I have watched a Neflix animation series “Onmyōji”. It is based on a novel series of Baku Yumemakura, in which a chaotic culture of Heian era in Japan is vividly regenerated, and adapted to different media several times. You can see a Japanese national culture (e.g. Shintoism) together with Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, and many other cultures originated in various countries. The flora of the residence of the main character Abe-no-Seimei is strange, representing a strange appearance of his character. Abe-no-Seimei is a real character of the period, who was a leading specialist of Onmyōdō. Onmyōdō is a system of natural sciences, astronomy, almanac, divination and magic in Japan inspired by yin and yang and wuxing philosophies in China. The animation is an adventure of Seimei and Minamoto-no-Hiromasa related to a friendship of unnamed characters. I don’t have read the original Baku Yumemakura’s novel, but have watched movies of “Onmyōji” starring Nomura-Mansai. Compared with the movies, Abe-no-Seimei is more fragile in the animation and it brightens up the friendship. The final results offer a challenge to the god, which vividly represents the character of Abe-no-Seimei in this animation. There are many trivia from Japanese cultures such as 262 kanji characters in Prajñā-pāramitā-hṛdaya (般若心経, which describes śūnya). Śūnyatā (空) is a kind of emptiness that all the existences are generated from causing depending on the context and there is no self, reality or a substance. In the animation, this philosophy appears as Shu (呪), which binds up a relation. The story of animation models particular relations in easily understandable manner. The animation is not an exaggerated but an unpretentious example of congruous themes. Oni (鬼), which appears in the story, is often translated as demon in English, but in Japan an oni is not a kind of an absolute evil. Sometimes an oni appears as a good existence, or something close to a god. Stories of onis appear as anchors of classical Nohgaku program, and are very important in the classic Japanese theatre.
