Demon in Japanese is 鬼, said oni. Ten strokes, and it is Kangxi radical 194 in its own right, the head of a family of characters for spirits and monsters. For the devil of religion, Japanese uses a different word, 悪魔 (akuma). Written in hiragana the folk demon is おに, and in katakana オニ.
Demon in Japanese
Demon in Japanese is 鬼, and the spoken word is oni. To meet one, visit a Japanese home on the night of Setsubun in early February. Somebody, often a father, puts on a paper mask with horns, and the children pelt him with roasted soybeans, shouting 鬼は外、福は内! (oni wa soto, fuku wa uchi!), demons out, fortune in. That is an oni: a big, horned, slightly ridiculous brute you can chase out of the door.
The devil is a different creature with a different word. 悪魔 (akuma) is the Devil of Christianity and the tempter of Buddhist scripture. Nobody throws beans at an akuma.
The on’yomi キ (ki) works inside compounds and keeps an older, darker sense of the character: 餓鬼 (gaki), a hungry ghost, and 吸血鬼 (kyuuketsuki), a vampire.
Oni and Akuma Meaning
Oni (鬼) means a demon or ogre. In hiragana it is おに, in katakana オニ, and it is said “oh-nee,” two short beats. The picture is fixed: horns, red or blue skin, a tiger-skin loincloth and an iron club, the 金棒 (kanabou). That costume took shape by the Muromachi period, between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, and spread through illustrated storybooks.
Where the word comes from is uncertain. The best-known theory, recorded in a tenth-century dictionary, derives it from 隠 (on), hidden, because the first oni were invisible spirits. Until the end of the Heian period, 鬼 could also be read kami, mono or shiko.
Modern Japanese uses oni for people as well. 仕事の鬼 (shigoto no oni), a demon for work, is half a compliment, and whoever is “it” in tag is the oni. In recent slang 鬼 has become an intensifier: 鬼うまい (oni umai) means insanely delicious.
Akuma (悪魔) is 悪 (aku, evil) plus 魔 (ma), a character created to write the Sanskrit māra, the Buddhist tempter. It means the Devil, demons in the Western sense, and a person of monstrous cruelty. Its partner in a phrase like 天使と悪魔 is 天使 (tenshi), angel in Japanese. It is said “ah-koo-mah,” and the middle vowel is often whispered.
The Kanji for Demon: 鬼
- Character: 鬼
- On’yomi: キ (ki)
- Kun’yomi: おに (oni)
- Stroke count: 10
- General meaning: ogre, demon; in older and Chinese use, the spirit of a dead person; as a prefix, fierce or extreme
- Radical: 鬼 is itself a radical, Kangxi number 194, with no strokes added
It is a Jōyō kanji taught in secondary school and is usually listed at JLPT N1. The akuma characters are 悪 (eleven strokes, under 心, the heart radical, taught in third grade) and 魔 (twenty-one strokes, under 鬼 itself, taught in secondary school). Chinese references, including the Unicode database, count 魔 as twenty.
Japanese Symbol for Demon
鬼 began as a picture, and it was not a picture of an ogre.
The oldest forms show a crouching figure with an enormous head, the head of the dead. The small ム at the lower right was added later. The classical Chinese dictionary Shuowen Jiezi defines 鬼 as what people return to, the dead. In Chinese, 鬼 (guǐ) still means a ghost, and that is the sense the character carries inside other characters. 魂 (tamashii), the soul, puts 鬼 beside a cloud; you can read it on soul in Japanese. 醜 (minikui, ugly) and 魅 (mi, to bewitch, as in 魅力 miryoku, charm) are in the same family.
Japan took the character and gave it to its own monster. The native oni, invisible spirits at first, then the horned brutes of the medieval scrolls, absorbed the Chinese ghost and the demons of Buddhist hell, and 鬼 became theirs.
魔 has a stranger history. It was made to transliterate the Sanskrit māra, a word meaning the killer. Early translators wrote it with 摩 or 磨, and tradition credits Emperor Wu of Liang, in sixth-century China, with swapping in 鬼 underneath, though the form may be older. The 麻 (asa, hemp) on top is there only for the sound ma.
