What was Onishigai Village?
Onishigai Village (“oni corpse village”) was a village in Iwai District, Mutsu Province, in what is now Mashiba, Ichinoseki, Iwate Prefecture. In the early Meiji era it merged with neighboring villages to become Mashiba Village and its name disappeared, but its striking name makes it a topic online as “a village erased from the map.”
The legend of Onishigai
The legend behind the name says that in the early Heian period, Sakanoue no Tamuramaro, on his expedition to northern Japan to subdue the Emishi, killed an oni here (said by some to be an oni named Otakemaru) and buried its corpse. A large stone called the “oni stone” remains at the place where the oni is said to have been buried, and the oni’s corpse is said to lie beneath it.
The “oni” here may have referred to local powerful figures who did not submit to the imperial court, or to Emishi chieftains. Many place names linked to Tamuramaro’s oni-slaying remain across northern Japan, such as Onikobe (“oni head”) in Miyagi Prefecture.
The name that lives on
Though the village name vanished, the name “Onishigai” continued to be used locally and long survived as the name of a stop on a nearby bus route. The oni stone is still cared for as a local historic site. It is one of Japan’s strange place names, where legends of the oni and local history meet.
