Toshiden: Exploring Japanese Urban Legends: Volume Two

by Tara A. Devlin

  At this point, you would think that Higashihara should probably stop blogging entirely. This isn’t even the entirety of the strange coincidences readers of her blog have noticed, but it gives you a good idea of why it came to be somewhat affectionately known as the “Death Blog.” It may seem reminiscent of Matsushima Nahomi’s curse, where anybody she publicly supports soon suffers a terrible fate. In fact, this pair have been called by some the Devil of the East (Higashihara in Tokyo) and the Devil of the West (Matsushima in Osaka).

  Unsurprisingly, Higashihara herself is aware of what people call her blog, and has spoken on TV about how it’s often on her mind. Her blog reached peak infamy around 2013 due to a rapid string of incidents, but now, around 10 years after she first started writing, things seem to have calmed down.

  Still, people must undoubtedly get nervous when they see their names pop up in one of her posts. You never know what might happen…

  Dragon Ball GT’s Meaning

  Dragon Ball GT hit the airwaves in 1996 and aired for close to two years. However, despite its popularity, nobody could ever fully explain what “GT” really stood for.

  In reality, Dragon Ball GT was made without any help from Toriyama Akira, the original creator, and so the company producing the show added “GT” as an apology to him. It actually stood for Gomen ne (sorry) Toriyama-sensei.

  ABOUT

  This legend could easily fit in the joke section as well. Dragon Ball GT was generally not very well received by fans when it was originally released. It was a new story created not by Toriyama Akira, the creator, but by TOEI Animation, the company behind the anime adaption of his original work. When Dragon Ball Z ended, TOEI approached both Toriyama and Shuukan Shonen Jump, the magazine which published Dragon Ball, and informed them of their desire to make a new show that continued 10 years after the battle with Majin Buu. Both Toriyama and his publisher agreed and even gave their own ideas for the show, and in the end it was Toriyama himself who gave the show its title of GT: Grand Tour, not Gomen ne, Toriyama-sensei.

  Needless to say, there’s not much truth in this one.

  The Idol’s Prediction

  This happened a long time ago, on the TV show Neruton Benikujira Dan. On this particular day, popular singer Nakamori Akina appeared as a guest. One of the hosts asked her a simple question.

  “What type of man do you like?”

  Nakamori responded, “I like men like Miyazaki Tsutomu.”

  She had meant to say Yamazaki Tsutomu, a popular actor, and instead said “Miyazaki.”

  A few days later, news of a man who was arrested for crimes that shook the world was announced. His name was Miyazaki Tsutomu, the Little Girl Murderer.

  ABOUT

  Nakamori Akina is a popular singer who is still releasing albums to this day. She debuted at age 16 when she won the 1981 season of talent show Star Tanjo!, and has to-date sold over 25,340,000 albums, making her the third best-selling idol in Japan’s history (behind SMAP and Matsuda Seiko). Nakamori was at the pinnacle of her career when she was scheduled to appear on the talk show Neruton Benikujira Dan in 1989. That year would prove to be the darkest of Nakamori’s life, for various reasons.

  Nakamori was scheduled to appear on Neruton Benikujira Dan for its June 17, 1989 episode. However, when Nakamori’s interview segment was due to air, the screen suddenly cut off and switched to a “Please wait a moment” placard. The program continued to flicker in and out, before finally going to black with the text “Due to breaking news, this program has been cancelled. Please understand.” The program then cut to a commercial, but scenes of Nakamori’s interview continued to cut in and out. Finally the screen turned to colour bars, and the show ended.

  A few days later, the episode was rescheduled. A notice was put up before the show announcing “We apologise that the June 17 episode of Neruton Benikujira Dan was cancelled. We will air it now.” This time, the episode proceeded as normal. The hosts asked Nakamori what type of man she liked.

  “A man with a nice smile,” she answered.

  “Can you give us an example using a famous person?” they asked.

  “Miyazaki Tsutomu,” she answered. The hosts were briefly confused, because there was no famous person with that name.

  “You mean Yamazaki Tsutomu?” they clarified. “Come on, at least get his name right!”

  Nakamori, confused, then said, “Huh, I don’t know why, but inside my head I always thought it was Miyazaki.”

