Toshiden: Exploring Japanese Urban Legends: Volume One

by Tara A. Devlin

  Long ago, there was a young girl who enjoyed playing tricks. This girl received a valuable hand-mirror from her parents which she then painted purple. She thought she would be able to remove the paint if she didn’t leave it for too long, but no matter what she did, the paint refused to come off.

  Filled with regret, the girl muttered “purple mirror… purple mirror…” over and over until her death, on the day of her 20th birthday.

  Ever since that day, the girl’s feelings towards that purple mirror were transferred to the words themselves, and all those under 20 who remember them will die just like she did.

  ABOUT

  Purple mirror, or murasaki kagami, is one of the most popular urban legends in Japan. Ask anyone in the street and chances are high they’ve heard of it before. At its most basic, this legend is about two words, in English “purple mirror,” in Japanese “murasaki kagami,” and if you remember those two words by the time you turn 20, you will either be cursed or you will die. If, for some reason, you don’t think about those two words together, then there’s no problem! But we all know how well we go when we’re told not to do something, and that’s the charm behind this legend. By telling you not to remember those two words, it’s pretty much guaranteeing that you will.

  HISTORY

  The purple mirror urban legend originally sprang to life from the following story:

  A young girl was hospitalised with immune impairment. Her body was so weak that she spent most of her teens in a hospital bed.

  For her birthday one year her parents gave her an extremely cute hand-mirror. You might be wondering why it was a hand-mirror, but this was a time before Japan experienced rapid economic growth.

  The girl fell in love with that hand-mirror. She looked into it every single day and treated it like a precious object.

  Until one day.

  One day, for some unknown reason, the girl painted the hand-mirror purple. According to her own words, this was because she liked the colour purple. Even so, her actions were clearly strange. Suddenly coming back to herself, the girl looked upon the purple mirror and was shocked.

  She tried desperately to peel the purple paint off, but it was stuck there, and in the end she couldn’t remove it. Her beloved mirror that she received as a present was now purple, and she was unable to use it any longer.

  Of course, it could be said that sickness and health start with the mind, and the girl was so shocked by what happened that her illness worsened right before their eyes. In order to brighten their daughter up again, the girl’s parents presented her with another mirror, but she wasn’t interested in it.

  The girl took her last breaths whilst holding that purple mirror, muttering, “Purple mirror… purple… mirror…”

  She was 19-years-old, only days away from her 20th birthday.

  That girl’s grudge lives on in the words “purple mirror,” and children who remember those words will meet an unfortunate fate.

  VARIATIONS

  The words and origin of the story vary from generation to generation, and area to area. The cursed words vary from “murasaki no kagami,” “murasaki kagami,” and even the English “purple mirror.”

  The fate one will meet also changes. It’s not necessarily always death. In many versions of the story one will simply meet with misfortune; for example, they won’t be able to get married in the future. And while 20 is the main age in most cases, some variations see the age changed to 18, 15, or the even more vague “until graduation.”

  The following version of the tale is also told in the Kansai area:

  There was a girl who was approaching her 20th birthday. She was looking forward to wearing her best clothes for her upcoming coming-of-age ceremony, but sadly for her that day never came. The girl died in a traffic accident.

  The girl had a purple mirror that she treasured. Her family considered placing it in her coffin, but even though she always kept this mirror on her person, it was nowhere to be found and the funeral proceeded without it.

  A short while later a terrible rumour about the girl began to spread. She was dating a boy of less than reputable reputation while alive, and things turned sour when she suggested they breakup, which was why she died. Not only that, the purple mirror had been a gift from that boy.

  The rumours were groundless, and it was none other than one of her friends that started them.

  The day of the coming-of-age ceremony arrived, and the friend who started the rumours of the dead girl disappeared. Not only had the girl gone missing, but they also found the aforementioned purple mirror in her bedroom.

  The girl was never seen again, and her parents ended up dying due to anxiety.

  The reason the words “purple mirror” are cursed is because of this bizarre incident.

  HOW TO AVOID

  The most common method proposed for avoiding a terrible fate upon remembering the words “purple mirror” is to say “white crystal” or “shiro suishou” in Japanese. White crystals were long considered holy in Shinto religion and are said to be strong enough to break the curse of the purple mirror.

  For those who want something a little more physical, you can try crossing a pedestrian crossing by only stepping on the white lines. This will supposedly break the curse as well.

  If you want to go one better and not just break the curse, but have yourself a happily ever after, you can say the words “pink mirror.” This will supposedly bring you good luck in the future as opposed to a horrible and messy death. Another option is the words “gold potato.” No reason is given as to why these phrases bring good luck, but it certainly can’t hurt to try!

  WHY “PURPLE MIRROR”?

  There are two schools of thought as to why the specific words “purple mirror” are thought to be a curse. The first comes from Hansen’s disease, or leprosy. According to those who saw people suffering from the disease, the inflamed sores of the body appeared to be purple. Combined with the fear of death that came from the disease and you have the potential for ill-will against the colour.

