Oni Playing Cards :: Onibaba

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    Onibaba was a demon from Japanese folklore who took on the appearance of an elderly woman and feasted on humans.

    One version of her origin story told of a wealthy family in Kyoto who was searching for a cure for their child. The child was five years old and had not uttered a single sound since birth. Desperate, the family asked a fortune teller how to fix the problem, and the fortune teller told the family to seek out the liver of an unborn fetus to use as a healing component.

    The child’s nanny grew desperate after months of asking for a donated fetus, and she set a trap for traveling pregnant women near a mountain pass.

    After she killed a young pregnant woman and harvested the fetus, the nanny found a trinket she gave to her daughter before leaving in the woman’s possession. Stunned and deeply saddened by the revelation that she had murdered her own daughter, she turned into Onibaba, a demon hag who lurked in the mountains to snatch up unwary pilgrims and passerby.

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Oni Playing Cards © 2016. Dave Boyd.