In the imperial court’s Great Tsuina exorcism, this figure confronts and drives out pestilential oni. Wearing a four-eyed square mask, bear hide, and armed with a halberd and great shield, he leads pages and tsuina attendants to circuit the four directions of the palace. The rite follows set forms—onmyoji invocations, drum cues, and expulsion beyond the gates—and later influenced demon-chasing observances at temples and shrines. By the late Heian period, shifts in the term tsuina saw him at times enact a visible “oni role.” Though attire, implements, and routes changed with ceremonial norms, the core purpose remained the banishment of epidemics and ill fortune.
Character Profile
This section is our own creative profile for storytelling. It is not historical fact or scholarship.
Yokai Type - Traditional Yokai
Category - Deities and divine beings
Rarity - Epic
Personality - solemn, severe, scrupulously ritual-bound
Compatibility - shuns defilement and plague, favors purity and restraint
Abilities - apotropaic warding and banishment, pacifying through an intimidating dance, four-directional circuits that purge boundary defilement, command of processions pages and tsuina men
Weaknesses - regarded with awe and avoidance due to proximity to defilement and funerary rites, powerless outside formal ritual
Habitat - imperial palace precincts and gates, temples and shrines during tsuina and demon-chasing rites
🔮Yokai Compatibility Test
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