Daji

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Daji. A favorite concubine of King Zhou of Shang

Daji ( Chinese  妲 己 , Pinyin Dájǐ , Wade-Giles Ta 2 -chi 3 ) was King Zhou's favorite concubine of Shang , the last king of the Shang dynasty in China . She is portrayed in legends and novels as the evil fox fairy . Her identification as a fox fairy appears to have been popular at least since the Tang Dynasty . This assignment was popularized by works such as Wu Wang Fa Zhou Pinghua ( Chinese 武王伐紂 平 話 ), Fengshen Yanyi, and the Chronicles of the Eastern Zhou Kingdom . It is considered a classic example in Chinese culture of how a beauty brings about the fall of a dynasty.

In the Song Dynasty , fox spirit cults, including those dedicated to the Daji, were banned, although their suppression was unsuccessful. In 1111 an imperial edict was issued that ordered the demolition of many spirit shrines in Kaifeng, including those dedicated to the Daji.

biography

King Zhou of Shang and his concubine Daji, depicted in Faits mémorables des empereurs de la Chine, tirés des annales chinoises (1788)

Daji came from a noble family named Su ( Chinese 蘇 ) from the country Yousu ( Chinese 有 蘇 ). That is why she is also known as Su Daji . 1047 BC u. Z. attacked King Zhou of Shang Yousu and took Daji as his spoils of war. In the novel Feng Shen Yan Yi she was the daughter of Su Hu s ( Chinese 蘇 護 ); in the first few chapters, she was killed by a thousand-year-old fox spirit possessed by her body before becoming a concubine of King Zhou.

King Zhou became totally fond of Daji and began to neglect state business in order to be around her. He did everything to ingratiate himself with her and please her. Daji loved animals, so he built her a zoological xanadu with several rare species of birds and animals. He also ordered artists to compose lewd music and choreographers to develop raunchy dances to satisfy their musical tastes. He invited 3,000 guests to a party to indulge in his wine pond and meat forest. He allowed his guests in the forest naked endeavor to play to amuse Daji. When one of King Zhou's concubines, Lord Jiu's daughter, protested, King Zhou had her executed. Her father was crushed to pieces and his flesh was given to King Zhou's vassals to eat.

Daji's greatest joy was hearing people scream under torture. Once she saw a farmer walking barefoot on ice and ordered his feet to be cut off so that she could examine them and find out why they were so insensitive to low temperatures. Another time she had a pregnant woman's belly cut open to satisfy her curiosity about what was in it. To test the old adage, "A good man's heart has seven openings," she had the heart of Minister Bi Gan (比干) (an uncle of King Zhou) ripped out and examined it.

Daji was best known for inventing a torture method called Paolao ( Chinese 炮烙 ). A bronze cylinder covered in oil was heated like an oven with charcoal underneath until its side became extremely hot. The victim was forced to walk on top of the slowly heating cylinder, so the victim had to lift his feet to avoid the heat. The oily surface made it difficult for the victim to maintain his position and balance. If the victim fell into the charcoal, it was burned alive. The victim was forced to dance and scream in agony while King Zhou and Daji watched and laughed with joy.

Daji was executed in favor of Jiang Ziya on the orders of King Wu of Zhou after the fall of the Shang Dynasty .

literature

Depiction of Daji in the Hokusai Manga

In literature, Daji is the main character in the Chinese novel Fengshen Yanyi . In the novel, she is the first known destroyer of the descending Shang dynasty. Her father, Su Hu , gave it to King Zhou of Shang as a reassurance gift after armed conflict broke out between Sus and Shang's armies.

One night before Daji was sent to the capital, Zhaoge , she was possessed by an evil nine-tailed fox spirit (that is, a millennial witch). When Daji arrived in Zhaoge, the king took Zhou under her spell and caused the king to become completely obsessed with her. King Zhou neglected his state business in order to stay in their company and neglected his duties. Yunzhongzi was the first man to crack down on Daji by giving the king a magical peach wood sword that Daji would make sick and maybe kill her. Through these schemes she grew from a little concubine to queen because the king preferred her so much.

Daji was blamed for the fall of the Shang Dynasty for corrupting King Zhou and causing him to neglect his business of state and rule with tyranny and despotism. This led to the ultimate downfall of the dynasty and widespread chaos. King Zhou's tyranny drew the anger and resentment of the common people, which arose in a revolt led by King Wu of Zhou. After the fall of the Shang Dynasty, Daji was subjected to an exorcism by Jiang Ziya (also Jiang Taiging), in which she died.

