Other than that, in Kyōhō 5 (1720), in a performance of The Love Suicides at Amijima, there was the expression, "of one possessed by a god of death". Since the character was seller of paper, the character who confronted death wrote "paper" (紙, kami) as "god" (神, kami),[11][12] but there are also interpretations that Chikamatsu himself did not think about the existence of a shinigami.[1]
Classic literature
In the classical literature of the Edo period, shinigami that would possess humans are mentioned. In the Ehon Hyaku Monogatari from TenpĹŤ 12 (1841), there was a story titled "Shinigami". In this one, however, the shinigami was the spirit of a deceased person and had bad intent. Acting jointly with the malicious intent already within people who were living, those people were led on bad paths, which caused repeat incidents to occur at places where there was previously a murder incident (for example by causing the same suicide at places where people have hung themselves before),[13] and thus these shinigami are somewhat like a possession that would cause people to want to die.[7][14][clarification needed] Similar to this, according to the essay of the Bakumatsu period titled "Hogo no Uragaki", there were the itsuki that made people want to commit suicide through various means, namely hanging, as well as things told through folk religion such as gaki-tsuki and shichinin misaki.[5]
In the later Edo Period, the essay "Shōzan Chomon Kishū" in Kaei 3 (1850) by the essayist Miyoshi Shōzan, the one titled "upon possession by a shinigami, it becomes difficult to speak, or easier to tell lies" was a story where a prostitute possessed by a shinigami invites a man to commit double suicide,[15][16] and in the kabuki Mekuranagaya Umega Kagatobi by Kawatake Mokuami in Meiji 19 (1886), a shinigami enters into people's thoughts, making them think about bad things they have done and want to die.[17] These are, rather than gods, more like yūki (meaning ghosts and yūrei),[18] or evil spirits.[1]
