Ungaikyō

The ungaikyō (雲外鏡、うんがいきょう; "mirror beyond the clouds") is a yōkai in Japanese mythology depicted in the Gazu Hyakki Tsurezure Bukuro, a collection of yōkai paintings by the Edo period ukiyo-e artist Toriyama Sekien.

Ungaikyo from the Gazu Hyakki Tsurezure Bukuro by Toriyama Sekien

In modern media they are often depicted as a tsukumogami in the form of a possessed mirror, where they have characteristics such as: manipulating people's reflections to resemble what they prefer, transforming any human who looks into the ungaikyō into a monstrous version of themselves as the reflection shown, or (for a human to use) to trap spirits in them.

Mythology

Sekiken depicts a mirror^[1] with a face standing behind a slanting column and a tongue protruding from it, which is described in the side notes in Gazu Hyakki Tsurezure Bukuro as follows.

That called the shomakyo (照魔鏡, lit. "illuminate occult mirror") reflects the forms of many mysterious things, and as its shadow is reflect, when it moves I figured it was this mirror's yokai, or so I thought in a dream.^[2]

The shomakyo is a legendary mirror that is said to reveal the true identity of demons. The reading-book (yomihon) Ehon Sangoku Yofuden by Takai Ranzan notes it to have revealed the true identity of the beautiful woman Daji who corrupted the Shang emperor King Zhou.^[3] The ungaikyō in Gazu Hyakki Tsurezure Bukuro is noted to be an original creation of Sekien Toriyama based on the shomakyo,^[4][5] and the accompanying picture shows it to be a mirror with a monstrous and mysterious face floating on it,^[6] as can be seen in the figure.

Books on yōkai since the Heisei era and beyond often consider it to be a tsukumogami (a yōkai transformed from a vessel) of a mirror that has become over a hundred years old, which offer varying interpretations on what it does, ranging from it reflecting one's own face in the mirror but transforming into a yōkai^[6] or a vessel that the yokai reflected in the shomakyo.^[6] The name “ungaikyo” is noted to possibly be a reference to the Chinese geography book Shanhai Jing Classic of Mountains and Seas, which describes a number of yokai.^[7]

The mirror monster

In a book written by yokai manga artist Shigeru Mizuki, there is a legend that on the fifteenth night of the eighth month (Hazuki) of the lunar calendar, a crystal tray is filled with water under the moonlight, and when the water is used to draw the image of a yōkai on the mirror's surface, that yōkai will then dwell inside the mirror.^[8][9]

A disguised raccoon dog

The ungaikyo in the 1968 film “The Great Yōkai War” (Daiei) is designed as a yōkai in the shape of a raccoon dog. It has the ability to inhale and puff out its belly to project images of various places like a television set, and it uses this ability in the film as well.^[10]

In many yōkai illustrated books for children since the Showa period (1926-1989), it is often described as a yōkai that looks like a raccoon dog with a mirror on its belly, or as being able to project various things onto its own body.^[4]