The bright red horned face on your emoji keyboard once meant you were about to be swallowed in a single gulp. This episode traces the Japanese oni from the Heian period, when it was a hulking, clawed shapeshifter tied to thunder and famine, back to its origins as a formless Chinese ghost and the Shinto myth of Izanami creating the first oni from grief in the underworld of Yomi.

We unpack why the oni gained a body, including the Nihon Shoki account of one wearing a hat, and why its ox horns and tiger-skin loincloth come from the northeast Demon Gate on the Onmyodo zodiac compass. Then we follow its promotion to warden of Buddhist hell, the notched palace walls and temples built to block the ox-tiger direction, the bean-throwing Setsubun festival, and its softening into roof-tile guardians, the weeping red oni of children's literature, overwo ...