Bone WomanBone Woman (after Sekien Toriyama)

This version is based on the Bone Woman image in Toriyama Sekien’s Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki. She is a skeletal woman who carries a peony-patterned lantern and visits the home of her beloved in the late night. The source is the ghost tale “Peony Lantern” in Asai Ryōi’s Otogi-bōko. Sekien visualized its core motifs—the inversion of a lovely face and a skeletal body, and the link between lamplight and erotic affection. Rooted in Edo-period notions of vengeful fixation and shifting appearances common to yomihon and kaidan, the figure is an iconographic type rather than a legend tied to specific locales or persons: not a land deity or beast, but a visualization of a passion-bound revenant. Peonies, lanterns, and night roads are its key nodes. While later lore speaks broadly of walking skeletons, this image stresses appearances born of yearning and nocturnal trysts.