  Another theory suggests it has nothing at all to do with the colour or object, simply that the words “murasaki kagami” combined give a strange, ambiguous and mysterious feel. The more you think about them, the more they get stuck in your head, and when you’re trying very hard not to remember them so you don’t die, the curse becomes self-fulfilling.

  If you’ve yet to turn 20, never fear. Remember that you can just say “pink mirror” and all will be well. Although now that you’ve been told not to, it may be hard to stop thinking about the words “purple mirror.” That’s how the curse gets you, after all.

  Tomino’s Hell

  There exists a poem that you must not read out loud. That poem is called “Tomino’s Hell.” This poem is the work of Saijou Yaso, a popular poet who worked on children’s nursery rhymes and popular song lyrics. The poem is recorded in the poetry collection Sakin.

  If you read it out loud, you will meet with misfortune. In reality, people have claimed to feel ill whilst reading this poem, so I recommend those who are weak to self-suggestion to read the poem silently.

  I will leave it up to you how you perceive the poem itself.

  You will find it below.

  Tomino’s Hell

  His older sister vomits blood, and his younger sister vomits fire,

  And the cute Tomino vomits his soul.

  Tomino falls into Hell alone,

  The darkness of Hell where even flowers don’t bloom.

  Is it Tomino’s older sister wielding the whip?

  The blood on the whip weighs on his mind.

  Beating and striking yet not hitting at all,

  There is but a single road to the eighth and most painful Hell.

  Would you request guidance into the darkness of Hell,

  From the golden sheep, or the nightingale?

  Put as much as you can into the leather sack,

  In preparation for the journey into the most painful of Hells.

  Spring
comes to the forest and the valley,

  And to the seven twisting valleys of dark Hell.

  The nightingale in the cage, the sheep in the cart,

  And tears in the eyes of cute Tomino.

  Cry, nightingale, in the forest rains,

  He screams as loud as he can in yearning for his younger sister.

  The cries echo throughout Hell,

  And the buttercup blooms.

  Through the seven mountains and seven valleys of Hell,

  The cute Tomino’s solo journey.

  If they are in Hell, bring them,

  The mountain of pins and needles.

  The red pins don’t stand out,

  As a sign leading to cute Tomino.

  Ane wa chi wo haku, imoto wa hibaku,

  Kawaii Tomino wa tama wo haku.

  Hitori jigoku ni ochiyuku Tomino,

  Jigoku kurayami hana mo naki.

  Muchi de tataku wa tomino no ane ka,

  Muchi no shubusa ga ki ni kakaru.

  Tatakeya tatakiyare tatakazu totemo,

  Mugen jigoku wa hitotsu michi.

  Kurai jigoku e anai wo tanomu,

  Kane no hitsuji ni, uguisu ni.

  Kawa no fukuro niya ikura hodo ireyo,

  Mugen jigoku no tabijitaku.

  Haru ga kite soro hayashi ni tani ni,

  Kurai jigoku tani nana magari.

  Kago niya uguisu, kuruma niya hitsuji,

  Kawaii tomino no me niya namida.

  Nakeyo, uguisu, hayashi no ame ni

  Imouto koishi to koe kagiri.

  Nakeba kodama ga jigoku ni hibiki,

  Kitsune botan no hana ga saku.

  Jigoku nanayama nanatani meguru,

  Kawaii tomino no hitoritabi.

  Jigoku gozaraba mote kite tamore,

  Hari no oyama no tomebari wo.

  Akai tomebari date ni wa sasanu,

  Kawaii tomino no mejirushini.

  ABOUT

  “Tomino’s Hell,” or Tomino no Jigoku, was written by poet Saijou Yaso in the 1919 poetry collection Sakin. He was 26 at the time. On the surface, the poem is about a person named Tomino and their journey through hell. It’s said that if you read the poem out loud, then you will either die or suffer from a great catastrophe. In 1983, a director by the name of Terayama Shuji made a film based on the poem and later died, which was how rumours of the poem being cursed first came about.

  But why is the poem cursed? Who is Tomino and why is he or she in Hell?

  MEANING

  Even for Japanese speakers, the true meaning behind Tomino’s Hell can be difficult to understand. There are countless blog entries and forum posts where readers ask others what the poem means, and if any of them have been brave enough to read it out loud. There are several interpretations, and it’s up to the reader to decide for themselves what the poem means to them. I’ve included the Japanese lyrics in romaji above to go with my original translation, as I found most of the available English translations on the internet to be lacking. There appears to be a lot of misleading information about this particular legend in English, so let’s take a closer look at what’s going on.

  At face level this is a poem about Tomino travelling through hell. Who is Tomino? The gender is never mentioned in Japanese, nor is Tomino a common name particular to boys or girls. It can be deduced from the poem that Tomino is a male, however, as expressed by his love for his younger sister. There’s more, but I’ll get to that in a moment.

  The poem begins by letting the reader know that Tomino has thrown up his tama. This is the first important point. The kanji used in the poem are the characters for “treasure.” The reading given for those kanji, however, is tama, expresses “balls” or “beads.” This is on purpose, as it’s meant to draw a parallel to tamashii, one’s spirit. Tomino has thrown up his spirit. He has lost his soul, and thus he begins his descent into Hell.

