On View: Ghosts and Demons in Japan

The Art Institute of Chicago is currently presenting an exhibition, Ghosts and Demons in Japanese Prints. When I first saw this on my phone, I was thrilled because I have been doing research on the same subject for my senior thesis. My focus is on a sixteenth century hand-scroll depicting the night parade of one hundred demons, but I also look at many nineteenth century prints to get a broader picture of the development of Japanese supernatural belief. Thus, I am super excited about this exhibit and want to encourage you to see it if you have the opportunity to do so.

The work that appears on the exhibition poster is Kohada Koheiji, one of the five Hyaku Monogatari prints by Katsushika Hokusai. It depicts a skeleton-like creature leaning over a mosquito net. This scene is based on the story of Kohada Koheiji, an actor who was murdered by his colleague, who had an affair with Koheiji’s wife. After he died, Koheiji turned into a vengeful ghost and haunted the two to death. The image here shows Koheiji creeping into the bedroom of his wife and her lover.

As mentioned earlier, this scene is from the Hyaku Monogatari (One Hundred Supernatural Tales) series. Hyaku Monogatari was actually a popular game, which originated in Edo period. To play it, a large group of people would sit together with a hundred burning candles in the room after sunset. Then all participants would take turns to tell ghost stories, and extinguish a candle after each story. As you can imagine, the room would get darker and darker as the game went on, therefore creating a scarier atmosphere. It was believed that something frightening would happen once all the candles were put off.

Hyaku Monogatari is developed from hyakki yako, the belief about the night parade of one hundred demons. It is commonly believed that at night, ghosts and demons would come out and form a procession in the streets. The number “one hundred” of hyaku monogatari is presumably to derive from this folklore. Interestingly, the notion of vengeance also echoes hyakki yako. The most famous visual representation of hyakki yako is the hand scroll I am working on. In this scroll, all the demons are depicted as the spirits of man-made objects, such as scissors, a lute, an umbrella, etc. They are vengeful beings roaming in the streets because they were ill-treated and abandoned by their owners, and committing mischievous, if not hostile, acts to punish those who do not cherish man-made objects…

Anyway, it will be a super cool exhibit to see. It is be even more interesting because AIC will present another exhibit, Temptation, the Demons of James Ensor. So don’t miss—that will be an encounter between the supernatural beliefs in Japan and those in Belgium.