Oni (myth)

This article is about the Japanese myth. For the game, see Oni.

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The kanji for "oni".

Traditional depictions of oni

Many people give the translation for "oni" as "demon", but below we examine more accurate terms for the various depictions of oni in Japanese stories. On the whole, it will be seen that a modern oni is always some kind of minor evil in the flesh that afflicts, threatens, or sometimes even ignores humans. This is in contrast to the usual use of the word "demon" in English, which refers to the fallen angels in the Bible, who are immaterial and who can possess humans. In fact, a much closer translation, looking at the Eastern depictions of an oni, would be "ogre", "beast" or "monster", but not "demon", which more closely corresponds to the Japanese word "akuma" ("evil being").

Imps

In traditional Buddhist-Japanese mythology, the oni are the exact counterparts of Christian imps (or devils with a small D). Some would guard the gates of Buddhist hell, while others would hunt down bad people and bring them to hell, and others would actually torture the bad people in hell. It's exactly what Christian imps do, so it's a pretty exact analogy. Recurrent features of oni were somewhat improbable skin color, two small horns on the forehead, a big club (imps have forks instead), and they were dressed in tiger skins. The iron club is called a kanabō.

Ghosts

Before the influence of Buddhism, oni may have been depicted as immaterial spirits like the yurei, which needed to be driven out through yin-yang magic. Instead of being the "official enforcers of the underworld", they would infest sacred places and prey on humans. However, the concept of oni eventually crystallized into a more solid form.

Ogres

The theme of the monstrous, man-like enemy that must be slain by samurai or a demon-hunter resembles Western (Greek, Medieval, Slavic) heroes and the mythological beasts they were said to have slain. As opposed to the Buddhist "imps" or the Shinto "ghosts", this is more secular mythology, closer to the fantasy genre than a moral tale belonging to religion.

A few stories involving them:

Rashômon gate

[Taken from one of the stories of the demon-hunter, Raiko.] While in Kyoto, he and his five retainers heard tale of an oni that lived inside the great gate Rashoumon, the southern gate on the main road through Kyoto. One of his retainers, Watanabe, volunteers to see if this is true, and if so, slay the oni and hang a talisman with all of their names on the gate's handle. Sure enough, he encounters an oni there, but only succeeds in severing one of its arms and driving it off.

Incidentally, mukade are large centipedes native to Japan. Pagan mythology depicts giant versions of these things alongside gods, dragons and other beasts. As opposed to e.g. dragons, the Mukade were irredeemably vile, so of all the beast-gods they're the most likely to fall in the category of oni, super-oni even... See Mukade's page for more.

Aliens

As seen in contemporary anime, Japan's view of the oni has mellowed somewhat; oni might simply be immortal, aloof, selfish beings, superior to humans but with no clear intentions about them. In some cases they are clearly depicted like Western ogres. Some oblivious, some malicious, some downright malevolent. Some, however, could feel sympathy or pity for the humans and defend them against a greater evil (end-of-all-worlds kind). But mostly they're just outsiders, aliens in the mortal world.

A classic modern example of oni is found in Urusei Yatsura, where Lum (pictured, below) and her relatives are aliens (literally, the alien race of Oni) sent here to (fairly benevolently) conquer Earth. Their powers include flying, breathing fire, and shocking electrically. Lum has the typical two horns of an oni, but they're mostly hidden by her hair.

Satire

Occasionally the modern take on oni is a bit more satirical, as in the case of George Saotome (pictured, below) from Yu Yu Hakusho, who appears to be a traditional monstrous oni, but who is actually a mild-mannered, harried office worker, assisting the ruler of Spirit World. In Dragon Ball Z, Goku accidentally falls into Hell and encounters Goz and Mez (pictured, below), who challenge him to physical competitions. More typical oni, they display the traditional red-and-blue coloring and one-and-two horns, as well as carrying kanabō.

File:Lum.jpg	File:George from YYH.jpg	File:Goz and Mez from DBZ.jpg
Lum	George	Goz and Mez

Further reading

• Oni (folklore) on Wikipedia
• Oniko's Gallery; draws the connections between Buddhist oni and the ones in contemporary anime
• and a lot more (minor/trivial ones, ONI=imps/ogres/demons)

Speculative meanings of "oni" in Bungie's Oni

That is, who or what is the "demon" in Bungie's Oni? There are a few more or less trivial explanations that can work within the world of the game. There is also the real-world explanation, if you hate ambiguity.

