Hone-onna

{{Short description|Yōkai}}

Image:SekienHoneonna.jpg by Sekien Toriyama]]

{{nihongo|Hone-onna|wiktionary:骨女||literally: bone woman}} is a yōkai depicted in the Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki (1779) by Toriyama Sekien. As its name implies, it depicts this yōkai as a woman in the form of bones.

In Sekien's explanatory text in the Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki states that there is a story called {{nihongo|Otogi Bōko|御伽ばうこ}} in which an aged female skeleton would carry a chōchin (lantern) decorated with botan flowers on it and visit the house of a man she loved back when she was still alive, and then cavort with that man. In other words, this refers to {{nihongo|"Botan Dōrō{{-"}}|牡丹燈籠||"The Peony Lantern"}}, within the collection of writings called {{nihongo|Otogi Bōko|伽婢子||1666}} by Asai Ryōi.{{Cite book |editor-last=Murakami |editor-first=Kenji |year=2000 |title=Yōkai Jiten (妖怪事典) |publisher=The Mainichi Newspapers Co. |isbn=978-4-620-31428-0 |page=308}} (The collection was composed as a sort of moral-free version of the Chinese work Jiandeng Xinhua written in 1378 by Qu You.) In the Botan Dōrō, a man named Ogiwara Shinnojō meets a beautiful woman named Yako and they become entangled almost every night, but one night an old person from next door catches a glimpse of it and sees the strange scene of Shinnojō embracing with a skeleton.{{Cite book |editor1-last=Inada |editor1-first=Atsunobu |editor2-first=Naohi |editor2-last=Tanaka |year=1992 |others=Mamoru Takada, supervisor |title=Toriyama Sekien Gazu Hyakki Yagyō (鳥山石燕 画図百鬼夜行) |publisher=Kokushokankokai |isbn=978-4-336-03386-4 |page=148}}

According to Tōhoku Kaidan no Tabi by Norio Yamada, there is an odd tale in the Aomori Prefecture about a yōkai under the title of "hone-onna". It says that in the Ansei period, a woman who was said to be ugly by those around her became a good-looking skeleton after death, and walked around town as a skeleton to let everyone see. It is said that she likes fish bones and would collapse upon encountering a high priest.{{Cite book |last=Yamada |first=Norio |author-link=Norio Yamada |title=Tōhoku Kaidan no Tabi |year=1974 |publisher=Jiyū Kokumin |id={{NCID|BA42139725}} |pages=138–139}}