Hone-onna

Traditional accounts attribute hone-onna to women who died while in a romantic/sexual relationship with a living man; their attachment is so strong they cannot rest, and they return from the grave to reunite with their lovers. The literary template is tied to the kaidan Botan Dōrō (Asai Ryōi, 1666) — notably the figure Otsuyu in that tale — and to later Edo-period yōkai taxonomy and illustration such as Toriyama Sekien's Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki (1779), whose explanatory note links the skeletal female visitor (Otsuyu) to the motif of nightly visitation and intercourse with a living man.

Hone-onna present a dual appearance: to the men they loved in life (and to those similarly blinded by love) they appear as beautiful, young women, "just as they were when they were alive," while their true form is that of a decaying skeleton — literally a woman in the form of bones, which gives the name 'bone woman'. Sources note that the skeletal form can be perceived by those who have never fallen in love or by persons of strong religious conviction, and some regional variants record openly skeletal behavior (a fragmentary Aomori tale describes a woman walking about as a skeleton).

Folkloric accounts describe hone-onna awakening from their graves at night to come to their former lover's home and spend the night, typically by having sexual intercourse; they leave before dawn. The union is said to drain the life force of the living lover unintentionally, causing progressive illness and eventual death if the deception is not detected. Most hone-onna are portrayed as unaware of their undead condition and continue their visits believing themselves alive. Some accounts also state that as the hone-onna decays further, her human guise may become yet more seductive, increasing the difficulty of resisting her.