Japanese ghost culture: How did Japanese ghost culture evolve?

Masako, a Japanese folklore researcher, divided Japanese ghosts into five categories:

A ghost in folklore, the soul of an ancestor or the soul of the world.

Ghosts of mountain religion, ghosts of mountain residence, such as Japanese tengu.

Buddhist ghosts, such as Hag, Luo Cha.

People and ghosts, such as robbers and cruel people.

A person who becomes a ghost because of resentment or anger, such as the six retreats of becoming a creature in the Tale of Genji.

Ghost culture originally came from China, and the word "ghost" in Chinese characters refers to the soul of the dead. Ghost (interpretation of ghost 1), originally meaning necromancer and ghost, was introduced to Japan around the 6th century, and combined with the inherent "ォニ" in Japan, forming the "ghost" of Japanese traditional culture.

So what is the deep-rooted "ォニ" in Japanese society? According to research, "ォニ" refers to an evil spirit (alien existence) that infringes on the traditional world, including untouchables who are excluded by society. For example, in ancient Japan, many craftsmen (metal forgers) lived in the deep mountains and forests, and they rarely contacted the general public, so they would gradually be alienated into ghosts. The classic image of ghosts in Japanese culture, holding gold bars, will make people think that its prototype is related to metal smelting.

In addition, ancient humans had limited knowledge of nature and imagined natural disasters and diseases as ghosts. For example, according to historian Takahashi Chang-ming, one of the three famous monsters in Japan is the personification of the plague that prevailed peacefully, and the teenager who swallowed wine and liked drinking was a sign of the plague at that time.

In addition, the legendary artifacts in Japan will be abandoned in a few hundred years, turned into mourning, and gathered together to March, which is "a hundred ghosts walking at night."

In short, compared with China's view that ancestral spirits and souls are ghosts, the Japanese mainly regard phenomena related to nature and artifacts (beyond the scope of human knowledge) as ghosts. The combination of this "ォニ" and China's Chinese character "Ghost" created a unique Japanese ghost culture.