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No.031

Shuten-doji

THE OGRE KING OF MOUNT OE

Shuten-doji
Pixel artOriginal art by Pixel Yokai
"Shuten-doji" from Wakan Hyaku Monogatari (National Diet Library)
For reference: old artTsukioka Yoshitoshi（1865）
"Shuten-doji" from Wakan Hyaku Monogatari (National Diet Library)
Public domain (Wikimedia Commons)
Japanese name
酒呑童子（SHUTEN-DOJI）
Type
Oni chieftain
Found in
Mount Oe (Kyoto Prefecture)
Where the legend lives
  • Kyoto — Mount Oe, said to be Shuten-doji's lair. Another theory places it at Oe (Oinosaka) just west of Kyoto

◆ The legend

Shuten-doji is the oni chieftain said to have kept a palace deep in Mount Oe, with a whole band of oni under his command. True to his name ("the sake-drinking boy"), he was a mighty drinker, and the tales say he carried off princesses and young people from the capital and held drinking feasts night after night. His followers were famous too, starting with Ibaraki-doji, often called his right-hand man. One story even says he usually looked like a boy, but when he showed his true form he became an oni so huge you had to crane your neck to see him.

There are several stories about where he came from. One says he was a beautiful temple boy in Echigo (today's Niigata) who in time turned into an oni. Another links him to Mount Ibuki in Omi (today's Shiga). Rather than one being right, it seems each place kept telling its own version of how this great oni began. His story was retold again and again in picture scrolls, in the Otogi-zoshi tales, and on the Noh stage, until it became the most famous oni-slaying tale in Japan.

◆ Stories about this yokai

Disguised as Mountain Monks, Bearing Strange Sake — Raiko and the Oni of Mount OeShuten-doji of Mount Oe is the star of Japan's most famous oni-slaying tale. Raiko and his four retainers are said to have beaten the oni chief not by brute force but with a monk's disguise and a magical sake. A gentle walk through the story, the oni's lament, and the question of where Mount Oe really is.