The tale of Adachigahara / The raging mind as Oni.

Is it true, that Oni hide in the black tombs of Adachigahara in the deep northeast?
- Taira no Kanemori

The silent depths of Autumn in Adachigahara in northeast Japan...
At dusk, a group of wandering mountain ascetics from west Japan, lead by Yukei, was searching for a place to spend the night. Following a faint beam of light, they found themselves at the entrance of a small hut. A woman lived there alone and she reluctantly permitted the group to sleep in her house for the night. She then began to make yarn with a spindle as she grieved about the emptiness and impermanence of life. Recounting the splendors of her past and the people she loved, she broke down and shed tears of sorrow.

Later in the evening, when the temperature started to drop, the woman went into the mountains to gather firewood. But before leaving, she gave the group of men strict orders never to look into her bedroom.

Thinking the woman suspicious, one of Yukei's men broke the promise and peeked into the woman's bedroom where he found a countless number of human corpses. Shocked by the stench of the dead bodies, he woke the other men, and together, they all left the house in a great hurry.

A little while later, the woman returned and saw that she had been betrayed. In her fury, she manifested her true nature, as an Oni, and swinging an iron bar, chased after the men. Yukei, with a prayer to the guardian deities, began to fight her, all the while rubbing a string of prayer beads. At the end of a seemingly eternal battle, the Oni was finally subdued by the power of Yukei's chants. Letting out a terrible scream, in anger that its true nature was exposed, the Oni disappeared into the night wind.

        

The oni mind

In contrast with other Noh plays such as "Dojoji," "Aoi no ue," and "Kanawa," it is not the vengeance of lost love that triggers the manifestation of the Oni nature in the tale of "Adachigahara," but rather, the internal emotion of shame.
From 1336 until 1392, the Japanese empire was divided into two powers, each claiming sovereign rule. The battle between the two palaces - North and South - which lasted for decades, resulted in the social displacement of many formal royals. This story is a case of a woman who has lost her future on account of a changing world and has become an outcast of society.
Her strong attachment to this life keeps her from freeing herself of an emptiness that torments her. On top of this, she is cruelly betrayed by this group of traveling ascetics.

With the secrets of her numerous passions exposed, her sense of shame reaches its limits and manifests itself as an Oni The story is only beautifully human.