Edo-period Japan
Yūrei in the Japanese print tradition
c. 1831–32 · Japan · Katsushika Hokusai
Hokusai, The Ghost of Kohada Koheiji, from One Hundred Ghost Stories, c. 1831–32.
Source & rights
- What this is
- Depiction from within the tradition
- Object
- Title
- The Ghost of Kohada Koheiji, from One Hundred Ghost Stories
- Creator
- Katsushika Hokusai
- Date
- c. 1831–32
- Held by
- Library of Congress
- Licence
- Public domain
- This copy
- Rendered at 3840 × 3026 from an original of 4750 × 3743; not otherwise altered.
- Retrieved
- 2026-08-29
Made within the tradition that transmitted the account, though not by a witness to it.
A commercial print from a popular series, illustrating a figure already familiar from theatre. It is a representation of a well-established narrative type - not a report, and not a depiction of anything anybody claimed to have seen.
In the early 1830s Hokusai produced a series of prints of ghost stories for the Edo market. The figures in them are yūrei: the returning dead, with a settled iconography that a buyer would have recognised instantly from the theatre - the posture, the hair, the absent feet, the particular grievance.
They are not reports of anything. They are commercial illustrations of narratives that were already famous, made for people who knew the stories. That is precisely why they are here.
What the source is
Colour woodblock prints from a commercial series of ghost stories, illustrating figures already established in kabuki and popular literature.
They are catalogued here as depictions of narrative material, not as reports.
The report
No passage reproduced - Excerpt not published - edition and page not yet verified
No text is reproduced. The prints carry Japanese inscriptions this project cannot read and has not had read.
Why it is in this archive
This entry is a control, and it is here for the same reason as the monastic practice record: to keep the collection honest about what most of this material is.
The overwhelming bulk of what any culture produces about the returning dead is not testimony. It is theatre, print, entertainment and commerce, made for people who wanted the pleasure of a good ghost story and knew exactly what they were buying. An archive that collected only the accounts presented as true would badly misrepresent every tradition it drew from.
It also documents the shape of an expectation. A nineteenth-century Edo audience knew what a yūrei looked like before ever encountering a claim about one, and so did everyone else in this archive about their own tradition's figures. What a witness has already seen is never nothing.
The words the source uses
Given in the language they were written in, with a plain rendering. None is treated as equivalent to a term from another tradition.
- 幽霊
- yūrei - the returning dead
- A specific category with its own conditions: an improper death, an unresolved obligation, a bounded reason for returning. It is not interchangeable with the English ghost, which carries none of those requirements.
How close is the source?
Substantial chronological or textual distance from any event.
01 · Narratives from
Kabuki theatre and popular literature
02 · Designed by
Katsushika Hokusai, c. 1831–32
03 · Printed and sold by
Commercial publishers, for the Edo market
04 · Held by
Library of Congress
Project Nikolaos annotation
Written by this project. Not part of the source, and not a translation of anything in it.
Everyone in this archive already knew what they were going to see. That is not an accusation. It is a condition of the experiment, and it applies to me as well.
Details, provenance and rights
- Experiencer state
- Not applicable
- Reported agency
- Single personal agency
- Locomotion claim
- None
- Physical trace
- None reported
- Witness or speaker
- None. These illustrate narrative fiction.
- Recorder / translator
- Katsushika Hokusai; commercial publishers
- Edition
- From the series Hyaku monogatari (One Hundred Ghost Stories), c. 1831–32
- Rights
- May be reproduced from a verified public-domain edition
- Cultural sensitivity
- Ordinary historical context
Provenance notes
- These are illustrations to fiction and are catalogued as such.
- The English word ghost is used nowhere in this record as a translation. The source's own term is kept.
The print is public domain; the reproduction is from a public collection.
From the same shelf
Grouped by the tradition that produced them. Nothing here claims they share a cause.