Japanese even has a direction for demons. 鬼門 (kimon), the demon gate, is the unlucky northeast, and the theory tying it to the oni’s ox horns and tiger skin is in our guide to Japanese yokai.
How to Write 鬼 in Japanese
Ten strokes, top to bottom, then left to right.
The short slanting stroke at the crown comes first. Then the box beneath it, written the way any enclosure is written: the left vertical, the stroke that crosses the top and turns down the right side, the strokes inside, then the base. Then the two legs, left before right, the right one bending along the bottom and flicking up into a hook. Last comes the small ム tucked inside that bend, its dot the final stroke of the character.
The legs carry the balance. Make the box too big and they have nowhere to go, and the ム gets swallowed. Keep the box to about half the height and give the bottom room.
How to Say Demon in Japanese
Oni is two short beats, “oh-nee,” with no stress on either. Akuma is “ah-koo-mah,” often closer to “ak-mah” in fast speech. Ki in compounds is a single short “kee.”
Real sentences:
- 鬼は外、福は内!(Oni wa soto, fuku wa uchi!) Demons out, fortune in!
- 鬼ごっこしよう。(Onigokko shiyou.) Let’s play tag.
- 次は君が鬼だよ。(Tsugi wa kimi ga oni da yo.) You’re it next.
- 心を鬼にして叱った。(Kokoro o oni ni shite shikatta.) I hardened my heart and scolded him.
- 悪魔に魂を売った。(Akuma ni tamashii o utta.) He sold his soul to the devil.
The fourth sentence is worth keeping. 心を鬼にする, to make your heart a demon, means being strict for someone’s own good.
Words and Compounds With 鬼
| Word | Reading | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 赤鬼 | akaoni | a red oni |
| 青鬼 | aooni | a blue oni |
| 鬼ごっこ | onigokko | tag, the playground game |
| 鬼門 | kimon | the unlucky northeast; a person or subject you cannot handle |
| 鬼才 | kisai | an uncanny genius |
| 餓鬼 | gaki | a hungry ghost; a brat |
| 天邪鬼 | amanojaku | a contrarian, someone who does the opposite |
| 百鬼夜行 | hyakki yakou | the night parade of a hundred demons |
| 鬼籍に入る | kiseki ni iru | to pass away; literally to enter the register of the dead |
Three oni proverbs are in daily use. 鬼に金棒 (oni ni kanabou), an iron club for an oni, is an advantage handed to someone already strong. 鬼の目にも涙 (oni no me ni mo namida), tears even in a demon’s eyes, is what you say when the hardest person in the room is moved. And 渡る世間に鬼はない (wataru seken ni oni wa nai), there are no demons in the world you pass through, means kindness turns up wherever you go.
The akuma character 魔 has a family of its own: 魔法 (mahou, magic), 魔女 (majo, a witch), and 睡魔 (suima), the sleep demon that gets you after lunch. 邪魔 (jama), originally a Buddhist word for a demon that obstructs practice, now means a nuisance, and every polite visitor says お邪魔します (ojama shimasu), I am about to be a nuisance, as they step into someone’s home.
Demon in Japanese Culture
Japan has been throwing beans at oni for a long time. On the eve of spring in 1447, the diary of a Zen monk, the Gaun Nikkenroku, records beans being scattered in every room at dusk to the chant 鬼外福内, demons out, fortune in, and calls it the local way of driving out demons. The words have barely changed since, and the Setsubun page covers the whole festival.
The oni is not simply evil. The 鬼瓦 (onigawara), a demon-faced roof tile, guards temple roofs by being scarier than whatever might come. On the Oga Peninsula in Akita, young men in oni masks and straw capes, the Namahage, stamp into homes on New Year’s Eve, roaring for lazy children, and the head of the house welcomes them with sake. The thunder god Raijin is drawn as an oni with a ring of drums.
The theatre has its own demons. In Noh, the hannya mask shows a woman turned into a demon by jealousy, a 鬼女 (kijo) rather than a born oni. Our guide to Japanese masks sets the oni and the hannya side by side.
And in pop culture, the word demon in English very often hides 鬼. The title of Demon Slayer, 鬼滅の刃 (Kimetsu no Yaiba), uses 鬼 with its ki reading: the demons being slain are oni.
