Lewis Edwards

Posted: 2026-02-11

AnimeMediaJusticeAbusePoliticsGenderHeavyReproductiveInjusticeTrauma

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Mononoke Is An Actual Masterpiece

"Yeah, he's big on killing shame demons."

Introduction

Mononoke is an anime/manga franchise which began in 2006.

It is slightly unfortunate that this franchise shares a name with the seminal work Princess Mononoke (Mononoke-Hime), because they have completely different premises. Mononoke is one of the cleverest and most deeply subversive works to be smuggled in under the "monster of the week" category, but it doesn't announce that loudly. It is deeply concerned with very real and serious power structures, and rewards careful thinking and research across time.

Coming up with your own interpretations is kind of the point, but I'm sharing mine in case they get you thinking.

I see the series as a collection of stories about moral compromise and institutional self-protection, where we see the incompatibilities between order and justice.

The protagonists, the Medicine Sellers, are tasked with slaying emerging demons before they fully manifest in the human world. Despite a seemingly straightforward and protective mission, these characters are quite morally grey.

A lot of the terminology for the series has only been made concrete quite recently, in the wake of the films' releases.

Mononoke

The titular monsters are referred to as mononoke, which are defined as ayakashi (spirits) which have latched on to a real-world human grievance (grudge) as a gateway into the physical world. The protagonists are tasked with slaying them, a process which requires understanding the grievance first and foremost.

The humans which the mononoke latch onto are nearly universally women, and there are good reasons for this we'll cover in a moment.

Aesthetics

The first thing that strikes most viewers about the franchise are its visual and sound design: they are remarkable. The beautiful unmoving plaid effect paints each scene as if it were a scroll, and the very appropriate Noh-with-horror sound effects as if it were a play.

Despite the hand-drawn appearance, it is simultaneously very human and almost too perfect. This is a great allegory for the content.

The Medicine Sellers

The protagonists (there are two of them so far) are interesting characters; they are liminal by nature, neither here nor there: not quite masculine, not quite feminine; not quite human, not quite alien; not quite friendly, not quite hostile; not quite detached, not quite invested. They never linger. They just do their job and go.

Their core motivation is a relentless, singular drive to understand. Everything else they do serves it. They prioritise their engagement according to how much it will help achieve this end: they usually have very little time for the perpetrators whose stories are already being repeated, but often spend lots of time listening deeply to the victims and paying particular attention to the voices which are being drowned out.

Their empathy is forensic, not relational.

The Medicine Sellers — though individually personally distinct — also tend to have a bit of attitude, and can be quite snarky and passive-aggressive at times.

Recent information released by the director of the films indicated that there are 64 Medicine Sellers with 64 swords and 64 Shingi to represent the hexagrams in the I Ching, with 8 more powerful swords representing the trigrams, and that by default they reside outside the material world. So far two (Ri and Kon, both trigrams) have appeared.

Mikkyō Buddhism

Mikkyō is an esoteric and distinctly Japanese branch of Buddhism, and is quite far outside the mainstream. Mononoke's lore is built around it.

One of its central concepts, which is deeply embedded in the mythology of mononoke is san himitsu (The Three Mysteries), usually abbreviated to sammitsu or sanmitsu.

They are usually rendered as body, speech, and mind. These are physically manifested as mantras and gestures.

Mononoke instantiates this in the Divine Ritual and the Medicine Sellers' toolkits.

The Medicine Sellers' Tools

The Divine Ritual (Shingi) and Taima no Ken (Sword of Exorcism/Sacred Sword)

"If you had that sword the whole time, why didn't you just draw it?"

— Because violence without insight produces more consequences than it resolves.

In Feudal Japan, merchants as a class were not allowed to carry swords. This is presented early in Ayakashi as a subtle cue of the Medicine Sellers' otherworldliness: very serious human rules that don't quite align with how they operate.

The dub of the film translated this to "sacred sword", likely for its better fit to the animation's cadence, but I'm not a fan of this — the sword is about functional purity, not holy authority. "Sword of Exorcism" makes much more sense in the context. Despite consistently being called a "sword", it is closer to a tanto (dagger) in size.

There is a Pure Land monastery called Taima-dera. To the best of my knowledge, the shared phonetics are coincidental.

The Sword of Exorcism cannot be drawn until the Divine Ritual is completed: the Medicine Seller must learn the Form, Truth and Regret of the grievance which gave the ayakashi a foothold in the material world, then swap places with his Shingi (godly other self) to draw it. This moment comprises a ritual handover from the investigator to the executioner — one half understands the human side, the other half deconstructs the bridge between worlds. The Medicine Seller does not personally enact violence; he authorises it.

The sword does not have a blade in the conventional sense. When drawn, its blade is composed of a flowing beam made of the kanji for "destroy"/"kill".

In Ayakashi, there is a brief moment where the Medicine Seller of Ri says that he has no choice and is forced to draw the sword with only two of the three preconditions, implying that there is some grave cost to doing so; curiously, in this sequence, the sword is shown with an ordinary steel blade which was never seen or referenced again in the franchise. The third element is provided before he draws it.

