Red Ogre and Blue Ogre actually liked the villagers they lived near. They would sit in a giant pine tree overlooking the village and watch women hanging clean clothes up to dry, children spinning bright colored tops in the dirt, and farmers bringing armfuls of eggplant and horse-radish back from the fields. This made Red Ogre and Blue Ogre very happy. But most of all, the two ogres liked to watch the older children play a hide-and-seek game called Oni-go-ko. In Japanese, an ogre is called on Oni. So Red Ogre and Blue Ogre thought the children named the game after them!

The children of the village would gather in a circle and call out: “Jan-ken-hoi!” At the word “hoi,” they would make their hands into scissors, paper, or rocks. Scissors cut paper, paper covered rock, rock smashed scissors. Their hands would cut or cover or smash until just one was the loser; he would become the Oni.

Whenever the game began, Red Ogre would clap his hands in delight. Sitting on their giant pine branch, Red Ogre and Blue Ogre would watch as the game’s Oni pressed his face against a wall and counted to one hundred, while the rest of the children scattered and hid. Finally, when they were tucked away in cowsheds and behind doors, the Oni would finish counting and go looking for them. He would hunt and hunt until he found them all. Then they would start the game over and pick a new Oni.

“Wouldn’t it be fun to play Oni-go-ko with them?” Red Ogre sighed as he looked on. The children were laughing and screaming and running as the next Oni stomped over to the wall to count.

Blue Ogre shook his head. “You can’t play with them,” he told his friend. “You’re a real Oni.”

“Yes,” Red Ogre agreed, “I am.” The children would never understand that he wanted to laugh and skip and run circles around trees the way they did. They would see the horn on top of his head, the muscles underneath his red skin, the fangs in his mouth, and they would be afraid. They would scream and run away.

Red Ogre felt very sad.

“I know what we can do!” Blue Ogre cried out suddenly. He shouted so loudly that the ground shook and the people in the village trembled. Red Ogre held tightly onto the branch they were sitting on, not wanting to fall off.