the island chief home bound. Both restore captives to their families. Their shared pleasure in the homecoming does not make their violence identical. The broken horns, the severed head and the memorial stone each belong to a particular ending, and each changes what victory means for those who survive it. [13][12]
Griffis and Ozaki supply the two complete English tales. Reider’s study and Shibukawa selections, Walley’s exhibition and Itakura’s interview place them beside other histories of oni. The gong, scroll, masks and Kyōsai records identify particular artworks; Andoh and Japan Society explain Setsubun observances. [13][12][2][3][1][4][5][6][10][11][9][7][8]
Glynne Walley · University of Oregon Libraries and Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art
Oni: introductory demon/ogre distinction; Identifying oni; King Enma; A day in the life of oni
Checked 2026-10-11
Artwork
Select a folio to enlarge it. Its caption describes the account, landscape or artistic choices behind the image.
Manuscript checked 2026-10-13. Artistic interpretations © Scott Schubr / Luminary Oddities.
Return to the Bestiary ↑Ozaki’s Momotaro begins with a peach carried down a river to an old woman washing clothes. A child emerges from it and becomes the old couple’s son. At fifteen he asks to leave home to defeat the island raiders and recover their plunder. His parents prepare rice cakes for the journey. A dog, a monkey and a pheasant join him, receiving pieces of the cakes. Their quarrels force Momotarō to insist on cooperation. At the sea, the animals hesitate, having never seen such water. He threatens to dismiss them; they cling to him and beg to continue. A small ship carries them onward. [12]
Momotarō sends the pheasant ahead to attack from the castle roof. The oni laugh at a single bird, shake their red hair, pull on tiger-skin trousers and take up iron bars. They try to strike it, but its repeated passes confuse them. On shore, Momotarō finds two captive women washing bloodstained clothes. They show him a back door so small that he can barely crawl through. He, the dog and the monkey enter while the pheasant fights above. Their combined attack overwhelms the defenders. Some fall onto the rocks or into the sea; others die fighting the animals. [12]
The chief, left alone, drops his bar, kneels, and breaks his horns as a sign of submission. He offers treasure in return for his life. Momotarō refuses to spare him, but then binds him and leaves him in the monkey’s charge. He frees the prisoners and collects the plunder. The narrative carries the chief home as a captive rather than describing an execution. The rescued women return to their parents, and the wealth supports the old couple in peace and plenty. The son has kept his promise to come back. [12]
Noriko T. Reider · Utah State University Press; Library of Congress access copy · 2010
Selected chapter 2 passages pp. 42–48; conclusion pp. 177–184
Checked 2026-10-09
Utah State University Press; Library of Congress access copy · 2010 · Translated by Noriko T. Reider
Appendix A, selected pp. 185–186, 193–200
Selected passages from Reider’s English translation of the Shibukawa version.
Checked 2026-10-09
Kimie Itakura · Nippon.com · 2023-05-31
Complete article: historian Koyama’s changing forms, outsiders and modern reception
The historical records are discussed through Koyama’s interview.
Checked 2026-10-09
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
89.4.2016a–e
Checked 2026-10-09
Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art
F1998.303.2, second scroll label
Checked 2026-10-09
Elizabeth Andoh · Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center; A Taste of Culture · 2014
PDF page 1
Checked 2026-10-09
Japan Society · 2023-11-06
Complete Setsubun Festival public body
Checked 2026-10-09
Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art · 2013-02-01
Throwing Beans, S2003.8.496
Checked 2026-10-09
Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art · Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art
F1905.314, object label and metadata
Checked 2026-10-09
Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art · Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art
F2003.5.1, description and label; eighteenth century
Checked 2026-10-09
Yei Theodora Ozaki · Project Gutenberg · English
Preface; Momotaro, or the Story of the Son of a Peach
Checked 2026-10-11
William Elliot Griffis · Project Gutenberg transcription of Trübner edition · 1887 · 1887 Trübner text, preface 1880-09-28 · English
Chapter XXII, printed pp. 190–200; preceding commission/disguise pp. 188–189; preface iii–iv
Checked 2026-10-11