Japan’s Three Great Vengeful Spirits

Sugawara no Michizane was a Heian-period scholar and composer of Chinese verse who rose to the office of Minister of the Right; after his death he came to be counted among the most dreaded vengeful spirits in Japan, and was in time enshrined nationwide as Tenman-Tenjin, the god of learning. Born into the scholarly Sugawara house, he was favored under the two reigns of Uda and Daigo, but in the fourth year of Shōtai (901), slandered by the Minister of the Left Fujiwara no Tokihira, he was demoted to Dazaifu, where he died in despair in the third year of Engi (903). After his death, the capital saw a succession of deaths among his political enemies, beginning with Tokihira, followed by plague and drought, all whispered to be the curse of Michizane, who had been sunk by a false charge. Above all, the lightning strike on the palace's Seiryōden in the eighth year of Enchō (930), which killed and wounded many nobles, fixed the conception of Michizane as Karai-Tenjin, the thunder-wielding "Fire-and-Thunder Heavenly Deity." To pacify that raging spirit, the court enshrined him as a god, and the cult of Tenjin spread outward from Kitano Tenmangū in Kyoto and Dazaifu Tenmangū, built over his grave. Feared at first as a curse-bringing deity, Tenjin gradually changed in character—on account of Michizane's own outstanding learning in life—into a guardian of scholarship and letters; and in the early-modern era, as terakoya schools spread, he became beloved even among commoners as the god who grants success in study and clears false accusations. The plum he loved so dearly in life, and the thunder he wielded as a vengeful spirit, survive to this day as his emblems.

Taira no Masakado was a warrior of the Kanmu-Taira line who held sway over the Bandō region in the mid-Heian period, a man who raised the banner of revolt against the court, styled himself "New Emperor" (Shinnō), and was struck down. After his death, the uncanny tales surrounding his severed head made him one of the most dreaded vengeful spirits in Japan, and in time he was enshrined as a guardian deity of the Kantō and a goryō god at shrines such as Kanda Myōjin. In the Jōhei and Tengyō years, Masakado rose from private feuds within his own clan, and in the second year of Tengyō (939) he overran the provincial seats of Hitachi and other Kantō provinces to subjugate the eastern lands, proclaiming an oracle of Hachiman Daibosatsu and styling himself New Emperor . But the following year, the third of Tengyō (940), he was shot in the forehead and killed in battle by the punitive army of Taira no Sadamori and Fujiwara no Hidesato (Tawara Tōda). His life is recounted in detail in the contemporary war chronicle Shōmonki. What made Masakado a yokai and a vengeful spirit was less the historical revolt itself than the legend of the head, told in later ages. The story that his head, exposed in the capital, would not rot and cried out night after night before flying off to the east is bound up with the dread of the Masakado Grave-Mound (the "Head Mound") at Ōtemachi in Tokyo, and transmits to this day the belief that to move it brings a curse. At Kanda Myōjin, by contrast, he is fervently revered as the great tutelary of Edo and a god of martial fortune and thriving commerce—embodying the two faces of a goryō god: curse and protection.

Emperor Sutoku was the seventy-fifth emperor of the late Heian period; defeated in the Hōgen Rebellion and exiled to Sanuki, he died in bitterness, and was thereafter dreaded as the most powerful vengeful spirit and Great Tengu of Japan. Among the "Three Great Vengeful Spirits of Japan," ranked beside Sugawara no Michizane and Taira no Masakado, he is often spoken of as the mightiest. Born as the son of Emperor Toba, he was dogged by the rumor that he was in truth the son of his grandfather, the cloistered emperor Shirakawa—the "uncle-child" (ojigo)—and was shunned by Toba. Though enthroned at the age of three, he was forced to abdicate at twenty-three without ever grasping the power of cloistered rule, and in the first year of Hōgen (1156) his conflict with his younger brother Emperor Go-Shirakawa came to armed clash as the Hōgen Rebellion. Sutoku's side, which mustered Minamoto no Tameyoshi and Taira no Tadamasa, was defeated in a night attack by Go-Shirakawa's side, which mustered Taira no Kiyomori and Minamoto no Yoshitomo; Sutoku was exiled to Sanuki and, never permitted to return to the capital, ended his life in the second year of Chōkan (1164). The legend that, enraged when his sutra-copies made in exile were rejected by the court, he bit off his tongue and wrote a curse in blood, and—cutting neither nails nor hair—turned into a tengu, is what made Sutoku a yokai and a vengeful spirit. After his death, whenever the realm fell into disorder it was feared as his curse, and the court labored to pacify him through renaming and the building of shrines. His vengeful spirit is depicted even in the famous tale of the uncanny in Ueda Akinari's Ugetsu Monogatari.