Wanyudo (輪入道)

Wanyudo is a Japanese specter described in Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki (Continued Illustrations of the Many Demons Past and Present), a collection of illustrations of specters by Sekien TORIYAMA.

It has the appearance of a wheel of an ox-drawn carriage, with a man's face positioned in the center, and is said to take out the soul of the person who looks at it. It is said that when one places a piece of paper indicating "Koko-wa Shobo-no Sato" on the door as a talisman, Wanyudo cannot go near the house; this derives from the anecdote in Shuyo Retsuden (a series of biographies of Shuyo) of Shiki (the Chinese Historical Records), according to which So-shi, a disciple of Koshi, the founder of Confucianist in China, disliked Shobo-no Sato and did not set his foot in the place because of the name suggesting "to win against mother".

Wanyudo by Sekien is said to be a specter called "Katawa-Guruma", which looks like a wheel and is said to have appeared in Kyoto's Higashinotoin-dori Street according to "Regarding Katawa-Guruma in Higashi-no-toin, Kyoto" (from Vol. 1 of "A hundred stories from the provinces", which is a collection of ghost stories published in 1677); therefore, one possible interpretation is that Wanyudo and Katawa-Gurumaare, which were depicted as different specters in "Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki", are actually one and the same. Wanyudo is depicted as a male and Katawa-Guruma as a female in "Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki." Katawa-Guruma was depicted as a female following the publication of a book covering a wide range of topics entitled "Shokoku Rijin Dan" (literally, "tales of villagers from various provinces) in 1743. There is a theory that in 1677, the year in which "A hundred stories from the provinces" was published, Katawa-Guruma was separated into the two different specters of Kagawa-Guruma and Wanyudo.

[Original Japanese]