Russian Oni : Them

• In Russian, "oni" means "them". Since the title was transcribed with Cyrillic characters, Russian gamers hardly wonder about the japanese meaning of Oni :) It's worth to say that "Oni" means "them" also in Polish language, but in comparison to Russian, title wasn't transcribed.

Miscellany

• The Iron Demon is an oni by definition. It would be a bit absurd, though, if Oni was named after a boss that didn't make the final cut...
• Dark Horse's comics series involves "ghosts" rather than "demons". Thus, in episode 1, Syndicate thieves have been spreading rumors of a ghost-like entity that attacks them after successful jobs and steals their loot. In episodes 2 and 3, mysterious "ghosts" are plaguing Syndicate operations, and Agent Konoko, while investigating the Syndicate, finds out what these "ghosts" are.
• Was there any other "official" explanation?

Binary data

Oni-related artwork (CD cover, a few desktops) pictures Konoko against a background of electronic circuits and/or a lot of binary digits : "0"s and "1"s. This allows for another interpretation of the title : ONI = 0'n'1 = 0&1. Zeros and ones. Binary data. Could be a remnant of the initial project perspective where Konoko was a cyborg (legal high-tech) fighting the Syndicate of Technological Crime (illegal high-tech). It doesn't make much sense now that Konoko's human (at least to start with).

Them again : Russian evangelisation

The fact that "oni" means "them" in Russian is a rather nice touch (IMO). ONI is very ambiguous, but so is "them" : actually it conveys about the same general creepy feeling. Some lucky coincidence...

For the record, the Russian language has rather accurate terms for the japanese ONI : "besy" (demons/devils/imps, the title of a novel by Dostoevsky) or, alternatively, "nechist'" and "nechistaja sila" (evil/dirty force). It's flexible enough so it can address the greater evil or a specific manifestation thereof. It's as ambiguous as the japanese term ONI because it used to designate "demons" in pagan culture until eventually Christian religion came around, with the Devil aka Satan as the bad guy, and a whole load of "small-D devils" aka "imps" to serve him.

There are other words for those purely Christian notions, namely Satana=Satan, Chort=Devil and chort=devil=imp. But "bes" is very much used, despite, or maybe because of its ambiguity with pagan evil : Christian Evil was a "sensible substitute" to pagan beliefs, and evangelisation goes better if people can use the same vocabulary as before :)

An iron club for a demon

The most probable explanation, IMO, has to do with how the Daodan makes Konoko super strong and resilient. The quote above "Very strong and resilient : severed body parts can grow together again." is already a hint at the Daodan's "unearthly" overpower and regeneration abilities. If you look at the Wikipedia article, there's this :

Depictions of oni vary widely but usually portray them as hideous, gigantic creatures with sharp claws, wild hair, and two long horns growing from their heads. They are humanoid for the most part, but occasionally, they are shown with unnatural features such as odd numbers of eyes or extra fingers and toes. Their skin may be any number of colors, but red, blue, black, pink, and green are particularly common. Their fierce appearance is only enhanced by the tiger skins they tend to wear and the iron clubs they favor, called kanabô (KANA BÔ). This image leads to the expression "oni with an iron club" (ONI NI KANA BÔ), that is, to be invincible or undefeatable. It can also be used in the sense of "strong beyond strong", or having one's natural quality enhanced or supplemented by the use of some tool.

Regeneration is not mentioned there, but note how the superhuman strength is covered by the expression "oni with an iron club" (ONI NI KANABÔ, literally "an iron club for a demon"). Daodan-enhanced Mai, Muro and Mukade are all that (virtually invincible, undefeatable, and "strong beyond strong", their natural abilities being "supplemented" by the Daodan).

So it would look like Bungie's title merged all those notions (those carried by the Buddhist ONI per se and the additional ones carried by the "oni with a kanabô"), and that it thus applies to the different aspects of the effect of Daodan "symbiosis" on human beings, in particular on Konoko.

ZDLO's quote from the Russian site provides another interesting parallel, namely "people who can't control their anger can become oni, especially females". As for "feasting on human flesh", this probably applies to the pagan ONI rather than to the Buddhist ones (the ones with the KANABÔ), but it can also be seen as an allegory for physical violence, which Daodan-enhanced symbiotes (and Mai) are rather good at. So it's all about anger and lack of control : that's pretty much what drives all of Bungie's Oni.

