Shuten-dōji
Japanese · deity · mid heian · Recorded classification
He is killed by trickery and hospitality: Yorimitsu's party arrive dressed as mountain ascetics, are made welcome, produce poisoned sake, and cut his head off while he sleeps — and the head, in the best-known version, flies up and bites the helmet of the man holding the sword. The method is precisely Susanoo's with the serpent, eight hundred years later and with the monster given a name, a mountain and a grievance. This registry records named yōkai and not yōkai as kinds, and he is the standing reason the distinction matters.
Domains
- demons
- cannibalism
Relations
- killed by: Minamoto no YorimitsuOn Mount Ōe, by a party who came as travelling monks and brought the sake.Reference treatment of Shuten dōji as slain by Minamoto no Yorimitsu. (secondary)
- companion: Tamamo-no-MaeNot an association in any story: they are grouped by the tradition as two of the three worst things in it, and the edge records that grouping.Reference treatment of the three greatest and most evil yōkai of Japanese folklore. (secondary)
Sources
- Shuten-dōji is the king of the oni, a tyrant of Mount Ōe who led a cannibal band and abducted women from Kyoto, killed by Minamoto no Yorimitsu, and counted one of the three greatest yōkai.: Reference treatments of Shuten-dōji and of the three great yōkai. (secondary)