1. Many Places Name the Chaser Plainly, but Japan Says Ogre
Almost everywhere, children play some version of the same game: one player chases, the others run, and whoever is caught takes over the chasing. A Japanese scholar who studied the game, Hironori Funai, uses that “chase, flee, swap roles” pattern as his definition of onigokko [1]. That definition describes the type where chaser and chased trade roles. By it, tag is onigokko too.
What differs is the name for the chaser. In the English-speaking world the game is called tag or tig, and the chaser is called “it” (the player everyone else avoids) or “the tagger.” German-speaking children say Fänger, literally “catcher.” In France, Funai reports, the chaser is a wolf or a cat, and in Russia and Ukraine children’s chasers include wolves, bears, herons and an old man who brings bitter cold [1].
Funai notes that making the chaser a supernatural being, as Japan does with the ogre, seems to have few parallels outside English “it” [1]. He does not explain why “it” counts, and he calls the comparison tentative. So the puzzle is real: the chasing is everywhere, but the ogre looks unusual.
For comparison, the English word “tag” itself has no clear origin. Dictionaries are reported to say it is unknown or perhaps a variant of “tig,” which may come from “tick” [3]. Names for a game can drift in odd ways, and Japan’s ogre may be one of those drifts. Where might it have started?
2. An Older Japanese Version Had Three Roles, and a Parent Protected the Children
Before the three ideas, it helps to know that the old Japanese form of the game was different. It had three roles: the ogre, a “parent,” and the children. The children lined up in a row behind the parent, each holding the shoulders of the one in front. The ogre tried to touch the last child in the line, and the parent at the front spread both arms to block the way [1].
In the Edo period (about 1600–1868), this game was known as kotoro kotoro, and Funai says children played it until fairly recently [1]. A drawing of it appears in Santō Kyōden’s Edo-period book Kottōshū, as reproduced in a children’s-play history by Satoshi Kako [1].
This version has a chaser and a protector, and the ogre does not simply swap places with a caught child. Funai points out that this makes it a little different from the usual onigokko, where chaser and chased trade roles [1]. That difference matters for the first idea, because the “parent” role is exactly what a famous story tries to explain.
3. First Idea: A Monk Invented the Game to Teach About Hell, but the Evidence Is Late
The best-known explanation says that Ekishin Sozu, a Buddhist monk (also called Genshin, 942–1017), made up the game. In the story, the bodhisattva Jizo rescues people from hell, and hell’s guards, the oni, try to take them back. The monk is said to have had children act this out to make the teaching easier to understand. The parent is Jizo, the children are the rescued people, and the ogre is a guard [1].
The match between the story and the game is neat, which is part of its appeal. The weak spot is the date of the evidence. The story comes from Sangoku Denki, a collection of tales written in the Muromachi period, more than 300 years after the monk died [1]. Funai also cites the scholar Tsuneo Sagawa, who argued it is hard to believe the monk simply invented the game. At most, Sagawa says, the author passed on a story already going around, or the monk gave an older game a Buddhist meaning [1].
A tale about a game that appears centuries later is not a record of how the game began, so this idea cannot be taken as proven. If the monk did not start it, where did the idea of an ogre chasing children come from?
4. Second Idea: The Game Began as Wild Animals Raiding Livestock
Sagawa compared how the game is spread around the world and what its roles are called. He concluded that the original idea, “wild animals attack livestock,” arose among grain-farming peoples and spread across the Old World. In his view it reached Japan in the Yayoi period, when rice farming began (roughly 2,000 years ago), and only joined Buddhist ideas around the Kamakura period (1185–1333) [1].
This would explain why chasers elsewhere are so often animals such as wolves. It does not by itself explain why Japan’s animal became an ogre. Funai describes Sagawa’s work as answering only “part” of the question, partly because the old three-role game has a more complicated structure than plain chasing [1]. Still, it gives a very different starting point from the monk story: the game could be far older than Buddhism in Japan.
5. Third Idea: The Ogre Came From a Court Ritual That Chased Away Evil Spirits
The third idea looks for the ogre in tsuina, a year-end ritual at the imperial court, which is also said to be the root of today’s Setsubun festival, when people throw beans at ogres. It came from China and was performed at court from the early Heian period. At first an official called Hōsōshi chased away invisible plague spirits. By around the middle of the 10th century, however, the Hōsōshi himself seems to have turned into the ogre being chased [1].
An ogre who is chased and drives out bad luck could, in principle, become the player children run from or after. But Funai points out that in tsuina the ogre never swaps places with anyone, so it is not the same as onigokko [1].
The word itself is another complication. Funai introduces the Izumo no Kuni Fudoki (733) as the earliest written appearance of the character for “oni,” where it refers to a one-eyed creature, and it is not clear it was read as “oni” at that time. The scholar Akiko Baba thinks the reading settled only after the end of the Heian period (12th century) [1]. So an “ogre chaser” may be younger than the chasing itself.
6. Chasing Games May Be Older Than Humans, but the Ogre Is Still Unexplained
A study of Japanese macaques shows that chasing play is not only human. At Arashiyama, in Kyoto, young monkeys play a chase game with a target object, such as a branch. The monkey holding the object is chased, and whoever grabs it becomes the one chased [2]. The researcher Masaki Shimada reported this in 2018 and sees it as a hint about where tag-like play might come from [1].
The caution is just as important. The pattern is established among young monkeys in the Arashiyama group, which is fed by people, but not in the Kinkazan group, which is not [2]. So it is fair to say that monkeys have a similar game, but not that they play tag. It also says nothing about why the chaser is called an ogre.
What the evidence supports, then, is this: chasing games are very widespread and may be very old, while the ogre is a Japanese addition whose source is still debated. Each of the three ideas explains a different piece, and none explains all of it.
7. Try It Yourself: Collect Chaser Names and Play the Old Three-Role Game Safely
Ask people in your family or at school what they call the chaser in tag and what extra rules they use. Funai counts about 500 basic kinds of Japanese onigokko and over 2,000 with variations, so your local version may be one of many [1]. Do any of the names suggest an animal, a monster, or just “catcher”?
You can also try the old three-role game with four or more people on a wide, flat space. One person is the ogre, one is the parent, and the rest are children who line up behind the parent, about an arm’s length apart and without grabbing anyone’s shoulders. The ogre tries to touch the last child, and the parent blocks with spread arms. Walk rather than run, stop right away if anyone bumps into someone, and decide among yourselves whether a touched child becomes the next ogre.
If you want the original ideas, Funai’s paper is free online, though it is in Japanese. Shimada’s monkey study has an English abstract. Reading both shows how each claim is argued, and where the authors say “we do not know.”
Safety Note: Play on soft, flat ground away from roads, and keep to walking pace in the old version. Stop if anyone is hurt or upset.