Oni (myth)

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This should summarize the factual part of Oni Name Translations, kanji and other Japanese stuff (a thread on Oni Central Forum)

Unless mentioned otherwise, it's geyser speaking. Occasional quotes of reference material are in bold italics.

Meaning of Oni

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.

Buddhist ONI : 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, 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 (just like by "our" imps), a big club (imps have forks instead), and they were dressed in tiger skins. The iron club is called KANABÔ.

Pagan ONI : demons

There are also recurrent pictures of another kind of ONI : barely human manifestations of evil, not related whatsoever to Buddhist hell. Instead of being the "official enforcers of the underworld", they would infest sacred places and prey on humans, only to be taken out by samurai and other demon-hunters.

Just as the Buddhist ONI connect to Christian imps, this other theme connects to Western (Greek, Medieval, Slavic) heroes and the mythological beasts they slay. As opposed to the Buddhist "imps", this is "pagan" mythology, close to the fantasy/epos genre, but little or not related to religion. For one thing, artistic representations of those (not too human) ONI are less present in architecture etc. A few stories involving them :

Rashoumon 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.

Redemption smiles

A short fantasy story with a well-depicted oni hunt.

Mukade

Mukades are giant centipedes that live in Japan. Pagan mythology involves giant versions of those things along with gods, dragons and other beasts. As opposed to e.g. dragons, the Mukade were irredeamably vile, so of all the beast-gods they're the most likely to fall in the catergory of ONI, super-oni even... See Mukade's page for more

Contemporary culture : West and East

On the whole, it can be seen that an ONI is always some kind of minor evil in flesh. Not something immaterial like a ghost or specter or spirit or djinn or whatever. So, definitely "demon" rather than "ghost" seems to be the correct translation, which allows a bit of freedom of interpretation, because :

Christian imps and fallen angels are both demons, though very different. Stuff like possession and exorcism also fall under the thematic of "demons". And, you could throw in any material manifestation of evil, from Stephen King's "IT" to Freddy Krueger to God Knows What. Any "thing" you could refer to as "it" or "them". Something real enough for you to fear it.

That's for Western culture (fantasy and the like). In contemporary ANIME, you can have a milder interpretation :

Somewhat selfish beings, superior to humans but with no clear intentions about them. 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).

A small piece of reference here. I kinda like that one :

In Ursei Yatsura Lum, Tenten, and all their relatives are presented as oni, although in their case oni are simply misunderstood aliens from another planet, who only want to conquer earth (no hard feelings). These oni have two small spiral horns, the ability to fly, breath fire, and/or shock electrically.

• Personaly, the "misunderstood aliens" crack me up, partly because of the Oni 2 perspectives with respect to Daodan.
• As for flying, breathing fire, and/or shocking electrically, I'm not the only one who'd like to see that in "future releases".
• Lum (see picture) is truly a bridge character between Japanese traditional mythology and anime. She's very "modern" in that she's a fairy alien royal demon gorgeous babe, and yet she stays true to the traditional features that characterize a (Buddhist) ONI : horns and tiger skin.

Resources

• Buddhist imps on Wikipedia
• Oniko's Gallery : not trivial, draws the connections between Buddhist ONI and the ones in contemporary ANIME
• and a whole lot more (minor/trivial ones, ONI=imps/ogres/demons)
• 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.

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Why is Bungie's Oni called Oni?

That is, who or what is the "demon" in Bungie's Oni? There are a few more or less trivial explanations

Miscellani

• 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 here 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 :)

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Related

Names

• Konoko
• Muro
• Mukade
• Barabas
• Daodan

More on Oni's Onis

Mostly speculative considerations, part of the Oni 2 project. More about that on the Daodan page