Here is a Japanese site, seemingly about that Buddhist proverb/expression : ONI NI KANABÔ. It would seem like the right title for Bungie's Oni would have been

ONI NI KANABÔ : AN IRON CLUB FOR A DEMON

Gives another dimension to the Iron Demon (KANAONI), too.

As for the moral meaning of the proverb (a strong being, when supplemented by a tool, is very strong, so what?), here it is :

great power should be given only to the strong/worthy

That last thing was taken from In Ghostly Japan, which you can read either here (top of page 34) or here (middle of the Japanese Buddhist Proverbs chapter).

Another proverb with a similar meaning is "Benkei ni naginata" (Benkei is a legendary fighting monk). There's also the Western allegory of Hercules with his massive club and lion skin (see below)

Basically it means that great tools (primarily tools of death : any great power holds some kind of danger) should be handled by the ones who are worthy of them. The juxtaposition of the two proverbs "Oni ni kanabô, Benkei ni naginata" is rare (I only found it in some guy's forum signature) and the moral meaning would be somewhat weaker.

More on Benkei and on that "double proverb", later...

Hercules

Ironically, a character that's very similar to Buddhist ONI is the pagan hero Hercules/Heracles. He wears a lion skin and wields a massive wooden club, which is fairly close to an ONI's tiger skin and kanabô...

The Greek mythos has episodes where Hercules displays gratuitous violence, while at other times he appears as sly and cunning (just as ambiguous as the Buddhist Oni). One thing's for sure : he's inhumanly strong to start with (half-god), and his chosen attributes (the Nemean Lion's skin and the massive club) make him even tougher.

As for regeneration... a (Greek) hero is not immortal (neither is an ONI), but as a half-god he's inhumanly tough and resilient. So there's a reasonable analogy here as well, with the Japanese ONI and with the Daodan.

See "Oni2:Heroes" for a deeper connection between Bungie's Daodan and Greek heroes (no, it's not just the way they used the Greek alphabet at the TCTF... there's more).

AO-ONI & AKA-ONI

A very nice short page on Oni here

In addition, Oni of various colors such as the Ao (Blue)-Oni and Aka (Red)-Oni have been created, but there seem to be no single, established view for the connotations of these colors.

Would look like Mai is an AO-ONI and Muro is an AKA-ONI :)

Real origin of name

As first explained here, "Oni" was originally going to be the game's codename during development. Brent Pease, who first formulated the idea for the game, was told that it meant "ghost", which was the word he wanted for the code name, being inspired by Ghost in the Shell as the project was. As later explained by Hardy LeBel (the story lead) here, in writing the story he tried to incorporate the meanings of "ghost" and "demon" to justify the name, now that it had ended up being the title under which they would actually release the game. (Of course, if you've read the rest of this page, you know that neither of those words are good translations for "oni", but give the man credit, he tried. --Iritscen).

Connections to the game

• also a Russian site with some non-trivial info :

Oni. Big evil human-like demons with fangs and horns living in hell (Dzigoku). Very strong and resilient : severed body parts can grow together again. Preferred weapon is an iron club with spikes on it (KANABÔ). Wear tiger skins around their hips. Despite their appearance, they're very sly and clever, and can morph in human shape. Feast on human flesh. People who can't control their anger can become oni, especially females. Sometimes oni can be good to people and even defend them.

They've apparently mixed up pagan and Buddhist ONI here, but there are many interesting things nevertheless. Thanks to ZDLO for that one.

Alternate universe titles for Oni

What if Brent had received an accurate response that day as to the Japanese word for "ghost"? Well, the most common words for ghost seem to be youkai, yurei, youma, and konpaku. So in an alternate universe, it could be that we'd all be big Youma fans or avid Youkai players.

It's probably worth pointing out here that an "ou" is used to represent the long 'o' sound in the standard Hepburn romanization system. When one has fancy characters at one's disposal, the sound can be written as 'ō'. Since most English speakers don't know about that use of "ou", they would be inclined to pronounce "youma" as "yuu-ma" when it should really be said "yoh-ma". So presumably Bungie would have ended up just writing it "Yoma" or "Yokai" to avoid confusion if Brent had used one of those words for the project's code name instead of "Oni".

Related

• Konoko
• Muro
• Mukade
• Barabas
• Daodan