According to tradition and legend, the Aonyōbō are court ladies associated with noble households who become lingering spirits when those families fall into ruin or when expected husbands or suitors do not return; sources describe them as court attendants who served until marriage and whose social role and household context have been lost, leaving them to inhabit deserted domestic spaces.
Legend describes the Aonyōbō as a blue-skinned, ogre-like spirit taking the appearance of an ancient court noblewoman. She is depicted wearing many layers of kimono from older eras that have become tattered and moth-ridden, and retaining court cosmetics such as a white-painted face, high-painted eyebrows, and blackened teeth.
Sources emphasize behavioral and emblematic traits over a broad catalog of supernatural powers: the Aonyōbō is said to be constantly applying makeup, fixing hair, and adjusting her appearance while waiting for guests who never arrive. According to legend, if trespassers enter the ruined houses she inhabits, the Aonyōbō will devour them. Beyond this predatory warning, the accounts focus on her symbolic role as an embodiment of poverty and social abandonment rather than on an extended list of abilities.
Weaknesses
- otherNo documented weaknesses in provided sources
Wards
- otherNo documented wards or protective practices in provided sources
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-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.
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.
Akateko
Akateko (赤手児, lit. 'red child's hand') is a yōkai from Japanese folklore commonly told as a small, red, disembodied child's hand that appears from trees—especially the Japanese honey locust—and startles travelers; in some regional variants it is accompanied by a specter of a young woman or manifests as paired foot- or leg-like apparitions. Accounts vary between mostly harmless trickster apparition and a violent variant that attacks humans.
Akubōzu
Akubōzu (灰坊主, Akubōzu) is a household yōkai from parts of Akita and Iwate Prefectures in northern Japan said to live in the ashes of the hearth. Sources say they appear when people (notably children) play with or dig in hearth/furnace ash; the figure is cited as part of a broader Tōhoku motif warning against disturbing ash.
Akuma
Akuma (悪魔／あくま) in Japanese sources is an evil spirit, devil, or demon associated with misfortune and mental disturbance. The term appears in Buddhist texts and Heian-period literature and was later used to translate the Christian figure of Satan, as well as the Buddhist Mara.
Akurojin-no-hi
Akurojin-no-hi (悪路神の火, "fire of the god of the bad road") is a flamelike ghost from the folklore of Mie Prefecture, Japan. It is reported to appear on rainy nights; those who encounter it and do not run away are said to become gravely ill. The phenomenon is sparsely documented and is usually compared to will-o'-the-wisp type ghost-lights.
Amabie
Amabie is a mid-19th-century Japanese yogenjū-type wondrous creature attested in kawaraban and related pamphlet culture that emerges from the sea (in canonical accounts) to prophesy about harvests and epidemics and prescribes that its image be drawn and shown to the sick as a protective measure.
Amanojaku
Amanojaku (天邪鬼 / あまのじゃく) is a Japanese yōkai-type being portrayed as a contrarian, heart-reading trickster. Treated in different contexts as a small ogre (ko-oni), a wicked demon (jaki) in Buddhist iconography, and a folkloric spirit that provokes human vice, it appears across regional tales with variable roles from malicious kidnapper to household oddity.
Amefurikozō
Amefurikozō (雨降小僧 or 雨降り小僧) is an Edo-period yōkai figure depicted in classical illustrated and popular print culture as a youthful attendant associated with rain. Classical sources (notably Sekien Toriyama's Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki) present it as a kozō-type servant linked by captional wordplay to a rain deity; later popular literature elaborates its rain-producing role and playful mischief on rainy nights.
Ameonna
Ameonna (雨女, "rain woman") is a figure in Japanese folklore treated as a yōkai associated with rain. Sources depict her both as a rain-calling supernatural being (sometimes helpful in drought) and as a folk label for an unlucky person whom rain seems to follow; a key pictorial source is Toriyama Sekien's Konjaku Hyakki Shūi.
Amorōnagu
Amorōnagu (Amorōnagu / 天降女子) is a tennyo or celestial maiden figure in the folklore of Amami Ōshima (Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan). Attested sources describe her as a heavenly woman who bathes in pools and waterfalls in ravines on the island.
Community Record
- [1]Aonyōbō — Wikipedia. Wikipedia contributors. "Aonyōbō." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aony%C5%8Db%C5%8Dwiki
- [2]Aonyōbō — Wikidata. Wikidata entry Q3109191: Aonyōbō. http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q3109191wiki