Source: Anime Tourist

Every country has their share of ghost stories and Japan is no different. Given Japan's love for a good ghost story, there are a lot of different types of Japanese spirits, from ghosts to demons and the occasional monster thrown in.

In Japan, their halloween comes in the summer in a festival known as the 'Obon', which is a week long festival in mid-July or August for the honoring of the dead. In fact, the festival is an opportunity for the dead to visit the living for a week, sort of like a spiritual vacation down here on Earth. These festivals are upbeat occasions and one may assume that at the end the spirits are satisfied to spend another peaceful year where ever it is that spirits go. However, not all spirits happily shuffle off from the mortal coil.

One type of these spirits that's quite well known is the yuurei, or the vengeful type of ghost. The yuurei are created when the shinto soul (or reikon) leaves the body, but the person was slain, committed suicide, wasn't given a proper funeral, or has very strong emotions for other reasons, and was not purified by prayer. This vengeful soul (or simply one with an agenda) and may become a yuurei to seek revenge or right a wrong. Unfortunately, many yuurei are female ghosts who suffered badly while alive and felt anger, spite, love, loyalty, jealousy, hatred, sorrow, or other strong feelings. In a nutshell, the harsher the victimization while alive, the stronger and more cruel the ghost is after death. The ghost remains until it is released of its obsession. Female ghosts may drive those they haunt to distraction, madness, murder or suicide. Male yuurei are less common and are usually ghosts of warriors who feel a need to tell the story of their final battles to either set the record straight or generally sort things out.

The yuurei usually wear pale clothing and may have a triangular white paper or cloth on their forehead (called a hitaikakushi). This and the fact that they don't have feet. The white clothing and forehead cover came from funeral rituals but the loss of the feet is probably a result of cultural influence. As ghost stories became increasingly popular in the late 17th century, how ghosts were depicted changed so viewers could easily distinguish them in art or stage presentations.

Men commit ritual suicide by harakiri or seppuku - disembowelment - but women cut their own throats, so many yuurei suicide ghosts show up with gashes across their throats and blood running from their mouths. Starting in the 18th century, women were depicted as having long, loose straight hair, waving or beckoning hands, and no feet (probably from theatrical fashions), while men are depicted normally as unkempt, with limp hands and perhaps one crossed eye (also a kabuki symbol of determination).

For some reason yuurei most commonly appear in the 'dead' hours of the night, 2 and 3 a.m. In the Momoyama and the Edo periods (mid 1500's through mid 1800's) there was a belief that if a man died of disease or in an epidemic, he turned into a monstrous demon yuurei. However in the earlier Heian era (end of the 700's through the end of the 1100's) it was believed that ghostly spirits floating above the living actually causing disease, plague and hunger.

An example of a yuurei spirit doing such a thing to an extreme shows up in Fushigi Yuugi in the form of Mitsukake's angry wife's when we first meet him. In Ayashi no Ceres, the treatment of the celestial maiden Ceres has pretty much warped her into a savage and obsessive yuurei bent on revenge even though she was originally a higher level being. A female yuurei type appears in the Sailor Moon episode "Mizuumi no densetsu youkai! Usagi kazoku no kizuna" ("Last Resort" in the DIC dub). I know it says "youkai" in the title, but the episode is about a woman who drowned in a lake due to her own jealousy and has returned as a vengeful spirit.