As a Tattoo
鬼 is a strong, dense character, and oni imagery has a long place in Japanese tattooing. Read alone, though, the character says ogre or demon plainly, and Japanese readers also hear its slang sense of fierce or extreme. That can be the point. Know that it is there.
Watch the language. In Chinese, 鬼 (guǐ) means a ghost, not an ogre, and it appears in some old insults for foreigners. A Chinese reader will not see the Setsubun brute you see.
Check pairings. 鬼畜 (kichiku) is a brute or fiend, a strongly negative word. 殺人鬼 (satsujinki) is a merciless killer. 餓鬼 (gaki) is a hungry ghost, and in everyday speech a brat. Kanji next to each other form dictionary words rather than a sum of ideas. If protective ferocity is what you want, 鬼神 (kishin), a fierce god, says it better.
Watch the look-alikes. Add one element and 鬼 becomes something else: 魂 is soul, 醜 is ugly, 塊 is a lump. Make sure the artist copies the character alone and copies it exactly.
悪魔 reads as the Devil, with a Christian flavour, and at twenty-one strokes 魔 fills in when small. Give either character real size.
Confirm with a native speaker before you ink. You can preview the character in vertical and horizontal layouts with the Japanese Tattoo Generator, and read the wider background in our guide to japanese tattoo meanings.
Related Kanji
For the rest of the night’s creatures and characters, browse the kanji library.
Sources and Further Reading
- 常用漢字表 (Cabinet Notice No. 2 of 2010), Agency for Cultural Affairs readings of 鬼, 悪 and 魔 and their Jōyō status
- Unihan database entry for 鬼 (U+9B3C), Unicode Consortium Kangxi radical 194, ten strokes
- 鬼, Digital Daijisen, Nihon Kokugo Daijiten and Heibonsha World Encyclopedia (Kotobank) the 隠 theory, the late Heian settling of the reading, the Muromachi costume, compounds and slang
- 魔, Digital Daijisen, Jitsū and Britannica Japan (Kotobank) Sanskrit māra, Emperor Wu of Liang, twenty-one strokes, 邪魔 and 睡魔
- 鬼は外福は内, Nihon Kokugo Daijiten (Kotobank) the 1447 Gaun Nikkenroku entry on bean scattering
FAQ
How do you say demon in Japanese?
The usual word is oni, written 鬼, said “oh-nee.” It names the horned ogre of Japanese folklore, the one chased out with beans at Setsubun. For the Devil or a demon in the Christian or Buddhist sense, the word is akuma (悪魔). In compounds 鬼 is read ki, as in 吸血鬼 (kyuuketsuki), vampire.
What is the difference between oni and akuma?
An oni (鬼) is a creature from Japanese folklore, horned and club-wielding, frightening but often comic, and sometimes even protective. Akuma (悪魔) is evil as a principle: the Devil, the Buddhist tempter Māra, the thing that tempts souls. You throw beans at an oni. You make a pact with an akuma.
What is the kanji for demon?
The kanji for demon is 鬼, ten strokes, and it is Kangxi radical 194 in its own right. Its readings are おに (oni) and キ (ki). It began as a picture of a figure with a huge head, a spirit of the dead. For akuma, the characters are 悪 (evil) and 魔, twenty-one strokes.
What is the Japanese symbol for demon?
In writing, 鬼. In art and festivals, the oni mask: a red or blue face with horns and tusks, often worn at Setsubun. In Noh theatre, the hannya mask stands for a woman turned demon by jealousy. The oni-faced roof tile, the onigawara, uses the demon as a guardian.
Is 鬼 the same character in Chinese?
The character is the same, but the meaning is not. In Chinese, 鬼 (guǐ) means a ghost, the spirit of a dead person, which is also its original meaning. Japanese gave the character to its horned ogre, the oni. A Chinese reader will see a ghost where a Japanese reader sees a demon.
What does oni wa soto, fuku wa uchi mean?
鬼は外、福は内 means demons out, fortune in. It is the chant shouted while throwing roasted soybeans on Setsubun in early February: beans out of the door for the demons, then into the room for good luck. A Zen monk’s diary records the same four-character chant in 1447.