This may have been a possibility which was retconned, but we can make some interesting inferences from this sequence: it is possible that a sword which doesn't have the full set of information is not less effective, but instead less discriminate — capable of severance, but unable to cleanly distinguish the grievance from its surrounding consequences.

The process of understanding the grievance is a critical set of constraints, and when they're bypassed, precision violence is downgraded into something much blunter and more dangerous.

In the films, it is explicitly shown to have no physical blade whatsoever, manifesting one out of the energy of the Divine Ritual instead. The films introduce a range of mechanics to its operation which are not explained and which I don't think I have enough information about to speculate on.

Because of the need to understand the deep truth of the injustice, oftentimes the Ritual must be completed at the last possible second before the wound bleeds through into the material world. The analysis is forensic, and the execution is surgical.

The dub of the film renders the Shingi's cry when he finishes the mononoke as "Flash Strike!" like it was a technique from Naruto or something (and the subs backport this). I'm not a fan, and I really hope we don't eventually end up with a taxonomy of shonen-like techniques.

The Shingi in the films notably have their kimono folded right-over-left, which in Japanese culture is something which is only ever done while dressing the deceased for their own funeral — it implies that this character is already dead.

Conditions of the Ritual

Form (Katachi)

The material manifestation of the mononoke, the body of the haunting.

In this universe, it is sufficient to simply identify this body by the name of a yokai (a category of spirits well known in Japanese folklore).

Yokai usually start from a common animal or object, then infuse it with special powers, but some are entirely invented.

Truth (Makoto)

The specific chain of events which created the grievance: who suffered, what was done, how it was concealed, and what caused it to escalate. It is presented in testimonies, confessions and memories; it is the speakable part of the true narrative.

Regret/Reason (Kotowari)

This is the truth beyond truths, the underlying principle of the grievance; it's the part which is unspeakable and unthinkable. It's not necessarily secret per se, but more implicit — the elephant in the room which everyone edges around.

This is the part that modern institutions and organisations struggle so much with, even in the West: we speak so highly of evidence and rational argument in governance, but all too often decisions are made in spite of critical contextual implications that the decisionmakers are well aware of. Confronting it usually means confronting structural mass complicity, a choice with a very high cost which almost always falls on the one saying the thing you're not allowed to say.

Wards

These are small rectangles of paper which the Medicine Sellers appear to be able to provide unlimited numbers of from the sleeves of their kimonos. The Medicine Sellers have a range of gestures (in the sanmitsu sense) which allow them to project wards very rapidly in a space.

Before the Divine Ritual is invoked, wards are the primary defensive tool of the Medicine Seller. They are not durable — mononoke can erode and destroy them given some time — but these fundamentally exist to buy time. When placed on walls/floors/ceilings they can create an invisible wall that the mononoke cannot cross; when placed on specific objects or around people they prevent the mononoke from directly affecting them.

When the wards come into contact with the mononoke, symbols appear on them, then warp and light up. In this way they also become a visual identifier similar to the scales.

Scales

The scales are rendered as instruments to measure distance, not weight. I interpret this as them measuring the moral weight of the space around an injustice, which gets heavier as it gets closer. The Medicine Sellers are not judges weighing guilt — their role is deliberately divorced from that type of judgement — they are investigators finding clues. Moral weight is a critical one.

The scales also appear to have some minimal level of quasi-consciousness, in that they can take a liking or disliking to someone depending on what they measure in the person.

Mirror

The mirror is difficult to get a good read on, because it almost exclusively turns up during fights and even then under confusing circumstances. On several occasions the Medicine Seller momentarily appears to hand it to his Shingi after the Divine Ritual has been completed; on some occasions, the Shingi shatters it; on some occasions, after it is shattered, a larger version appears in front of him; on some occasions, that larger version is shattered as part of the exorcism process. And in the Noppera-bō arc, the Medicine Seller (pre-shingi) reflects the mononoke's own image back at it in order to reveal its identity.

What I make of this is: there is maybe not a specific individual process or set of mechanics for this artefact, but rather a guiding principle: insight, which is deeply individual and situational.

Tattoos

In the anime, the Divine Ritual involves the Medicine Seller losing their tattoos (complete with the kimono eye closing) and being transferred to the Shingi. In the films, during the process of the Ritual, the Medicine Seller's tattoos similarly drip onto the ground like a liquid, then are "sucked up" by the matching Shingi. The tattoos appear to reflect which entity is active at any given time; we could infer that the knowledge of the mononoke's form/truth/regret are contained in them, or that the consciousness of the shared Medicine Seller/Shingi entity follows them.

In Ayakashi, at one point the Shingi's tattoos leave their body and appear to allow them to teleport, indicating that they do not just move between bodies, but between spaces.

Speech

The Medicine Seller of Kon consistently uses the same incantation with hand gestures when invoking the Divine Ritual: "The Reason has been revealed. I offer Form, Truth, and Reason. With these three things, my sword awakens. Now, release yourself, Kon!"

These lines are consistent and ritualistic, and reflect a specific sequence for the Ritual.

