Yūrei

Within syncretic Shinto–Buddhist frameworks, when a person dies their reikon (霊魂) leaves the body and enters a liminal purgatorial state, waiting for proper funeral and post-funeral rites; if rites are incomplete, death is sudden or violent, or intense emotions (revenge, love, jealousy, sorrow) remain, the reikon can become a yūrei that returns to the world of the living. Social factors such as rank and the circumstances of death shape how and whether a reikon manifests as a potent haunting (examples in tradition include tales of Oiwa and Okiku as victims whose violent deaths produced powerful revenants).

Sources treat yūrei as attenuated or insubstantial presences (the name itself combines kanji for 'faint/dim' and 'soul/spirit'). While no single canonical physical description is exhaustively given in the supplied material, visual and narrative traditions frequently portray partial, faint apparitions; artistic series and popular tales often show pale, floating figures and regional accounts commonly report sightings of a 'ghostly woman in white.' The supplied excerpts caution that these motifs are common in art and local legend but stop short of defining a universal costume or exhaustive iconography.

Yūrei are described as reikon that bridge back to the physical world: they linger, haunt locations or people connected to their death or emotional ties, and remain until the missing rites are performed or their emotional cause is resolved. Specific subtypes display characteristic behaviors—onryō (vengeful spirits) may cause disaster or possession, ubume return to care for children, funayūrei haunt seas or ships, and zashiki-warashi act as mischievous child-spirits. Living spirits (ikiryō) can exhibit similar agency while their body remains alive. Sources emphasize these social and ritualized behaviors rather than grand cosmological powers.