My Refrigerator Turned Into A Dungeon
Chapter 348

Oni 1

 

"Alright, alright, so I get that the theory about Tsuchinoko being a wet cat makes sense, but what about oni? What's the deal with them??"

Whoa there, Serai-san. Looks like you realized the Tsuchinoko debate wasn’t going your way and switched topics, huh?

"Oni, huh? The leading theory is that they’re just cases of mistaken identity, but the interpretation of 'oni' itself is so vague and varies wildly."

"Mmm~, so what do you mean by that?"

"What I mean is, back in the day, whenever people saw something bad or terrifying, they’d just slap the 'oni' label on it."

"Anything could be an oni..."

Yep, and this isn’t unique to Japan. All over the world, you’ll find similar examples. In pre-Christian Europe, anything bad was blamed on evil fairies, and any big, scary monster was usually a dragon.

Then, once Christianity spread, all the local gods and spirits that had been worshipped for ages got lumped together as "demons" meant to deceive people. "Don’t be fooled! Those are actually demons! You won’t find salvation believing in them, so convert right now!" That’s the downside of monotheism for you.

Even the famous demon Beelzebub was originally a god who got screwed over like this.

Beelzebub started out as Baal, a fertility god worshipped in Ekron, a Philistine city, who governed storms and gentle rains.

But then the stubborn Hebrews moved in and went, "We don’t acknowledge any god but ours!" and rejected Baal outright. Worse, they took Baal’s honorable title, "Lord Baal-Zebul," and twisted it into "Lord of the Flies, Baal-Zebub," like some childish mom joke to mock him.

That stigma stuck, and eventually, he was recorded in the Bible as the "Lord of the Flies," cementing his reputation as a demon for later generations. Poor guy. Dude didn’t even do anything wrong—just got hit with some serious slander.

But this kind of thing happened all over the world.

If people integrated peacefully, their gods might’ve ended up as parent-child or sibling figures. But if it was a relationship of conquest and domination, the losing side’s gods got demoted to underlings or servants. None of this had anything to do with the gods themselves—it was all just human politics.

Well, I guess they had to do it that way to avoid complications when ruling over others, but still.

"Huh~, but that’s just a total mess. Doesn’t make any sense to me."

"It’s just an example of how people in the past lumped everything together. That said, the 'mistaken identity' theory for oni is still pretty solid. There were probably cases where humans deliberately disguised themselves as oni, too."

"Wait, why would they do that?"

"Well, say there’s a monk training in the mountains, and he doesn’t want the villagers to know he’s there. What then?"

"So the monk would pretend to be an oni?"

"Could be an oni, could be a tengu—doesn’t matter. Point is, if he’s trying to focus on his training, the last thing he’d want is villagers bugging him to cure their diseases or give them pointless life advice, right?"

"Ehh~, a monk would really say that??"

"I’m just saying it’s a possibility. Back then, with no proper medical care, people didn’t know anything. Mysterious illnesses, stomachaches—everything got blamed on curses and required exorcisms. Praying to the gods was all they had."

"Oh, right..."

"And even if he did pray for them, let’s be real—those prayers weren’t gonna work. Then later, some villager would be like, ‘Hey, you crap monk! This didn’t do squat!’ and start a feud. Way too much hassle. So from the start, disguising himself as an oni to scare villagers away from the mountain? Not a bad strategy, if you think about it."

"‘Punt it, and it goes meow~’"

"Oh, the mountain temple’s head monk? Yeah, that’s straight-up animal abuse, Nina-san. Stuffing a cat in a bag and using it as a kickball? What a messed-up life hack. Anyway, back in the day, you had warlords like Oda Nobunaga, who aimed to unify Japan under his rule, and then you had outlaw monks who acted all high and mighty while picking fights with him. There were tons of them. So pretending to be an oni to trick villagers? They’d do it without a second thought. Heck, some probably did it for fun, like, ‘Hell yeah, my prank’s the best!’"

"Well, in old tales, monks outsmarting people with tricks is a classic trope."

"Yeah. They probably wanted to emphasize wisdom over brute force, but when you think about it, that’s pretty underhanded too."

"Eh~? What story’s that? I don’t know it."

"That’d be Nanishi no Mame. There’s this oni who brags, ‘I can transform into anything!’ So the monk challenges him, ‘Bet you can’t turn into a tiny bean!’ The oni, all fired up, turns into a bean and goes, ‘See? Told ya!’—and then the monk just chomps him and goes, ‘Aaaand I win~!’"

"That monk’s awful!"

"Right?"

Hmm… somehow, this turned into humans being worse than oni.

Well, I’m the one who brought it up, so whatever. At the end of the day, religion is like a drug—in small doses, it might help, but most people can’t handle it properly. They go off the rails, drag others into it, and all that’s left in the end is misery and grudges. What a troublesome poison.

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