The Medicine Seller of Ri's shingi uses verbal commands on two occasions which appear to have material effects: "Separate" and "Vanish".

These lines seem to reflect speech as a power, which is entirely consistent with the Sanmitsu framework.

Salt

On several occasions salt appears in the series, as a well-known traditional antidote to hostile spirits. Its role here is straightforward, but an important nuance is that the salt must be pure: traces of ash and the like render it much less effective. Like elsewhere in the series, the ritual Japanese concern with purity is a prime consideration.

Medicines

"Medicine Seller" is the protagonist's name, but the franchise is very narrow about presentation: we never see him healing — only diagnosing.

The only medicines which are narratively identified in the series are sexual or reproductive in nature: aphrodisiacs, libido enhancements, vitality remedies and fertility tonics. This is not an accident; in a setting where inheritance provides power, they are a toolkit of human governance. They are not so much about healing disease as regulating people and bodies; they are control and intrigue manifested as pharmacology.

The Ashes of Rage (second movie) explicitly foregrounds abortifacients, but critically, the Medicine Seller did not visibly provide them. They were depicted as a critical part of power structures and dynastic struggles; as political tools of coercion or force, rather than ones of choice and freedom.

The question is not so much the pharmacology itself as who controls it, and how they can coerce others with it.

Janitors

In many cases, the only one telling the truth is the monster, and the only one who listens to it is the person sent to kill it. The monster has no need for deception: it is the consequence of the lie's collapse; it is the truth manifesting into material reality. As a result, its actions are not strategic or self-interested: they are alien, operating on injustice rather than personal motive.

In the film adaptations, the protagonists utter two words after exorcising a mononoke: "forgive me". These words are not a dramatic flourish or a ritual formality; they are a quiet act of dissent against their role. The Medicine Seller has heard and deeply understood the grievance that created this monster, acknowledged the injustice, then determined that — right or wrong — it cannot be brought into this world. The cry of pain is heard, understood, and silently extinguished so that existing power structures can be maintained.

The visual imagery of a fight being won gloriously belies the fact that the exorcism is not a triumph; it's a concession to order and justice diverging. The protagonist's regret is not that the monster was killed, but that the world needed it to be killed. The world is saved, but nothing which made the monster necessary in the first place has been fixed.

The Medicine Sellers do not fight evil; they just clean up the ultimate consequences of it before the world is torn apart. They are more aware than anyone of what they're doing, which is why being congratulated and patted on the back by lords and ladies rings so hollow to them. The protagonists know perfectly well that they aren't heroes, least of all when they're called that by the people who created the problems. They are reluctantly shielding the villains from the consequences of their actions in order to minimise collateral damage.

The Medicine Sellers are emotionally distant because they know what their role is complicit in.

Women

A full exploration of the role of women in feudal Japan would be a life's work and is out of scope here.

Controlling and commoditising women's bodies is a central topic in Mononoke. From forced pregnancies, forced abortions, forced imprisonment and forced sacrifice to the slow creeping march of domestic confinement — almost every story revolves around at least one of these forms of gendered coercion as pivotal elements.

Just as the medicines were themselves instruments of governance, women's bodies became the objects of social and dynastic control; in a universe where unresolved grievance creates the entry point for the monster, it shouldn't be surprising that the group which is most structurally denied agency ends up becoming the mononoke's usual hosts out of sheer circumstance.

Injustice

Structural truths about injustices usually lie at (or past) the edge of accepted narratives.

The people the Medicine Seller forms the closest working relationships with are overwhelmingly the recipients of injustice, rather than its dispensers: servants and criminals, women and children, the people on the margins. This is likely because the people creating the injustices already control the dominant narrative, and the truth lies in the voices which are being drowned out.

The series depicts civil society as a whole as a narrative containment vessel for injustice, where the primary function of its institutions, laws and hierarchies is to legitimise and shield abuse and coercion.

Contemporary Japan

I believe that the central social commentary of Mononoke is in using the supernatural to quite plainly address these very real power dynamics with plausible deniability.

This is a diagnosis, not an allegory.

What we have described here is a comprehensive violence-authorisation protocol which permanently silences those who speak truth about injustice, something which disproportionately removes the voices of those who are already being talked over.

The horror is not the haunting: the horror is the society and systems which required the haunting to exist in the first place.

Contemporary West

Even in the West, we see analogous governance and containment systems in the real world. Even the ritual metaphor can be extended to create very unexpected analogies.

The Mental Health Tribunals in Victoria are made of a doctor (form), a lawyer (truth) and a layperson (regret) who between them hold a narrow subset of the powers of a judge (magistrate). These tribunals broadly do not resolve root causes or systemic harms, but simply contain and restrict. The question is often not "is this wrong?" but "can this be allowed to continue?"

These systems and the people who comprise them are not evil, but they make decisions which place containment and compliance over truth and justice on a daily basis.

🔗 Checkin

Version: 1

Written: 2026-02-08 to 2026-02-11

Written on: 7.5mg olanzapine since 2025-11-11

Mental health was: very poor - estimate 15% brain