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Concept
Yūrei-zu
Summary
Yūrei-zu (幽霊図) are a genre of Japanese art consisting of painted or woodblock print images of ghosts, demons and other supernatural beings. They are considered to be a subgenre of fūzokuga, "pictures of manners and customs." These types of art works reached the peak of their popularity in Japan in the mid- to late 19th century.
Literally translatable as ‘faint (yū - 幽) spirit (rei - 霊),’ yūrei is just one of several Japanese words used to refer to spirit beings. Other terms include: obake (お化け), yōkai (妖怪), bōrei (亡霊), and shiryō (死霊). There is a long tradition of belief in the supernatural in Japan stemming from a variety of influences. Imported sources include Buddhism, Taoism and Chinese folklore. The most notable influence, however, is Shintō, a native Japanese animistic religion which presupposes that our physical world is inhabited by eight million omnipresent spirits.
Japanese ghosts are essentially spirits "on leave" from hell in order to complete an outstanding mission. The souls (reikon - 霊魂) of those who die violently, do not receive proper funerary rites, or die while consumed by a desire for vengeance, do not pass peacefully to join the spirits of their ancestors in the afterlife. Instead, their reikon souls are transformed into ayurei souls, which can travel back to the physical world. According to Buddhist belief, the journey from the world of the living (konoyo - この世) to that of the dead (anoyo - あの世) takes 49 days, and it is in this limbo-like phase that they can attend to unresolved issues. There is a close relationship between the degree of an individual’s suffering in life and the severity of their actions in the afterlife. While their intentions are not always evil, the results of their actions are almost always damaging for the humans involved. Belief held that a ghost could only receive release through the prayers of a living individual that his/her soul be allowed to pass into the underworld.
Images of supernatural beings, as well as gory and grotesque scenes exist on Japanese painted scrolls going back to the medieval period.
Official source
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