What is the hone-onna?
The hone-onna is a female yokai in the form of a skeleton. Toriyama Sekien’s Edo-period yokai books depict her as a skeleton woman wearing a kimono and carrying a paper lantern. She is said to be the spirit of a woman who cannot let go of her love for a man even after death.
Botan Doro and the hone-onna
In his note on the hone-onna, Sekien refers to Botan Doro (The Peony Lantern), a tale derived from Chinese supernatural fiction. A beautiful young woman carrying a lantern decorated with peonies visits a young man every night, but when a neighbor peeks in, the man is embracing a skeleton. The story was adapted into a Japanese setting in the Edo period in Asai Ryoi’s Otogi Boko, and in the Meiji era it became a sensation as the ghost story “Kaidan Botan Doro” by the rakugo storyteller San’yutei Encho.
What the hone-onna represents
The hone-onna represents an attachment to past beauty and love that does not disappear even after death, when only bones remain. As a figure of the horror and pathos of love and attachment that continue beyond death, she has been passed down in the world of ghost stories.