  Yet Tomino is not travelling through Hell; not literally, anyway. It is largely believed that the poem is a metaphor for war. His older sister spits up blood; she is passionately encouraging him to fight for their country and win the war. His younger sister spits up fire; she is encouraging him in her own innocent way as he sets out. Then Tomino spits up his tama; he is presenting his life for the cause. The poem repeatedly refers to Tomino as cute, letting the reader know this is only a young man, still innocent himself when he sets out.

  Much of the imagery presented throughout the rest of the poem draws allusions to the battlefield and the horrors present within. He sees the buttercups, those flowers that often grow between the rice fields back home. The poem mentions him hitting and beating and yet not striking at all, reminding us of the fruitlessness of it all. He cries for his younger sister, and as he travels through the seven valleys of Hell to reach the last, the eighth and most painful, he suffers more and more.

  Something that gets lost in translation is the last few lines. The “red pins” signify the senninbari that soldiers used to wear into war. This was a piece of white cloth, usually a metre long, that was sewn with a thousand red stitches from a thousand different women. Different patterns and slogans could be sewn in, and the soldiers wore them as good luck and a sign of devotion to the women they left behind. They were supposed to give the wearer courage, good luck, and immunity from injury. These were generally made by the soldier’s family; their mothers, sisters, girlfriends or wives. These women would traditionally stand near temples, stations or other busy areas of town and ask passing women to sew a single stitch, although in later periods, such as WWII, these were made en masse by thousands of women at once and then posted to soldiers already at war.

  So this senninbari is not just a sign of good luck, it’s also supposed to be an identifying mark, a mejirishi; should Tomino die on the battlefield, they can identify him by his senninbari and return him to his family. The final lines mention that his senninbari does not “stand out,” however, and it’s left to the reader to imagine why. If Tomino is unable to be identified, that means first of all that he has likely died in battle, and secondly that he won’t be returned to his family. Suddenly the poem takes on an entirely different meaning, one even scarier than the literal reading of traversing through Hell.

  When put into the context of the poetry collection Tomino’s Hell was originally published in, this interpretation makes a lot of sense. There is another common interpretation you can find on the internet however, this one more literal, that claims Tomino was in love with his younger sister, and it was this forbidden love that doomed him to hell. This interpretation comes from the single line in which Tomino yearns for his younger sister, so to me personally it’s a little of a stretch, but it’s not impossible to see how this version came about.

  BECOMING A LEGEND

  In 1974, a movie called Denen ni Shisu (To Die in the Countryside) was released. It was written and directed by Terayama Shuji, and he took a lot of inspiration from Tomino’s Hell when making the film. When he later died, people claimed it was because of that poem. There were also rumours of a female university student who died after reading it.

  Yet in reality, Tomino’s Hell did not become the urban legend it is today until 2004. In the book Kokoro wa Korogaru Ishi no you ni, author Yomota Inuhiko claimed “If you by chance happen to read this poem out loud, after you will suffer from a terrible fate which cannot be escaped.” Even though people have been reading Tomino’s Hell out loud since 1919, it wasn’t until 2004 that one person claimed that it was cursed. While Yomota only claimed that one would suffer a terrible fate, rumours of Terayama and the university student were also floating around at the time, so it didn’t take long for the legend to mutate and turn into “read this poem out loud and you will die.” Never mind that Terayama died nine years after his film was made, and no-one knew who this female university student was. The poem’s creator, Saijou Yaso, lived to the ripe old age of 78 himself, 51 years after creating and presumably reading the poem out loud countless times during his life.

  MODERN DAY E
FFECTS

  You can find countless videos on YouTube and other Japanese video platforms of people reading Tomino’s Hell out loud. Many claim to feel ill while reading it, and others claim they later met with misfortune off-camera. Undoubtedly some of these people did feel ill; self-suggestion is a powerful thing. Yet there is no confirmed case of someone dying simply because they read the poem out loud.

  Red Room

  One day a student happened to overhear the story of the “Red Room” from one of his friends. He wanted to know more, so as soon as he got home he started searching for more about it on his computer. But no matter how hard he looked, he couldn’t find the website.

  He searched over and over, until finally he found a website titled “Red Room.” He clicked the link, but all it had was a banner that said “Red Room.” Against his better judgement, he expressed his dissatisfaction.

  “What the hell is scary about this?”

  He couldn’t understand what was supposed to be so terrifying about it.

  He tried closing the browser, but the “Red Room” banner appeared again and refused to go away. Confused, he clicked it over and over, trying to close it, but gradually the banner began to crack.

  A fissure was opening in the middle of the banner. Then, as soon as it broke, the boy died.

  ABOUT

  The story of the “Red Room” has been around since the late 90s, around the same time as another legend also called “The Red Room” or occasionally “The red-eyed girl.” Although the two legends had very little in common otherwise, they both contained the phrase “red room.” It’s possible this story influenced the creation of this particular Red Room legend, although there’s no solid evidence proving it did.