Onmyoji

“He came riding beneath the moon, seeking only one person.”

Four years ago, the great onmyoji Abe no Seimei used a forbidden technique on Black Night Mountain to suppress the Yamata no Orochi. The price was the loss of all his memories. The only ones he remembered were a fox spirit named Xiao Bai and Kagura, the mysterious girl he had picked up in the wilderness.

Four years later, Seimei, living in seclusion in Arashiyama, met a man who came beneath the moon: Minamoto no Hiromasa.

He was the Emperor's grandson, a man of noble birth, yet a forthright warrior who never knew how to beat around the bush. He carried “Ha Futatsu,” a flute given to him by a demon, and was filled with righteous spirit. Yet whenever he was in front of Seimei, he was at a loss, his face turning red and his heart racing.

“Seimei, is it true you once crushed a frog with a willow leaf?”

“...Hiromasa, did you come all this way just to ask me that?”

Demons run rampant, vengeful spirits wail, and a hundred demons parade through the night as conspiracies gather in the shadows. Someone watches from the dark, someone lays trap after trap, and Seimei, bereft of his memories, is drawn step by step into a greater whirlpool.

Yet in this strange world overrun by demons, what frightens Hiromasa most has never been the ghosts and monsters.

It's Seimei's eyes, as if they can see through everything, and the heart-stirring smile that slips across his face without warning.

“Seimei, are you human or fox?”

“If I were a fox, what would you do?”

“...Then so be it. As long as you remain yourself, I'll remain myself.”

Beneath the moonlight, the flute begins to play. A hundred demons fall silent, and thousands of people are still.

Only two hearts quietly draw closer in the darkness.

Between the worlds of yin and yang, amid a hundred demons roaming the night, you are the only person in this world for whom I would stop.

Theme: Though wrapped in the trappings of a ghost story about demons in the Heian era, this is, at its heart, a philosophical work that explores human nature, fate, cause and effect, emotions, and existence. Through a series of episodic tales, it builds a world where humans and spirits coexist and good and evil intertwine, and asks:

What is real? What is the self? What is good? What is eternal?

These questions run through the growth and interactions of Seimei, Hiromasa, Kagura, and the others, and permeate the story of every demon and spirit. The work thus transcends the simple supernatural tale and becomes a narrative poem full of human concern and philosophical depth.