Japan's Haunted Art: Ghost Imagery Explored

Discover the fascinating connection between ghost imagery and Edo period artwork in Japan's haunted art. Explore the supernatural elements that shape this unique artistic journey.

SHRINES AND TEMPLES

9/24/20267 min read

Have you ever wondered where the image of a ghost originated ? With its almost transparent hand, fingers elongated and indistinct, curling slowly as though grasping for something that exists just beyond the reach of the living. Light from outside passing through it, making the figure appear thinner, almost weightless, until you can see through it. It doesn’t speak. It floats rather than walks. Sometimes ghosts are depicted with feet, and sometimes they are not.

Part of this image comes from European burial traditions. Part of it is based on the yūrei. The classic Japanese yūrei, for example, is traditionally depicted as a woman in a white death robe, with long, disheveled hair and no visible legs. This convention became particularly influential in Japanese art from the late eighteenth century onward. The disappearing lower body became associated with the idea that the ghost was floating or fading into the air.

The artist most often credited with establishing the classic visual image of the Japanese yūrei is Maruyama Ōkyo (1733–1795), an important Kyoto painter. His famous work, The Ghost of Oyuki, is generally dated to the eighteenth century. It is one of the best-known paintings associated with the development of the visual image of the yūrei, combining features that became strongly associated with the form: a white burial robe, long, disheveled black hair, limp, outstretched hands, a pale, almost transparent body, and no visible legs or feet.

Maruyama Ōkyo’s The Ghost of Oyuki is associated with the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in California. This painting embodies much of the ghost imagery created during this period. This particular painting is not on exhibit at Zenshō-an, but it is reminiscent of many of Ōkyo’s works. Paintings by Ōkyo can be found in museums around the world, with one of the largest collections of his ghost paintings being at Zenshō-an Temple in Tokyo.

Zenshō-an Temple (全生庵) is in Yanaka, Taitō, Tokyo. From central Tokyo, it is relatively easy to reach. We took three trains, for a total of about 42 minutes on the Marunouchi and Chiyoda lines, followed by a 10-minute walk.

The walk is quite pleasant and passes by Daikokuten Kyōō-ji Temple, just a few minutes from JR Nippori Station, near Yanaka Ginza, where we disembarked. Its main gate still has bullet marks from the 1868 Battle of Ueno. The Shōgitai forces were retreating from the battle and took refuge at the temple; government forces attacked the temple, leaving the marks in the gate. Pretty interesting.

The road led us into a residential district past the Tsukiji-bei (築地塀), a traditional earthen-and-tile wall at Kannon-ji Temple (観音寺). It runs along the street and is one of the most recognizable features of old Yanaka. The wall dates to the late Edo period, and the temple says it was originally built in the Bakumatsu, or the final years of the Edo period. It was partially damaged in the 1923 earthquake but reconstructed using as much of the original material as possible. The wall is specifically valued because it preserves the appearance of Edo-period Yanaka.

Our destination today is Zenshō-an temple. The temple holds the Sanyūtei Enchō collection of yūrei-ga (ghost paintings). The collection includes works attributed to or associated with artists such as Maruyama Ōkyo, Shibata Zeshin, Kikuchi Yōsai, Matsumoto Fūko, Itō Seiu, and Kawanabe Kyōsai. Zenshō-an opens the collection to the public every August for the entire month. The timing is significant because August coincides with Obon, when deceased ancestors are traditionally honored. The temple’s exhibition is also connected with the annual memorial for the rakugo master Sanyūtei Enchō, who collected the paintings.

Entering the exhibition, we found ourselves confronted by an entirely different history of Japanese horror. The ghosts in these paintings did not all look alike. They were not simply variations on the same terrifying figure. Some were elegant women in white robes. Others were twisted or grotesque creatures. Some seemed angry, while others appeared almost pitiful.

What connected them was the sense that these were not merely supernatural beings. They were people who had died but had somehow failed to leave the world of the living behind.

Unfortunately, of the 50 works of art on display at Zenshō-an, it is forbidden to photograph any of them. We were unaware of this beforehand. At Zenshō-an (全生庵), the prohibition on photographing the ghost paintings is less about copyright and more about preservation, museum policy, and the character of the collection. Many of the paintings are eighteenth- and nineteenth-century works on paper or silk. Photography is often restricted because repeated photography, especially with flash, adds light exposure that can contribute to the deterioration of pigments and paper or silk. Even though a single visitor’s phone photo is insignificant, restrictions are easier to enforce universally.

Also, Zenshō-an is a Zen temple rather than a conventional art museum. The paintings are part of the temple’s cultural and religious heritage, so it has more control over how the collection is presented.

