Ungaikyō

Toriyama Sekien illustrated the "Ungaikyō" in his Gazu hyakki tsurezure bukuro (百器徒然袋; "The Illustrated Bag of One Hundred Random Demons"^[2] or "A Horde of Haunted Housewares", etc.), published in Tenmei 4/1784.^[a] As the title suggests, this work was a collection of haunted objects or tsukumogami.^[3]

Sekien drew "Ungaikyō" as a mirror with a mischievous looking face (tongue sticking out), held up on a tree-like stand^[3] (which resembles a torso with limbs: cf. image top right). Accompanying the drawing is the commentary as follows:

The so-called Shōmakyō (照魔鏡) ("Demon-shining mirror") is said reflect the [true] form of various mysterious things. I wondered if perhaps these [demons']^[b] shadows may reflect (or transfer) onto it, making the mirror-yōkai move around of its own free will, or so I dreamed.^[4][1]

The shōmakyō (照魔鏡; lit. "illuminating-the demon-mirror"), in Chinese literature, is a legendary mirror that is said to reveal the true identity of demons,^[5][6] as Sekien states at the beginning of his commentary.

The shōmakyō (Chinese: 照魔镜, zhàomó jìng) in historical fiction was said to have revealed the true identity of Emperor Consort Daji of the crumbling Shang dynasty to have been the nine-tailed fox, according to, e.g. a Japanese adaptation^[c] of the Ming period novel Fengshen yanyi ("Investiture of the Gods").^[7]

The ungaikyō in Gazu Hyakki Tsurezure Bukuro is noted to be an original creation of Sekien Toriyama based on the shomakyo,^[8][9] and the accompanying picture shows it to be a mirror with a monstrous and mysterious face floating on it,^[10] as can be seen in the figure.

Books on yōkai since the Heisei era (post-1988)^[d] describe the ungaikyō explicitly as a tsukumogami (an age-old vessel turned yōkai, where tsuku denotes demonic possession). According to some, the ungaikyō's face reflects the face of the yōkai that possessed it.^[10] Another scenario is that whichever yōkai reflected in the shōmakyō will gain control of the mirror and manipulate it.^[10]

One linguistic conjecture is that the name “ungaikyō” had been a pun played on Sengaikyō, the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese geography treatise Shanhai jing (Classic of Mountains and Seas), which describes a number of yōkai.^[11]

The possessed mirror manifests such characteristics 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.^{[citation needed]}

In a book written by yōkai manga artist Shigeru Mizuki, there is a legend that on the fifteenth night of the eighth month (Hazuki) of the lunar calendar, if one fills a quartz tray with water under the moonlight, and use that water to trace an image of a yōkai on the mirror, that yōkai will then dwell inside the mirror.^[12][13]

The ungaikyō in the 1968 film Yokai Monsters: Spook Warfare (Daiei Film) is designed as a yōkai in the shape of a raccoon dog. In the film, it has the ability to inhale and puff out its belly into a sort of giant TV screen, then display scenes from various places.^[14]

It is pointed out that many yōkai illustrated books for children since the Shōwa era (1926–1989) often ascribes a raccoon dog-like appearance to the ungaikyō and gives it the ability to show images on its pot belly due to the influence of the aforementioned film.^[8]