Popular culture

  • The main character Dakki in Ryū Fujisaki's manga series Hoshin Engi (based on Fengshen Yanyi ) is based on Daji. She is a “yokai sennin”, so she was originally a fox spirit. Dakki declares Taikoubou (Taigong Wang = Jiang Ziya) to be her rival in both the anime and the manga .
  • Daji appears in Koei's video game Warriors Orochi as "Da Ji", Orochi's strategist and right-hand man. Her appearance includes pointy, fuzzy ears and fox legs as an indication that she is a fox spirit. In Warriors Orochi 2 , she is a strong rival of Taigong Wang, who is the only one who easily sees through her strategies. She is also the one who originally freed Orochi the serpent king from dungeon because she sympathized with him. It is implied that she was once one of the "mystics", the game world organization of the Chinese and Japanese semi-mythical beings.
  • Daji appears as a general that the players can control in the strategy game War of Legends .
  • Daji is one of the antagonists of the light gun marksman game SEGA Golden Gun in the final part of the Shilitan level. In this game Daji transformed into a Moe - anthropomorphism of Byakko . She only attacks with her tiger tail, which she thrusts towards the players. One of her speaking texts begins with "Please accept my love ..." which she says to the players in order to unleash the hearts of the players in order to dazzle them. She can also summon red-armed bodyguards who are only seen in the first half of the boss fight. But these bodyguards do not result in player points. In the second part of the boss fight, she can make four copies of herself to confuse the players. In the end, Daji is defeated and shouts out King Zhou's name until she sinks into the abyss.
  • Daji appears as a Chinese goddess in the Tower of Saviors mobile game .
  • Daji / Dakki appears in the anime Hōzuki no Reitetsu (episode 9), where she is the most expensive courtesan in human hell.
  • The Hong Kong / South Korea film “Da Ji” in English “The Last Woman of Shang” (1964), directed by Choi In-hyeon and Yueh Feng, shows an unusual contrast to the title character (played by Linda Lin Dai ) to all of the above. She is a heroine there who does not want to kill and torture, but is led to by King Zhou to destroy his kingdom and to get the nation to depose him to restore the rightful line of succession.
  • Daji appears in the Hong Kong television adaptation of the 2001 novel Fengshen Bang, Gods of Honor . She is first shown as a young woman who was forbidden to study and who later becomes the opponent. She harmed a lot of people because of something they did to her. But whom she never harms is her sister, who condemns Daji's terrible actions. The series ran over 40 episodes.
  • In the 2016 Hong Kong film League of Gods , Daji is portrayed with monstrous tails that a victim can tear to pieces and eat what remains. She also has the ability to use magic that reverses the age of the victim with each spell.

literature

  • Ya-chen Chen: Women in Chinese martial arts films of the new millennium narrative analyzes and gender politics . Lexington Books, Lanham 2012, ISBN 978-0-7391-3910-3 (English).
  • Maram Epstein: Competing discourses: Orthodoxy, authenticity, and endangered meanings in late Imperial Chinese fiction . Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 2001, ISBN 0-674-00512-0 (English).
  • Rania Huntington: Alien child. Foxes and late imperial Chinese narrative . Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass 2003, ISBN 0-674-01094-9 (English).
  • Xiaofei Kang: The cult of the fox. Power, gender, and popular religion in late imperial and modern China . Columbia University Press, New York 2006, ISBN 0-231-13338-3 (English).
  • Fu-shih Lin: Modern Chinese Religion I . Ed .: John Lagerwey, Pierre Marsone. Brill, Leiden 2014, ISBN 978-90-04-27164-7 (English).
  • Zhonglin Xu: Fengshen Yanyi . (Chinese, 17th century).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ya-chen Chen: Women in Chinese martial arts films of the new millennium narrative analyzes and gender politics. P. 11.
  2. ^ Rania Huntington: Alien child. Foxes and late imperial Chinese narrative. P. 195.
  3. ↑ Maram Epstein: Competing discourses. Orthodoxy, authenticity, and endangered meanings in late Imperial Chinese fiction. P. 136.
  4. ↑ Xiaofei Kang: The cult of the fox. Power, gender, and popular religion in late imperial and modern China. Pp. 37-39.
  5. ↑ Fu-shih Lin: Modern Chinese Religion I. pp. 262-263.
  6. ↑ Zhong Lin Xu: Fengshen Yanyi. Chapter 3 (Chinese: Wikisource ).
  7. ↑ Zhong Lin Xu: Fengshen Yanyi. Chapter 4 (Chinese: Wikisource ).