Japanese Ghost Stories

by Lafcadio Hearn

  Instantly with a shock as of earthquake the stupendous spectacle disappeared; and the priest found himself alone in the dark, kneeling upon the grass of the mountain-side. Then a sadness unspeakable fell upon him, because of the loss of the vision, and because of the thoughtlessness that had caused him to break his word. As he sorrowfully turned his steps homeward, the goblin-monk once more appeared before him, and said to him in tones of reproach and pain: ‘Because you did not keep the promise which you made to me, and heedlessly allowed your feelings to overcome you, the Gohōtendo, who is the Guardian of the Doctrine, swooped down suddenly from heaven upon us, and smote us in great anger, crying out, “How do ye dare thus to deceive a pious person?” Then the other monks, whom I had assembled, all fled in fear. As for myself, one of my wings has been broken – so that now I cannot fly.’ And with these words the Tengu vanished forever.

  The Reconciliation

  There was a young samurai of Kyōto who had been reduced to poverty by the ruin of his lord, and found himself obliged to leave his home, and to take service with the Governor of a distant province. Before quitting the capital, this samurai divorced his wife – a good and beautiful woman – under the belief that he could better obtain promotion by another alliance. He then married the daughter of a family of some distinction, and took her with him to the district whither he had been called.

  But it was in the time of the thoughtlessness of youth, and the sharp experience of want, that the samurai could not understand the worth of the affection so lightly cast away. His second marriage did not prove a happy one; the character of his new wife was hard and selfish; and he soon found every cause to think with regret of Kyōto days. Then he discovered that he still loved his first wife – loved her more than he could ever love the second; and he began to feel how unjust and how thankless he had been. Gradually his repentance deepened into a remorse that left him no peace of mind. Memories of the woman he had wronged – her gentle speech, her smiles, her dainty, pretty ways, her faultless patience – continually haunted him. Sometimes in dreams he saw her at her loom, weaving as when she toiled night and day to help him during the years of their distress: more often he saw her kneeling alone in the desolate little room where he had left her, veiling her tears with her poor worn sleeve. Even in the hours of official duty, his thoughts would wander back to her: then he would ask himself how she was living, what she was doing. Something in his heart assured him that she could not accept another husband, and that she never would refuse to pardon him. And he secretly resolved to seek her out as soon as he could return to Kyōto – then to beg her forgiveness, to take her back, to do everything that a man could do to make atonement. But the years went by.

  At last the Governor’s official term expired, and the samurai was free. ‘Now I will go back to my dear one,’ he vowed to himself. ‘Ah, what a cruelty – what a folly to have divorced her!’ He sent his second wife to her own people (she had given him no children); and hurrying to Kyōto, he went at once to seek his former companion – not allowing himself even the time to change his traveling-garb.

  When he reached the street where she used to live, it was late in the night – the night of the tenth day of the ninth month; and the city was silent as a cemetery. But a bright moon made everything visible; and he found the house without difficulty. It had a deserted look: tall weeds were growing on the roof. He knocked at the sliding-doors, and no one answered. Then, finding that the doors had not been fastened from within, he pushed them open, and entered. The front room was matless and empty: a chilly wind was blowing through crevices in the planking; and the moon shone through a ragged break in the wall of the alcove. Other rooms presented a like forlorn condition. The house, to all seeming, was unoccupied. Nevertheless, the samurai determined to visit one other apartment at the farther end of the dwelling; – a very small room that had been his wife’s favorite resting-place. Approaching the sliding-screen that closed it, he was startled to perceive a glow within. He pushed the screen aside, and uttered a cry of joy; for he saw her there – sewing by the light of a paper-lamp. Her eyes at the same instant met his own; and with a happy smile she greeted him – asking only: ‘When did you come back to Kyōto? How did you find your way here to me, through all those black rooms?’ The years had not changed her. Still she seemed as fair and young as in his fondest memory of her; but sweeter than any memory there came to him the music of her voice, with its trembling of pleased wonder.

