Ame-onna
The Ame-onna ( Japanese 雨 女 , literally "rain woman") is a fictional being of Japanese folk belief . She is a yōkai and usually well-disposed towards humans.
description
The Ame-onna is said to appear on wet evenings in the form of a woman licking her hands. Their presence heralds rain. Even today, many farmers pray for the appearance of the Ame-onna so that their fields can be supplied with rain. Toriyama Sekien mentions in his work Gazu Hyakki Yakō that her figure probably goes back to a Chinese mountain goddess who is said to appear in the morning as a cloud over the peaks of Mount Wushan and in the evening as rain.
In modern Japanese colloquial language, Ame-onna , or the male pedant Ame-otoko , is a person who is jokingly said to bring the rain wherever he goes.
literature
- Michaela Haustein: Mythologies of the World: Japan, Ainu, Korea. ePubli, Berlin 2011, ISBN 3844214070 , p. 7.
- Stephen Addis, Helen Foresman: Japanese Ghosts and Demons: Art of the Supernatural . George Braziller, 2001.
Web links
- The Ame-onna in Obakemono Project (English)