Goryō
vengeful Japanese ghosts
In a broad sense, Goryō (御霊; Japanese: [ɡoɾʲoː]) is an honorific for a spirit, especially one that causes hauntings, and the term is used as a synonym for onryō (怨霊, vengeful Japanese ghosts). In a narrower sense, it refers to a noble or accomplished person who lost a political power struggle or died prematurely from an epidemic or other disease, becoming an onryō that brings pestilence or famine and is later enshrined as a kami in Shinto shrines. For example, the "Sandai Jitsuroku" (a historical Japanese document) mentions that six Shinto shrines were dedicated to the worship of goryō, which were the spirits of those who died from non-natural causes. Later on, two more shrines were added, bringing the total to eight.
Goryō Shinko (御霊信仰, Belief in goryō) refers to the belief that the onryō of people who have died unfortunate deaths cause hauntings and disasters, and the belief that they are enshrined as kami to appease them.
Description
The name consists of two kanji, 御 (go) meaning honorable and 霊 (ryō) meaning soul or spirit.
The belief that the spirits of those who died with resentment or anger after being treated unfairly caused hauntings existed before the Nara period (710–794). However, from the Nara to the Heian periods (794–1185), the belief arose that the spirits of those who died after being defeated in a power struggle among the nobility caused plagues and natural disasters, and Shinto shrines were built to appease their spirits and enshrine them as kami. The first example is Prince Sawara, who was stripped of his position as crown prince and exiled to Awaji Island to die in 785. After his death, a plague epidemic broke out in Kyoto, which people feared was caused by his spirit.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Goryō” is vengeful Japanese ghosts. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Goryō, vengeful and Japanese, not as a finished interpretation.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 13, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q3273210. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1185.
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This entry incorporates text from “Goryō” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.