  Then joyfully he took his place beside her, and told her all: how deeply he repented his selfishness – how wretched he had been without her – how constantly he had regretted her – how long he had hoped and planned to make amends; caressing her the while, and asking her forgiveness over and over again. She answered him, with loving gentleness, according to his heart’s desire – entreating him to cease all self-reproach. It was wrong, she said, that he should have allowed himself to suffer on her account: she had always felt that she was not worthy to be his wife. She knew that he had separated from her, notwithstanding, only because of poverty; and while he lived with her, he had always been kind; and she had never ceased to pray for his happiness. But even if there had been a reason for speaking of amends, this honorable visit would be ample amends: what greater happiness than thus to see him again, though it were only for a moment? ‘Only for a moment?’ he replied, with a glad laugh – ‘say, rather, for the time of seven existences!1 My loved one, unless you forbid, I am coming back to live with you always – always – always! Nothing shall ever separate us again. Now I have means and friends: we need not fear poverty. Tomorrow my goods will be brought here, and my servants will come to wait upon you, and we shall make this house beautiful … Tonight,’ he added, apologetically, ‘I came thus late – without even changing my dress – only because of the longing I had to see you, and to tell you this.’ She seemed greatly pleased by these words; and in her turn she told him about all that had happened in Kyōto since the time of his departure; excepting her own sorrows, of which she sweetly refused to speak. They chatted far into the night: then she conducted him to a warmer room, facing south – a room that had been their bridal chamber in former time. ‘Have you no one in the house to help you?’ he asked, as she began to prepare the couch for him. ‘No,’ she answered, laughing cheerfully: ‘I could not afford a servant; – so I have been living all alone.’ ‘You will have plenty of servants to-morrow,’ he said – ‘good servants – and everything else that you need!’ They lay down to rest – not to sleep: they had too much to tell each other; and they talked of the past and the present and the future, until the dawn was grey. Then, involuntarily, the samurai closed his eyes, and slept.

  When he awoke, the daylight was streaming through the chinks of the sliding-shutters; and he found himself, to his utter amazement, lying upon the naked boards of a mouldering floor … Had he only dreamed a dream? No: she was there; she slept … He bent above her – and looked – and shrieked; for the sleeper had no face! … Before him, wrapped in its grave-sheet only, lay the corpse of a woman – a corpse so wasted that little remained save the bones, and the long black tangled hair.

  Slowly – as he stood shuddering and sickening in the sun – the icy horror yielded to a despair so intolerable, a pain so atrocious, that he clutched at the mocking shadow of a doubt. Feigning ignorance of the neighborhood, he ventured to ask his way to the house in which his wife had lived.

  ‘There is no one in that house,’ said the person questioned. ‘It used to belong to the wife of a samurai who left the city several years ago. He divorced her in order to marry another woman before he went away; and she fretted a great deal, and so became sick. She had no relatives in Kyōto, and nobody to care for her, and she died in the autumn of the same year; on the tenth day of the ninth month …’

  A Legend of Fugen-bosatsu

  There was once a very pious and learned priest, called Shōku Shōnin, who lived in the province of Harima. For many years he meditated daily upon the chapter of Fugen-Bosa
tsu [the Bodhisattva Samantabhadra] in the Sûtra of the Lotos of the Good Law; and he used to pray, every morning and evening, that he might at some time be permitted to behold Fugen-Bosatsu as a living presence, and in the form described in the holy text.fn1

  One evening, while he was reciting the Sûtra, drowsiness overcame him; and he fell asleep leaning upon his kyōsoku.fn2 Then he dreamed; and in his dream a voice told him that, in order to see Fugen-Bosatsu, he must go to the house of a certain courtesan, known as the ‘Yujō-no-Chōja’,fn3 who lived in the town of Kanzaki. Immediately upon awakening he resolved to go to Kanzaki; and, making all possible haste, he reached the town by the evening of the next day.

