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Concept
Onryō
Summary
In Japanese traditional beliefs and literature, vengeful spirit, sometimes rendered "wrathful spirits", "hatred spirits", "resentful spirits" are a type of ghost (yūrei) believed to be capable of causing harm in the world of the living, injuring or killing enemies, or even causing natural disasters to exact vengeance to "redress" the wrongs it received while alive, then taking their spirits from their dying bodies. Onryō are often depicted as wronged women, who are traumatized by what happened during life and exact revenge in death.
Emperor Sutoku, Taira no Masakado, and Sugawara no Michizane are called the Three Great Onryō of Japan because they are considered to be the most powerful and revered onryō in Japanese history. After they died with resentment and anger, there was a series of deaths of political opponents, natural disasters, and wars, and the rulers enshrined them as kami and deified them in Shinto shrines to appease their resentment and anger that had turned into onryō.
Onryō are used as subjects in various traditional Japanese performing arts such as Noh, Kabuki, and Rakugo; for example, hannya is a Noh mask representing a female onryō.
The Japanese people's reverence for onryō has been passed down to the present day. The head mound of Taira no Masakado, located between skyscrapers near Tokyo Station, was to be moved several times as part of urban redevelopment projects, but each move resulted in the death of a construction worker and a series of accidents. Although the buildings surrounding the Taira no Masakado mound have been rebuilt many times, the mound has remained intact between the high-rise buildings. Even today, the mound is carefully maintained.
The term 御霊 is often used as a synonym for onryō, but the term goyō is more commonly used to refer to the onryō that have become the object of the people's reverence after a noble person has died a politically unjust death. 御霊信仰 refers to the belief that the onryō of people who have died unfortunate deaths cause hauntings and disasters, and the belief that they are enshrined as kami to appease them.
Official source
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