Ameonna

Overview

Ameonna is a female apparition pictured in heavy rain. Long diagonal strokes run across her loose garment, hair and the surrounding ground. She raises one hand to her open mouth and bends the fingers upward, a gesture made unusually prominent by the otherwise sparse composition. A roofed standing lantern beside her supplies the scene’s main architectural feature.

The label 雨女 directly names this rainy female figure. The print makes weather visible through repeated lines rather than adding an animal body or an elaborate costume. Her posture and gesture support a close description of this image, but cannot establish every later tale of rain-making women. The historical witness is therefore recorded as a particular representation within Sekien’s illustrated collection, with its accompanying explanatory prose only partly assessed.

Origins & earliest records

Toriyama Sekien, Konjaku Hyakki Shūi (first published 1781), volume 2; the named plate was directly inspected in the digitized institutional copy. This dates a selected representation, not an earliest oral belief.

Records & interpretation

Printed label 雨女 and creature composition directly checked in the enlarged primary scan. The cursive explanatory commentary has not been fully transcribed; detailed popular narratives are excluded unless supported separately.

Selected bibliography

Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.

1. 01

   Konjaku Hyakki Shūi

   Toriyama Sekien · 1781

   Volume 2; IIIF canvas index 8 (zero-based); HyakkishuYiV2Tori_0009.jp2. Named illustration directly inspected.

Family & connections

A source-supported family tree or inspiration record has not yet been compiled for this profile. Related reading below indicates a connection in subject matter, not a proven lineage or creative influence.

Primary records and illustrations

References

Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.

1. Institutional primary-book recordKonjaku Hyakki Shūi — Smithsonian Libraries digitized volume 2Research access: 2026-10-05
2. Primary illustrated plate / institutional digitizationAmeonna (雨女) — exact inspected primary plateResearch access: 2026-10-05

Image credits

Ameonna, named plate by Toriyama Sekien

Printed label 雨女 and the pictured composition directly inspected at enlarged resolution. Sekien depicts Ameonna as a long-haired woman lifting a hand toward her mouth in driving rain. The exact image URL comes from the returned IIIF manifest, not a guessed page ID.