  When he entered the house of the yujō, he found many persons already there assembled – mostly young men of the capital, who had been attracted to Kanzaki by the fame of the woman’s beauty. They were feasting and drinking; and the yujō was playing a small hand-drum (tsu-zumi), which she used very skilfully, and singing a song. The song which she sang was an old Japanese song about a famous shrine in the town of Murozumi; and the words were these:

  Within the sacred water-tankfn4 of Murozumi in Suwō,

  Even though no wind be blowing,

  The surface of the water is always rippling.

  The sweetness of the voice filled everybody with surprise and delight. As the priest, who had taken a place apart, listened and wondered, the girl suddenly fixed her eyes upon him; and in the same instant he saw her form change into the form of Fugen-Bosatsu, emitting from her brow a beam of light that seemed to pierce beyond the limits of the universe, and riding a snow-white elephant with six tusks. And still she sang – but the song also was now transformed; and the words came thus to the ears of the priest:

  On the vast Sea of Cessation,

  Though the Winds of the Six Desires and of the Five Corruptions never blow,

  Yet the surface of that deep is always covered

  With the billowings of Attainment to the Reality-in-Itself.

  Dazzled by the divine ray, the priest closed his eyes: but through their lids he still distinctly saw the vision. When he opened them again, it was gone: he saw only the girl with her hand-drum, and heard only the song about the water of Murozumi. But he found that as often as he shut his eyes he could see Fugen-Bosatsu on the six-tusked elephant, and could hear the mystic Song of the Sea of Cessation. The other persons present saw only the yujō: they had not beheld the manifestation.

  Then the singer suddenly disappeared from the banquet-room – none could say when or how. From that moment the revelry ceased; and gloom took the place of joy. After having waited and sought for the girl to no purpose, the company dispersed in great sorrow. Last of all, the priest departed, bewildered by the emotions of the evening. But scarcely had he passed beyond the gate, when the yujō appeared before him, and said: ‘Friend, do not speak yet to any one of what you have seen this night.’ And with these words she vanished away – leaving the air filled with a delicious fragrance.

  * * *

  The monk by whom the foregoing legend was recorded, comments upon it thus: The condition of a yujō is low and miserable, since she is condemned to serve the lusts of men. Who therefore could imagine that such a woman might be the nirman.akya, or incarnation, of a Bodhisattva. But we must remember that the Buddhas and the Bodhisattvas may appear in this world in countless different forms; choosing, for the purpose of their divine compassion, even the most humble or contemptible shapes when such shapes can serve them to lead men into the true path, and to save them from the perils of illusion.

  The Corpse-Rider

  The body was cold as ice; the heart had long ceased to beat: yet there were no other signs of death. Nobody even spoke of burying the woman. She had died of grief and anger at having been divorced. It would have been useless to bury her – because the last undying wish of a dying person for vengeance can burst asunder any tomb and lift the heaviest graveyard stone. People who lived near the house in which she was lying fled from their homes. They knew that she was only waiting for the return of the man who had divorced her.

  At the time of her death he was on a journey. When he came back and was told what had happened, terror seized him. ‘If I can find no help before dark,’ he thought to himself, ‘she will tear me to pieces.’ It was yet only the Hour of the Dragon;fn1 but he knew that he had no time to lose.

  He went at once to an inyōshifn2 and begged for succor. The inyōshi knew the story of the dead woman; and he had seen the body. He said to the supplicant: ‘A very great danger threatens you. I will try to save you. But you must promise to do whatever I shall tell you to do. There is only one way by which you can be saved. It is a fearful way. But unless you find the courage to attempt it, she will tear you limb from limb. If you can be brave, come to me again in the evening before sunset.’ The man shuddered; but he promised to do whatever should be required of him.

  At sunset the inyōshi went with him to the house where the body was lying. The inyōshi pushed open the sliding-doors, and told his client to enter. It was rapidly growing dark. ‘I dare not!’ gasped the man, quaking from head to foot; ‘I dare not even look at her!’ ‘You will have to do much more than look at her,’ declared the inyōshi; ‘and you promised to obey. Go in!’ He forced the trembler into the house and led him to the side of the corpse.