We spent approximately an hour looking at the collection. It was easy to notice those details that have become synonymous with ghost imagery: the floating, footless apparition, the elongated hands and arms, and the transparency of the spirits.

The most famous ghost painting associated with Maruyama Ōkyo is The Ghost of Oyuki (幽霊図・お雪の幻), which is traditionally connected with a woman named Oyuki, who was said to have been Ōkyo’s mistress at the Tominaga geisha house in Ōtsu.

According to the story, Oyuki died young. Ōkyo was deeply affected by her death. One night, he supposedly woke and saw her standing before him—or encountered her in a dream. She appeared pale, dressed in white, with long, loose black hair, and her body seemed to fade away below the waist.

The vision disappeared, but Ōkyo supposedly painted what he had seen. The result was the image we now associate with the classic ghost: white burial clothing, long, disheveled hair, limp hands, a pale, translucent body, and no visible feet.

What’s especially interesting is that the story itself may have helped create the ghost’s reputation. Ōkyo was famous for his commitment to realistic observation. If the story said that he had actually seen a ghost and painted what he saw, people could regard the painting almost as a portrait rather than an imaginary monster.

I think the most compelling story isn't simply “Ōkyo saw a ghost and painted it.” It’s that Ōkyo may have transformed the way people imagined what a ghost looked like. Earlier art depicted spirits and supernatural beings, but Ōkyo’s restrained figure was different. There was no grotesque monster, no dramatic supernatural setting, and no obvious horror. Instead, there was a dead person who looked almost alive—except that something was missing.

The missing feet became enormously important. Ōkyo’s white-clad, footless ghost became a standard form for subsequent ghost paintings. The image that eventually became a frightening stereotype of a ghost may originally have been conceived as a portrait of someone Ōkyo loved and lost.

Despite the enormous range of his work, it is one ghost that has made Ōkyo famous around the world. His style led to the creation of the Maruyama School, an important school of Japanese painting. The Maruyama School (円山派), founded around 1770, was centered on painting from direct observation of the real world. The key idea was shasei (写生)—literally, roughly, “sketching from life” or “depicting what you observe.”

Students traditionally learned how particular birds, animals, landscapes, people, and other subjects were supposed to be represented. Ōkyo instead encouraged his students to look carefully at the actual subject. This approach helped give his depictions a sense of realism, even when he was painting subjects that could not actually be observed, such as ghosts.

There were other artists represented as well. There were paintings by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, who created dramatic images of famous ghost stories, including the story of Okiku, the servant whose death became the basis for one of Japan’s best-known supernatural legends.

There was also Oiwa, the tragic woman from The Yotsuya Ghost Story, who returns from the dead after being betrayed and poisoned by her husband.

Katsushika Hokusai painted the disturbing Ghost of Kohada Koheiji. Utagawa Kuniyoshi created Takiyasha the Witch and the Skeleton Spectre, an astonishingly dramatic image in which the supernatural becomes almost overwhelming.

And then there was Kawanabe Kyōsai, who could take the same tradition and make it humorous.

That was perhaps one of the biggest surprises of the collection. Much of this ghost art wasn’t necessarily about terror, but sometimes it was about sorrow or revenge. The supernatural could be frightening, but it could also be strangely human.

Walking through the collection at Zenshō-an, I found myself thinking less about horror and more about memory. That may be the real secret of these paintings. A ghost is someone who hasn’t completely disappeared.

The stories behind the paintings are filled with people who died carrying unresolved emotions—love, betrayal, anger, jealousy, grief. Their spirits remain because something remains unfinished.

That interpretation also makes the timing of the Zenshō-an exhibition particularly meaningful. The paintings are traditionally shown during August, around Obon, when families remember those who have died. The ghosts are therefore being displayed during a season devoted to the dead. It gives the exhibition an atmosphere that is difficult to reproduce anywhere else.

Eventually, we left Zenshō-an and returned to the streets of Yanaka. Back to the station, back to Tokyo where the trains were still running, cars passing, people going about their daily lives.

That may be one of the pleasures of traveling in Japan. You can walk into a place expecting to see an old temple and unexpectedly find yourself connected to an eighteenth-century painter, a nineteenth-century storyteller, or an ancient tradition of spirits.

And that is what makes the collection at Zenshō-an so fascinating. These paintings aren’t simply pictures of ghosts. They are pictures of how people imagined death. They show us what frightened people, what they mourned, what they remembered—and what they could not let go. And more than two hundred years after Ōkyo painted Oyuki, she is still floating there, suspended between two worlds.