Hone-onna

Hone-onna (骨(ほね)女(おんな), literally: bone woman) is a yōkai depicted in the Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki (1779) by Toriyama Sekien. As its name implies, it depicts this yōkai as a woman in the form of bones.

"Honeonna" (骨女) from the Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki by Sekien Toriyama

In Sekien's explanatory text in the Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki states that there is a story called Otogi Bōko (御伽ばうこ) in which an aged female skeleton would carry a chōchin (lantern) decorated with botan flowers on it and visit the house of a man she loved back when she was still alive, and then cavort with that man. In other words, this refers to "Botan Dōrō" (牡丹燈籠, "The Peony Lantern"), within the collection of writings called Otogi Bōko (伽婢子, 1666) by Asai Ryōi.^[1] (The collection was composed as a sort of moral-free version of the Chinese work Jiandeng Xinhua written in 1378 by Qu You.) In the Botan Dōrō, a man named Ogiwara Shinnojō meets a beautiful woman named Yako and they become entangled almost every night, but one night an old person from next door catches a glimpse of it and sees the strange scene of Shinnojō embracing with a skeleton.^[2]

According to Tōhoku Kaidan no Tabi by Norio Yamada, there is an odd tale in the Aomori Prefecture about a yōkai under the title of "hone-onna". It says that in the Ansei period, a woman who was said to be ugly by those around her became a good-looking skeleton after death, and walked around town as a skeleton to let everyone see. It is said that she likes fish bones and would collapse upon encountering a high priest.^[3]

See also

• Obake
• Succubus

References

1. Murakami, Kenji, ed. (2000). Yōkai Jiten (妖怪事典). The Mainichi Newspapers Co. p. 308. ISBN 978-4-620-31428-0.
2. Inada, Atsunobu; Tanaka, Naohi, eds. (1992). Toriyama Sekien Gazu Hyakki Yagyō (鳥山石燕 画図百鬼夜行). Mamoru Takada, supervisor. Kokushokankokai. p. 148. ISBN 978-4-336-03386-4.
3. Yamada, Norio (1974). Tōhoku Kaidan no Tabi. Jiyū Kokumin. pp. 138–139. NCID BA42139725.