Abura-akago

What it is

Abura-akago belongs to the yōkai of Japan, the beings and apparitions of that country's folklore. It is an infant spirit or ghost. Toriyama Sekien, an Edo period artist, put it in his mid-Edo collection Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki, drawn as a baby lapping oil from an andon, a lamp with a paper shade. Later writing about yōkai reads the same creature as a ball of flame that enters a house, turns into a baby, licks the lamps, and goes off again as fire. The name means "oil baby".

Where it comes from

Sekien's picture and his note are the first record of this name. The note describes a flying fire at Hatchō in Ōtsu, in Ōmi Province. The part after the mention of the village of Shiga comes from an older tale about a strange fire, the abura-nusumi no hi, which stands in two Edo period books, the Shokoku Rijin Dan and the Honchō Koji Innen Shū. In those pages an oil seller of Ōtsu steals oil from a Jizō at a crossroads so that he can sell it, and after death becomes a wandering flame. It is inferred that Sekien built his own creature on that tale.

How it is done

As later writing on yōkai tells it, the being travels as a ball of flame, comes into a home, takes a baby's shape, licks oil from the andon lamps, and leaves again as fire. No ritual and no human use are described. One suggestion among writers is that lamps in the countryside once burned rough oils such as fish oil, so a cat licking at a lamp could have looked like a baby doing the same.

Tools and materials

Oil and the andon lamp sit at the centre. An andon is a lamp with a paper shade, used to light a room. In the older tale the oil belongs to a Jizō statue at a crossroads in Ōtsu, and the seller takes it night after night to sell. Oil was a valuable material in Japan, used as food and for light, and refining improved from the middle ages onward. That worth is why the stories dwell on oil being licked or drained.

What it is for

The stories are read as warnings. Oil cost a great deal and was needed for light and for cooking, so licking it up or draining a lamp stood for waste. One theory holds that yōkai of this kind came into being as a caution against using oil carelessly. The older tale gives the theft a moral shape: a seller who robs a Jizō of its lamp oil is said to end as a lost flame.

Peoples and places

All the accounts are Japanese and set in named places. Sekien puts the flying fire at Hatchō in Ōtsu, in Ōmi Province, and the older story has the oil seller in the village of Shiga in the same area. The Shokoku Rijin Dan brings in Mount Hiei as well, where a fire called abura-bō is said to appear, and that book treats it as the same as the abura-nusumi no hi.

What people believe

In Sekien's note a person's konpaku, or soul, can become flame. The oil seller dies, his soul turns into a wandering fire, and Sekien asks whether the baby licking oil is that man born again. The Jizō at the crossroads is a Buddhist figure, and the oil taken is what keeps its lamp burning. Underneath lies a familiar idea in Japanese tales: a bond with oil, kept in life or after death, produces apparitions.

How scholars and sceptics see it

Specialists read the figure as a literary creation rather than a report from village belief. The lines Sekien writes follow the abura-nusumi no hi as it stands in the Shokoku Rijin Dan and the Honchō Koji Innen Shū, and the inference is that he invented the baby out of those pages. Researchers also note that later kaidan collections carry yōkai that began with Sekien and not with folklore. An oil lantern-drinking baby in Ihara Saikaku's Honchō Nijū Fukō has been called an invention too.

Compare and confuse

The abura-nase and the ubagabi belong to the same group of oil-linked legends. The Akita tale called "abura-name akago" shares the idea and part of the name, though it stands in a different book and in a different setting.

Today

Modern writing on yōkai keeps the creature alive as a fireball that flies into a house, becomes a baby, licks the lamps and returns to flame. A collection of kaidan, ghost tales, by the novelist Yamada Norio, Tōhoku Kaidan no Tabi, holds an Akita Prefecture story named "abura-name akago". In it a woman carrying a baby stays at the house of a shōya, a local official, and there the baby sucks a lantern dry of oil.

Questions people ask about Abura-akago

Good reading and sources

• Abura-akago on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data