Ask John: How Do Western & Japanese Succubi Compare?

Question:
I was wondering how do the Japanese and Western view of succubi differ/resemble each other?

Answer:
Like the Japanese concept of “shinigami,” the succubus is largely a Western import to Japan. Traditional Japanese myth isn’t without sexuality. According to the Nihongi, the Shinto collection of creation mythology, the seventh and eighth gods to exist, Izanagi no Mikoto and Izanami no Mikoto, created the islands of Japan through their sexual intercourse. However, Japanese myth doesn’t really have a figure characterized by a bacchanal appetite for sex. Japan’s “yuki-onna” (snow woman) monster is sometimes depicted as a beautiful woman who seduces men, distracting them from the awareness that they’re freezing on a snowy mountain. But this may be a modern embellishment of the folklore, as the oldest tales of yuki-onna describe only a beautiful but vicious spirit that takes relish in seeing men freeze to death. Similarly, in 1993 popular evangelist C. Peter Wagner briefly made headlines with the sensational claim that incoming Japanese emperors receive divine power by having sex with the Shinto sun goddess, Amaterasu, during the traditional daijosai ceremony (presenting rice to the gods and revered ancestors ceremony). During the daijosai ceremony, the new emperor is said to first “enter the womb of the sun goddess” and later “spend the night” with the sun goddess. But describing the sun goddess Amaterasu as a succubus is a grossly exaggerated misrepresentation.

The conventional succubus found in modern Japanese pop media is consistently a variation of a Western image of a female devil. Capcom’s Morrigan and Lilith; Astalot (or Astaroth) from Shinra Bansho; Carrera, Mercedes, and Rati from Viper GTS; Mephisto Dance from Hanappe Bazooka; Mogudan’s “Succubus Sylvia” cover girl for Comic Unreal magazine; the co-star of Nico Pun Nise’s erotic manga series Purimu no Nikki; Ria in Ruen Roga’s Trouble Evocation; Kurono Kurumu in Rosario to Vampire; Kamira & Kurusu from Umemaro3D’s interactive doujin video Twin Succubus; the succubus knight of the Yu-Gi-Oh card game. There’s variation in physical attributes. Manga, anime, and game succubi may have any assortment of horns, wings, or tail, although they’ll usually have at least one of the three. The characteristic that’s always consistent, though, is that these characters bear much more heritage from borrowed Western folklore than native Japanese legend.