Earliest depiction of the ‘Night of One Hundred Demons’

The oldest surviving depiction of Hyakki Yagyō (Night Parade of One Hundred Demons) in Japanese visual art is an paper scroll 747.1cm in length, held at Shinju-an, a sub-temple of Daitoku-ji in Kyoto, Japan. Known as the Shinju-an scroll, it depicts a procession of yōkai (supernatural creatures, loosely translated as demons, ghosts, goblins, and monsters), many of which are depicted as transfigured objects. It is believed to have been painted in the first half of the sixteenth century, and although it is often attributed to artist Tosa Mitsunobu, this may be erroneous.

There are Japanese records that refer to demon night processions dating to the Heian period (794-1185), but the anonymous twelfth-century fictionalized history Ōkagami (The Great Mirror) is the first detailed description of a parade of yōkai. It describes how a tenth-century minister encountered a demon procession as he traveled through Kyoto at night.

The Shinju-an scroll depicts a range of fantastic creatures parading left across the paper. They include female demons painting their teeth black, a large red demon releasing smaller yōkai from a crate, shrouded creatures, hybridised animals, and many tsukumogami: transfigured objects, such as scissors, a lute, and an umbrella. Tsukumogami were objects in Japanese folklore that had existed long enough to have acquired a spirit and become mischievous or hostile yōkai. At the end of the scroll is a red globe – possibly depicting the rising sun – its light scattering the night-time creatures.

The Shinju-an scroll may have been the first to depict the yōkai procession in this format, or it may have been based on an earlier work that has not survived. Like most other Hyakki Yagyō scrolls, it has no accompanying text. However, a later example from the nineteenth century, in the Spencer Collection of the New York Public Library, features a depiction of the nightly parade along with the story of a man trapped in a house in Kyoto by a horde of yōkai: ‘…terrifying forms appeared… One had the appearance of a man, while the others had assumed all sorts of frightening forms. In fact, they were so terrifying that they took the visitor’s breath away’.