, sometimes , is a

yōkai are a class of supernatural entities and spirits in Japanese folklore. The word is composed of the kanji for "attractive; calamity" and "apparition; mystery; suspicious." are also referred to as , or . Despite often being translated as suc ...

, or Japanese

monster A monster is a type of fictional creature found in horror, fantasy, science fiction, folklore, mythology and religion. Monsters are very often depicted as dangerous and aggressive with a strange, grotesque appearance that causes terror and fe ...

, composed of

smoke Smoke is a suspension of airborne particulates and gases emitted when a material undergoes combustion or pyrolysis, together with the quantity of air that is entrained or otherwise mixed into the mass. It is commonly an unwanted by-product ...

and

darkness Darkness, the direct opposite of lightness, is defined as a lack of illumination, an absence of visible light, or a surface that absorbs light, such as black or brown. Human vision is unable to distinguish colors in conditions of very low lu ...

. It was first featured in the

Konjaku Hyakki Shūi is the third book of Japanese artist Toriyama Sekien's ''Gazu Hyakki Yagyō'' tetralogy, published c. 1781. These books are supernatural bestiaries, collections of ghosts, spirits, spooks and monsters, many of which Toriyama based on literature, ...

, circa 1781.

Mythology

Enenras mostly reside in

bonfire A bonfire is a large and controlled outdoor fire, used either for informal disposal of burnable waste material or as part of a celebration. Etymology The earliest recorded uses of the word date back to the late 15th century, with the Catho ...

s; when they emerge, they take human shape or form. It is said that an enenra can only be seen by the pure of heart. Enenras are mostly considered to be demons or divine beings of darkness and smoke; legend says that there are two types of enenras, the first and most common type being enenras who are born purely as enenras, whilst the second and more rarely occurring type are humans who have died and been transformed into enenras.

Popular culture

In the 2011 video game ''

Mortal Kombat ''Mortal Kombat'' is an American media franchise centered on a series of video games originally developed by Midway Games in 1992. The development of the first game was originally based on an idea that Ed Boon and John Tobias had of making a v ...

'', the character

Smoke Smoke is a suspension of airborne particulates and gases emitted when a material undergoes combustion or pyrolysis, together with the quantity of air that is entrained or otherwise mixed into the mass. It is commonly an unwanted by-product ...

(who makes his first human appearance in the game in almost two decades) is an enenra. In the 2012 manga '' Forbidden Scrollery'' from the

Touhou Project The , also known simply as , is a bullet hell shoot 'em up video game series created by one-man independent Japanese ''doujin'' soft developer Team Shanghai Alice. Since 1995, the team's member, Jun'ya "ZUN" Ōta, has independently developed ...

series, Enenra is featured as an evil yōkai that gets exterminated by the series's heroine. In the 2020 video game ''

Nioh 2 is an action role-playing video game developed by Team Ninja for the PlayStation 4. It was published by Koei Tecmo in Japan and Sony Interactive Entertainment worldwide on March 13, 2020. It is both a prequel and sequel to ''Nioh'' (2017). Versio ...

'', Enenra is featured as one of the game's many yōkai bosses.

References

{{Japanese folklore long Yōkai Mythological monsters