Sōgenbi, the Fiery Ghost of an Oil-Stealing Monk, from Shin Otogi Bōko
新御伽婢子・宗玄火
- Date:
- 1683
- Medium:
- Woodblock-printed book; ink on paper
- Source:
- Wikimedia Commons
新御伽婢子・宗玄火
Yoshida Hambei depicts the supernatural figure of Sōgenbi (宗玄火), the fiery ghost of an oil-stealing monk, in an illustration from Shin Otogi Bōko (New Tales for the Bedside), the 1683 ghost-story compendium for which Hambei provided the visual programme. Sōgenbi is one of the canonical figures of Japanese yokai (supernatural creature) lore: in the medieval Buddhist narrative tradition, a monk at Mii-dera temple who stole consecrated lamp oil from the temple altar was reborn after death as a fiery ghost - a flaming head suspended in the night air - condemned to wander the temple precincts as punishment for his sacrilege. The story belongs to a wider Japanese narrative complex of oil-thief ghosts (abura akago and related figures) that supplied medieval and early-modern story collections with their stock of cautionary supernatural tales. Shin Otogi Bōko - the title combines 'New' (Shin) with the venerable Otogi-bōko ('Old Tales for the Bedside') of 1666 - was one of the major contributors to the late seventeenth-century kaidan (ghost story) genre that would flourish across the Edo period and ultimately culminate in Toriyama Sekien's eighteenth-century pictorial encyclopaedias of yokai. Hambei's illustration shows the fiery head against a setting of temple eaves and night sky, the flames rendered through curving brush strokes radiating from a central facial mask. The composition belongs to one of the earliest sustained pictorial campaigns to image the Japanese supernatural in printed form, predating the great eighteenth-century yokai compilations by almost a century. The illustration is preserved in Wikimedia Commons in the public domain.
武道伝来記・人魚
1687
Woodblock-printed book; ink on paper
女用訓蒙図彙・高麗菊
1687
Woodblock-printed book; ink on paper
日本永代蔵
1688
Woodblock-printed book; ink on paper
女用訓蒙図彙・滝に鯉
1687
Woodblock-printed book; ink on paper
Curated cross-cuts that include this print.
Sōgenbi, the Fiery Ghost of an Oil-Stealing Monk, from Shin Otogi Bōko (新御伽婢子・宗玄火) was created by Yoshida Hambei (吉田半兵衛) in 1683.
Sōgenbi, the Fiery Ghost of an Oil-Stealing Monk, from Shin Otogi Bōko depicts mythology.
