As a result, many people tried to avoid taking photos in threes, and if for some reason a photo absolutely had to be taken, some photographers went so far as to include a stuffed toy or doll to take the number of “people” in the photo up to four.
Similar to the reason given above, to take a photo in the Edo Period required going to a photo studio and spending a lot of money to do so. This meant that photos were, in general, limited to the wealthy. The most senior person would take the centre position as a sign of respect, and being the most senior person meant there was a higher chance of them passing away due to old age first.
Modern cameras, of course, are able to focus on several faces at once and reproduce all of them in perfectly clear quality, and very few people believe the camera actually steals your soul anymore. And yet the legend remains, and you’ll still find people today who refuse to stand in the middle of a three-shot photo, particularly amongst the elderly.
Red Scarf
A young girl with a red scarf transferred to a new elementary school. One day, a boy in her class asked her, “Why are you always wearing that scarf?”
“When you start junior high, I’ll tell you then,” she answered.
Both the boy and the girl went to the same junior high school. One day the boy asked her, “We’re in junior high now, so tell me, why do you always wear that scarf?”
“If you go to the same high school as me, I’ll tell you then,” the girl replied.
The pair ended up going to the same high school together.
“Tell me, why are you always wearing that red scarf?” the boy asked her again.
“If you go to the same university as me, I’ll tell you then,” the girl replied with a shy laugh.
The pair entered the same university. They started dating, and eventually got married. Shortly after they got married, the boy asked her, “By the way, why are you always wearing that scarf?”
“Do you really want to know?” the girl asked, her eyes downcast.
“We’re married, aren’t we? Surely you can tell me now.”
“Okay, fine. I’ll tell you…”
The girl finally took off the scarf she always wore.
“If you hadn’t asked, we could have been together forever…”
Bang!
The girl’s head fell to the floor. The scarf had been the only thing keeping her head on…
ABOUT
This legend first started to spread in the mid-1990s and was especially popular with junior and high school students. It’s both scary and heartbreaking, a winning combination for many in the throes of puberty. As the internet became more popular in the early 2000s, the story spread even further, and additions were made to the ending as it was shared around. One new ending added the following:
“Well, how about we get you a scarf that matches as well?”
Even now, the girl with the red scarf and the boy with the blue scarf are living happily together in that household.
Yet another embellishment went even further:
Word has it that recently, they’ve given birth to a baby with a purple scarf as well.
The story draws several parallels with older classics, such as Yuki-onna and Tsuru no Ongaeshi. In both of these classic tales, the woman is hiding a secret; in Yuki-onna’s case, the fact that she’s Yuki-onna, and in Tsuru no Ongaeshi’s case, the fact that the man’s wife is really a bird. When the man persists with knowing what the secret is, she is forced to reveal her true nature and the relationship ends. The newer additions to this urban legend attempt to add a happy ending and avoid that fate, but they don’t exist in the original, which is truer to the classics.
The girl is also somewhat reminiscent of the yokai rokurokubi, a woman who can elongate her neck or even detach her head completely, and hitouban, a yokai based on a Chinese legend that can do the same. In rare variations of the legend, the girl is actually revealed to be a hitouban, but in general there’s no reason given as to why her head is being kept on by a scarf. It’s scarier that way.
Turbo Granny
A man was driving through the mountains late one night. Before long he heard a sound coming from behind him. He looked in the rear-view mirror, thinking it might be another car approaching him, but there was no light. He must have been imagining it, he thought, and continued driving.
Bang! Bang!
The next moment, something hit the window. Surprised, the man turned and saw an old lady running beside the car, grinning at him. The old lady took off, out-speeding the car. A short while later the man crashed and died.
ABOUT
Turbo Granny, or Jet Granny, is perhaps the most famous of all “granny” legends. There are numerous variations on her name, where she appears, and what exactly happens if you see her, but the one consistent factor across all stories is her incredible speed. She’s said to be able to reach over 140 kilometres per hour. Not really someone you want to run into late at night on the mountain roads!
Although Turbo Granny is considered a modern yokai, it’s thought that she’s simply a new variation on an old tale called “Ushiro wo Furimukeba” (If You Turn Around). Danger in most horror situations tends to come from our blind spots, and we’re unable to see what’s behind us unless we turn around. It’s that old cliche of “phew, nothing’s there, it was all my imagination…” and then you turn to the side and whoops, it wasn’t my imagination after all. Something is there, and it’s unexpected and terrifying. In this case, the last thing you would expect to see while driving along a mountain road late at night would be an old lady keeping up with your car.
