Aoandon's best-known representation comes from Toriyama Sekien's Konjaku Hyakki Shūi, where Sekien illustrated a creature labeled Aoandon and associated it with the Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai parlor-game. Sources link the name and concept to the practice of placing candles in blue-paper andon lamps during that ritual; Sekien's compilation presents Aoandon as the spirit that appears after the final (one-hundredth) tale is told. The available sources do not assert whether Sekien invented the figure or recorded a preexisting folk belief beyond his illustration and labeling.
In the cited illustration and descriptions Aoandon appears as a womanlike figure with a blue complexion, twin horns emerging from the brow, and sharp teeth. The depiction ties the blue coloring to the name (blue andon) and frames the being as a personified uncanny presence rather than a naturalistic animal or human.
Classical sources provided do not record specific powers, actions, or interactions for Aoandon beyond its representational role: it is described as the spirit that appeared during Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai after the last story was told. Modern popular-culture works (for example the mobile game Onmyōji) reinterpret Aoandon as a storytelling shikigami who delights in tales; such portrayals are contemporary adaptations rather than documented aspects of the classical descriptions.
Apsara
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Rusalka
Water spirits in Slavic folklore — the spirits of young women who died by drowning or suicide, bound to rivers and lakes. Beautiful and dangerous, they can bewitch men to their deaths.
La Llorona
The Weeping Woman of Mexican folklore — the ghost of a mother who drowned her children and now wanders rivers and lakes, weeping for them and taking other children she finds at night.
5 Ronin
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Abumi-guchi
A Japanese yōkai classed as a tsukumogami: an animated stirrup (abumi) depicted in Sekien Toriyama's Gazu Hyakki Tsurezure Bukuro. Traditional accounts say it is formed from a stirrup that belonged to a soldier who fell in battle and that it waits where the stirrup lies for its dead owner to return.
Abura-akago
An Edo-period yōkai depicted as an oil‑licking infant or a ball of flame. First recorded in illustrated compendia (notably Toriyama Sekien's Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki), the Abura-akago is tied to tales of oil‑stealing fires and functions in part as an etiological warning about wasting or stealing oil.
Abura-sumashi
A yōkai spirit from the Amakusa region of Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan, said to inhabit mountain passes. Traditionally explained as the ghost of a person who stole oil, it appears to surprise travelers and is represented in modern media with a straw-coat body and a potato- or stone-like head.
Aburabō / Abura-bōzu / Aosaginohi (traditions)
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Acala
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Agaru
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Ajisukitakahikone
Ajisukitakahikone is a kami in Japanese mythic literature (Kojiki/Nihon Shoki). He appears in the transfer-of-rule cycle between heaven and earth, is described as a son of Ōkuninushi, associated with the Kamo cult (called Kamo no ōmikami in some modern museum/catalog entries), and features in narratives that explain landscape formation and meteorological genealogy.
Aka Manto
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Akaname
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Akashaguma
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Akashita
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Community Record
- [1]Aoandon — Wikipedia. Wikipedia contributors, "Aoandon," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.wiki
- [2]Aoandon — Wikidata. Wikidata entry Q1152318: Aoandon.wiki