Kage-onna (Gunma)

Kage-onna is a yokai in which a woman's silhouette alone is cast on a shoji or in lamp-light, while no person stands on the other side. Toriyama Sekien's Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki (1779) figures the yokai with the silhouette of an upswept-haired woman on a shoji; the inscription glosses it as the silhouette in a house where a hitodama dwells, or where fox or tanuki spirits live. The canonical narrative places the figure in a residence at night, where the shadow of a woman alone appears on the shoji of a lit lamp, although no one stands outside; the figure stands at the boundary of household yokai and female yokai. Toriyama Sekien's Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki (Anei 8, 1779) is the principal early text. Modern folk-studies in the Yanagita Kunio lineage compile cognate cases of shadow, hitodama, and fox/tanuki yokai; Murakami Kenji's Nihon Yokai Daijiten (Kadokawa, 2005) and the Nichibunken Strange Phenomena and Yokai Folklore Database also record the figure. Adjacent ghost-and-shadow yokai include nurarihyon, kitsunebi, and aoandon; adjacent female yokai include ohaguro-bettari and hashihime. Specific Gunma-local records are limited.