PARTICULARS
Turbo Granny’s traditional haunt was Rokkosan in Hyogo Prefecture, but as her fame grew, so did sightings of her all over the country. In early stories, Turbo Granny was a harmless yokai. She simply appeared running beside your car, grinned, and then ran off. Perhaps the look of surprise on drivers’ faces was enough for her, or perhaps she was just getting some exercise. Who knows? But as her legend grew, so did her danger. A scary story in which the monster causes no harm isn’t all that scary after a while, so Turbo Granny became more threatening. Now, if you saw her and she overtook you, that meant you would crash and die. Supposedly this was because your body went into shock upon seeing her and would refuse to move. Not the best situation to be in when driving through Japan’s perilous mountains.
Once a harmless and even somewhat charming yokai, stories of Turbo Granny’s reign of terror on the roads soon spread through television and manga. She became less of a joke and more of a serious legend, the living embodiment of that blind spot behind us all where danger lurks unseen. Seeing her was no longer something you could joke about with friends; seeing her meant certain death.
VARIATIONS
Turbo Granny doesn’t roam the dark streets of Japan alone; she has numerous old folk helping her out. Here are a few buddies who are believed to be derived from her original story:
Basketball Granny: likes to dribble a basketball while chasing bikes on the road. She then throws the ball to unsuspecting riders. If they catch the ball, their bike will crash and they’ll die. If they ignore the ball, the ball will hit them in the head, causing them to crash and die. There’s no winning either way. Also known as Dribbling Granny thanks to her hot basketball skills.
Coffin Granny: likes to chase drivers, grab them, shove them in a coffin and then cremate them alive.
Bonnet Granny: likes to jump onto the bonnets of cars driving along the highway. This is in an attempt to make drivers swerve and crash, but if you can manage to drive another seven kilometres with her on the front of your car, she’ll eventually leave you alone.
Elbow Granny: likes to chase cars on her elbows. There’s a good reason for this: like Teketeke, Elbow Granny has no legs. If she manages to catch you, it’s game over.
Hopping Granny: likes to land in front of cars on mountain roads, causing them to freak out and slam on the breaks. She jumps out of the way before they can hit her, but this usually
results in the car going over the edge of a cliff and the driver dying.
Jumping Granny: likes to jump incredible distances, just like Hopping Granny. We’ll be looking at her a little more in-depth later.
Aside from her old lady friends, plenty of other speedy folks are said to haunt Japan’s roads as well:
Highway Businessman: a man in a suit who chases down cars on highways.
Bike Office Lady: the company worker who chases down cars on her old-fashioned Japanese motorcycle.
Hand Cart Woman: a lady in Hokkaido who pulls a hand cart and races cars with it, reaching speeds of up to 80 kilometres per hour.
Crawling Woman: a woman in white who haunts mountain roads and crawls behind cars on all fours at incredible speed.
Missile Girl: the high school girl who rides a missile.
Skipping Girl: a young girl near the Tsuyama Interchange in Okayama who wears a white blouse, red skirt, backpack and skips between cars at speeds of 80 kilometres per hour.
Handball Mari-chan: the spirit of a girl who was killed in a hit-and-run accident while playing with a Japanese handball.
Handball Grandpa: an old man who chases down cars while playing with a Japanese handball.
Crawling Baby: crawls with incredible speed alongside cars on the highway.
Beware if ever driving Japan’s streets, particularly at night. Turbo Granny and her friends are seemingly everywhere.
Jumping Granny
A young man arrived at a cemetery in Nagoya to test his courage with a group of friends. The cemetery was creepy at night, which made the group even more excited. They decided to circle around the area.
Shortly after they started walking, they heard a sound. They turned to see what it was. Endless tombstones lined the park, but something strange stood out amongst them.
There was an old woman wearing geta (Japanese wooden clogs), jumping from tombstone to tombstone, over incredible distances not possible by any normal human.
ABOUT
A group of YouTubers looked up what urban legends were popular in Nagoya and the first thing that popped up was “Jumping Granny.” According to the legends, this “Jumping Granny” only appears in Aichi Prefecture, specifically in the capital of Nagoya, so they wanted to know how well-known she was, and what information they could discover about her from the general public. They stopped random people in the street to ask them about her and roughly half had no idea who she was. All of these people grew up outside of Nagoya, which confirmed their suspicions that she was unknown outside the local area. Of those who had heard of her, the responses were varied. Nobody seemed to know exactly who she was, what she did, or where she appeared. But she could jump really high. Everyone agreed on that.
By all accounts, Jumping Granny appears to be a recent urban legend that began sometime during the last few years. She’s closely tied to Yagoto Cemetery, one of the largest cemeteries in Nagoya, and Heiwa Park a few kilometres away. Supposedly she can jump anywhere from four to 10 metres, and not just on tombstones. Some stories have her lurking in the woods and jumping to the top of trees, while others see her on highways jumping all over the place and causing drivers to crash.
On an interesting side note, there is also a “Rolling Grandpa” that roams the streets of Nagoya at night. Much like the granny he’s no doubt based on, he chases people at high speed, only this grandpa rolls instead of jumps. There’s also a “Hopping Granny” who may or may not be another name for the Jumping Granny, although she’s often linked to Turbo Granny as well. She seems to occupy a middle ground between the two.
With Japan’s ageing population, it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise to see scary old folk stories on the rise, and I suspect we’ll see even more of them in the future.
564219
A high school girl received a strange number on her pager. It said “564219.” The girl had no idea what it meant. Then it came again. “564219.”
A few days later, the girl was killed. Everyone, if you happen to receive the numbers “564219” (ko ro shi ni i ku), take care. You could be next.
ABOUT
As you can tell by the use of a pager in this legend, it’s rather old. The meaning behind it may not be immediately apparent to an English speaker, but that’s because the “warning” is hidden in the Japanese pronunciation of the numbers involved.
Japanese numbers often have several ways they can be pronounced depending on the situation. In this legend it’s literally spelt out afterwards, just in case people weren’t quick on the uptake: 5 (ko) 6 (ro) 4 (shi) 2 (ni) 1 (i) 9 (ku). This spells out koroshi ni iku, which in English translates to “I’m going to kill you.” Straight forward, yet still sneaky enough to inspire fear once somebody realises the hidden meaning.
Few people carry pagers anymore, and high school girls these days probably wouldn’t even know what a pager was if it landed on their desk, so more recent versions of this legend have changed it to a phone number you can call instead. It should be clear at first glance that 564219 isn’t enough numbers to be a phone number, but that’s its charm. It’s a special number that will forward you to a shinigami, a god of death, and that shinigami will come to kill you for calling them direct:
If you call the number 564219, you’ll be put through to a shinigami who will come to collect your soul. Whether it’s actually true or not is up for debate, but it’s not something you should mess around with lightly.
While the method of receiving or calling this number may change with technology, the heart of this legend is likely to be around for a while. People do love a deadly pun, after all.
Tripping Over a Tombstone
Graveyards are said to be unlucky places, and if you happen to trip over a tombstone, they say that the dead will reach out to claim your leg. In order to avoid this, you must leave your shoe behind on the grave instead.
ABOUT
Parents often tell their children this legend, or at least some variation where it’s mortally dangerous to trip over a tombstone. For example, the following is a tale commonly told in the countryside:
A group of five friends were playing in a graveyard after school. One of the boys tripped over a tombstone and the others told him, “If you fall over in a graveyard, you have to leave one leg behind.”
Of course, the boy couldn’t cut his own leg off, so he left a shoe instead. A few days later, the five were playing at the same graveyard again, only this time, one of the boys tripped and took two of his friends down with him like dominoes.
“We need to leave a shoe behind!” they said again. Two of the boys removed a shoe and placed it on the ground, but the other boy refused. His shoes were brand new and his favourite. He didn’t want to leave one behind.
“If you don’t leave one, they’ll come and take your leg,” the boys told him, but in the end he left with both his shoes on. Nobody thought much of it, but on the way home one boy was nearly hit by a truck, and another narrowly avoided being crushed by fallen materials at a construction site.
The next day, the boys told each other about what happened on their way home. “It’s the graveyard curse!” they screamed. They wondered what happened to their friend who didn’t leave his shoe behind, but he didn’t come to school that day. The following day their teacher suddenly announced that he had transferred schools.
In reality, that same day the boy refused to leave his shoe behind, he was overcome with sudden paralysis on the right side of his body and never recovered…
Losing a leg (or suffering paralysis) isn’t the only thing to fear if you happen to accidentally trip over a tombstone. Other stories claim that if you fall over, that wound will never heal. If you fall over, your life will be shortened. If you fall over, you’ll be spirited away. If you fall over, your spirit will escape. If you fall over, you must change your name. If you fall over, you’ll become a cat (yes, seriously…). There are all sorts of variations from different areas of Japan, all designed to keep rambunctious children from desecrating grave sites. As
ide from the obvious reason of not wanting children to run wild in a graveyard, how did this legend come to be?
ORIGINS
It’s thought this superstition came about as a way to teach children of the hidden dangers in graveyards. At present, 99.9% of bodies are cremated after death in Japan, but before World War II, most were buried. Some local governments now ban burials altogether, but many rural areas retain their old traditions. It wasn’t uncommon in the early Showa Period for these bodies to ferment and produce gases that burst forth through the ground, opening small holes and cracks above them. This made it easy for people to unknowingly fall into one and trip over.
Children often used graveyards as playgrounds at the time, and aside from the sudden holes in the ground, they were also faced with sharp, pointed tombstones and the possibility that knocking one over would crush them. Thus, to keep their children safe, parents told them that falling over in a graveyard was not only unlucky, but it would lead to death if they were not careful, and a superstition was born.
What about the shoe? Well, if you’ve upset a spirit by tripping over its grave, the least you can do is leave something behind so they don’t come and take something—like your leg—for themselves…
Toshiden: Exploring Japanese Urban Legends: Volume Two Page 5