Demon Kozuka
KK0040
SOLD
A silver kozukah the rare theme of eliminating the Demons at Mt. Ooe. The silver kozuka dates from Edo, and was likely copied from the kogai, KK039, or a third image which both drew upon. Rarity of rarities, Haynes said that he had never seen this theme.
The shorthand version of the story is that there was a barber, who kept cutting his customers when shaving them. He would lick he blood, and eventually became and oni. He joined up with other demons at Mt. Ooe, where they terrorized the countryside. A group of samurai disguised as traveling merchants, visited them, and threw a feast. When the demons were so drunk that they couldn't move, the samurai slaughtered them. One of them escaped.
Another version is that he was in the womb for sixteen months, and was born an almost super person, talking and walking immediately after birth. Another that he was a beautiful young man who scorned the affections of the ladies, save for one, who rejected him. He then went to a monastery where the priest practiced unnatural arts, and he became an oni. Whatever the beginning of the tale, they all end with the slaughter at Mt. Ooe. See Ibaraki-doji, Shuten-doji, Wtanabe no Tsuna, Mt. Ooe massacre, $700