  The dead woman was lying on her face. ‘Now you must get astride upon her,’ said the inyōshi, ‘and sit firmly on her back, as if you were riding a horse … Come! – you must do it!’ The man shivered so that the inyōshi had to support him – shivered horribly; but he obeyed. ‘Now take her hair in your hands,’ commanded the inyōshi – ‘half in the right hand, half in the left … So! … You must grip it like a bridle. Twist your hands in it – both hands – tightly. That is the way! … Listen to me! You must stay like that till morning. You will have reason to be afraid in the night – plenty of reason. But whatever may happen, never let go of her hair. If you let go – even for one second – she will tear you into gobbets!’

  The inyōshi then whispered some mysterious words into the ear of the body, and said to its rider: ‘Now, for my own sake, I must leave you alone with her … Remain as you are! … Above all things, remember that you must not let go of her hair.’ And he went away – closing the doors behind him.

  Hour after hour the man sat upon the corpse in black fear; and the hush of the night deepened and deepened about him till he screamed to break it. Instantly the body sprang beneath him, as to cast him off; and the dead woman cried out loudly, ‘Oh, how heavy it is! Yet I shall bring that fellow here now!’

  Then tall she rose, and leaped to the doors, and flung them open, and rushed into the night – always bearing the weight of the man. But he, shutting his eyes, kept his hands twisted in her long hair – tightly, tightly – though fearing with such a fear that he could not even moan. How far she went, he never knew. He saw nothing: he heard only the sound of her naked feet in the dark – picha-picha, picha-picha – and the hiss of her breathing as she ran.

  At last she turned, and ran back into the house, and lay down upon the floor exactly as at first. Under the man she panted and moaned till the cocks began to crow. Thereafter she lay still.

  But the man, with chattering teeth, sat upon her until the inyōshi came at sunrise. ‘So you did not let go of her hair!’ – observed the inyōshi, greatly pleased. ‘That is well … Now you can stand up.’ He whispered again into the ear of the corpse, and then said to the man: ‘You must have passed a fearful night; but nothing else could have saved you. Hereafter you may feel secure from her vengeance.’

  * * *

  The conclusion of this story I do not think to be morally satisfying. It is not recorded that the corpse-rider became insane, or that his hair turned white: we are told only that ‘he worshipped the inyōshi with tears of gratitude.’ A note appended to the recital is equally disappointing. ‘It is reported,’ the Japanese author says, ‘that a grandchild of the man [who rode the c
orpse] still survives, and that a grandson of the inyōshi is at this very time living in a village called Otokunoi-mura [probably pronounced Otonoi-mura].’

  This village-name does not appear in any Japanese directory of today. But the names of many towns and villages have been changed since the foregoing story was written.

  The Sympathy of Benten

  In Kyōto there is a famous temple called Amadera. Sadazumi Shinnō, the fifth son of the Emperor Seiwa,1 passed the greater part of his life there as a priest; and the graves of many celebrated persons are to be seen in the temple-grounds.

  But the present edifice is not the ancient Amadera. The original temple, after the lapse of ten centuries, fell into such decay that it had to be entirely rebuilt in the fourteenth year of Genroku2 (1701 A. D.).

  A great festival was held to celebrate the re-building of the Amadera; and among the thousands of persons who attended that festival there was a young scholar and poet named Hanagaki Baishū. He wandered about the newly-laid-out grounds and gardens, delighted by all that he saw, until he reached the place of a spring at which he had often drunk in former times. He was then surprised to find that the soil about the spring had been dug away, so as to form a square pond, and that at one corner of this pond there had been set up a wooden tablet bearing the words Tanjō-Sui (‘Birth-Water’).fn1 He also saw that a small, but very handsome temple of the Goddess Benten3 had been erected beside the pond. While he was looking at this new temple, a sudden gust of wind blew to his feet a tanzakufn2 on which the following poem had been written: