Historical records note that smallpox was introduced into Japan in 735 CE (Shoku Nihongi); thereafter folk belief interpreted outbreaks as caused by spirits and kami, including hōsōshin. Rather than a single cosmogonic origin myth, the hōsōshin concept arises from local and historical responses to smallpox outbreaks in which afflicted households and communities framed the disease as the action of a localized sickness‑spirit or onryō‑like agency.
Textual sources do not give a fixed, standardized bodily description of the smallpox spirit; instead it is treated as a sickness‑spirit or kami. Visual culture contains representations (for example Tsukioka Yoshitoshi’s ukiyo‑e 'Tametomo and Smallpox Demons'), but the provided sources emphasize variability and lack of a canonical anatomy rather than a consistent anthropomorphic form.
Within the tradition the entity is credited with causing smallpox and behaving as an intentional actor whose anger or presence produces illness. It is described as responsive to human ritual behavior—capable of being appeased, praised, or driven off—and as having particular aversions (notably to red objects and to dogs). Some accounts record that, after an outbreak, a household might enshrine the smallpox spirit as a means of securing recovery and preventing further harm, showing it could be transformed into a localized kami through reciprocal ritual.
Weaknesses
- symbolthe color red (red clothing, red dolls, red streamers)
- otherdogs (the spirit was said to be afraid of dogs)
Wards
- ritualstraw rope with red paper streamers
- symboldisplay of red dolls
- ritualred clothing for patients ('red treatment')
- ritualmusic and dance before the patient (sanshin and lion dance)
- ritualofferings of flowers and burning incense
5 Ronin
5 Ronin is a 2011 Marvel Comics five-issue limited series that reimagines five Marvel superhero archetypes as rōnin (masterless samurai) in a fictionalized post‑Sekigahara feudal Japan. The work places Wolverine, Hulk, Punisher, Psylocke, and Deadpool analogues into period roles to explore displacement, revenge, and identity in an era of political upheaval.
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)
Two distinct Japanese traditions appear under related flame imagery: Aosaginohi/Aosagibi is presented as a will-o'-the-wisp type luminous night phenomenon interpreted as reflections from herons; aburabōzu (abura bōzu, "oil monk") appears in a separate anecdote as a reported fire-breathing apparition in a 12th-century Yasaka Shrine tale. The sources treat them as separate portrayals rather than a single unified being.
Acala
Acala (Sanskrit: अचल, 'The Immovable') is a wrathful protective deity (dharmapala) in Vajrayāna and East Asian esoteric Buddhism, classed among the Wisdom Kings (Vidyārāja). He functions as a ritual focus for visualization and mantra practice intended to remove obstacles and bind or destroy hostile forces.
Agaru
Agaru (attested historically as Agarum) appears in the supplied sources as a Bronze Age Near Eastern toponym—often identified with Failaka Island—and as a modern personal or media name. The provided material contains no evidence that Agaru is a supernatural being in any traditional cosmology.
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
Aka Manto (赤マント, "Red Cloak") is a Japanese urban legend and schoolyard ghost-story about a masked, cloaked figure who appears in public or school toilet stalls and forces occupants to choose between colored toilet paper; each choice in the tale produces a violent supernatural consequence. The legend is part of modern popular folklore recorded in school contexts from the 1930s onward rather than a formal religious myth.
Akaname
Akaname is a Japanese yōkai associated with baths, bathtubs, toilets, and other places where scum and filth accumulate. Traditionally depicted as a child-like creature that licks grime, it functions in folklore as a cautionary figure tied to cleanliness; a few narrative variants cast it as dangerously predatory.
Akashaguma
Akashaguma is presented in the available sources as a child-like house guardian spirit in the Japanese yokai tradition, closely comparable to the regional zashiki-warashi. It is associated with domestic interiors (parlors or storage rooms) and with bringing prosperity to households where it dwells.
Akashita
Akashita (赤舌, lit. “red tongue”) is an Edo-period pictorial yōkai commonly represented as a hairy, clawed face emerging from dark clouds with a wide open mouth and a conspicuous red tongue. The figure appears in yōkai emaki and Toriyama Sekien’s Gazu Hyakki Yagyō; Sekien’s plate shows it atop a sluice, but the original pictorial tradition provides no explanatory caption. Later folklorists and popular writers (Shōwa and later) have variously interpreted the image as a punitive spirit linked to irrigation/floodgate justice or as a kidnapper in evening skies, though these narrative roles are post-hoc.
Community Record
- [1]Smallpox demon — Wikipedia. Wikipedia, 'Smallpox demon' article (summary of folk beliefs, rituals, Okinawa practices, red treatment, enshrinement, and historical notes including Shoku Nihongi reference).wiki
- [2]Wikidata: Smallpox demon (Q7543689). Wikidata entry summarizing the entity's classification as a Japanese mythological figure.other
- [3]Tametomo and Smallpox Demons - New Forms of Thirty-six Ghosts (Tsukioka Yoshitoshi) — ukiyo-e print. Description of an ukiyo‑e print by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi depicting smallpox demons being frightened away, cited as visual cultural evidence.other