  At the time, Nakamori was publicly dating fellow singer Kondo Masahiko. They briefly spoke about her relationship with him and the show ended. People soon forgot about the strange hiccup that kept the show off the air and moved on. A few weeks later, breaking news revealed that a man named Miyazaki Tsutomu had been arrested for sexually assaulting and murdering several young girls. The very same name Nakamori had said was her “ideal type” on the TV program that suffered technical difficulties, proclaimed it was being interrupted for breaking news (when there was none, at least, not at that time), and then had to be rescheduled for a later date. A strange coincidence, to be sure, but things got even stranger.

  As mentioned earlier, 1989 was a troubling year for Nakamori. Her relationship with Kondo was on the rocks, and there was talk that her hit single “Liar” was written about him. On July 11, just a few weeks after her appearance on Neruton Benikujira Dan aired, Nakamori cut her left wrist inside Kondo’s apartment in a suicide attempt. She was found and taken to the hospital in time, but the news shocked Japan. Then, less than two weeks later, Miyazaki Tsutomu was arrested.

  The strange coincidences went even further than that. While Nakamori recovered, both mentally, physically, and career-wise, Miyazaki Tsutomu, the Little Girl Murderer and man whose name she had mistakenly said was her ideal type on TV, was sentenced to death. He was executed on June 17, 2008. The exact same date Nakamori’s original interview was supposed to air. The same date it was besieged with technical difficulties, strange warnings of breaking news, and then finally cancelled.

  Makes you think, doesn’t it?

  Jungle

  Did you know that in 1992, two different commercials were aired late at night that had subliminal messages? These commercials were called “Jungle” and there were two versions; a doll version and a heart version.

  The doll version featured a song that strongly resembled the national anthem, Kimi Ga Yo. A doll appeared on screen, and with each flash of light the number of dolls multiplied. The lyrics sang of the pain of life and death, and as the flashes extended, the dolls appeared to die in pain like victims of an atomic bomb. It then ended with a voice screaming painfully, “Come on then, look!”

  The heart version featured a healthy-looking pink heart (the shape, not an actual heart). The colours of the heart flashed in and out and slowly it decayed until rotten. If you traced over the dark, rotten spots, it spelt out “AIDS.” Right after the commercial began, a needle stabbed the upper right portion of the heart, signifying it was dying because of infection from a used needle, highlighting the horrors of drugs.

  ABOUT

  Although they’re not commercials, the videos mentioned in this legend are real and you can still watch them on the internet today. They are admittedly pretty creepy. The shorts were actually eye-catches; short clips used to begin and end commercial breaks on Japanese TV. They aired during Fuji TV’s late night programming block called Jungle, which aired from October 1992 to September 1993.

  The short clips, which both featured 15 and 30 second versions, were supposed to set the mood for the late-night block. The heart version aired on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, while the doll version aired on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays. Although they were never commercials, nor were they aiming to sell anything, the imagery was so vivid that people still remember them today as commercials.

  Not long after the shorts started to air, people began murmuring about the supposed subliminal messages hidden inside them. They were called the “weird” commercia
ls, the “fear” commercials, the “mysterious” commercials. Why did the rotten heart spell out AIDS? Why were dolls writhing in pain under what looked like an atomic bomb flash?

  THE TRUTH

  The head of editing at Fuji TV at the time was Ogawa Shinichi. When it came time to create the eye catches for the late-night programming slot, he reportedly said, “Anything goes. Mix it all up!” By mixing several elements together, they would end up with something strange and mysterious, which was his goal and also the reasoning behind the name “Jungle.”

  According to the creators who worked on the short clips, there were no hidden meanings behind them. They were created to demonstrate and wild freedom and abandonment the Jungle late-night programming was supposed to offer. Anything goes, after all! It’s hard to argue after seeing the clips that they didn’t do a good job of setting the mood, if nothing else.

  So, the official line was that there was no message behind either video. Of course, even if the creators did try to hide subliminal messages in the clips, it’s unlikely they’d come out and admit that, even several decades later.

  There’s no denying that the commercials were designed to push people’s buttons so they would be remembered, and it’s hard to deny that they were playing on the very real fear of both AIDS and nuclear bombing. Whether they were supposed to be anything other than memorable, however, we’ll likely never know.

  Severed Head on Live Broadcast

  This happened on the TV show Totsuzen Gabacho, an old program that featured comedian Shofukutei Tsurube.

  The hosts were discussing a ghost photo they had received in which three women appeared to be missing body parts; arms, legs, and even a head. Of the three women in the photo, two of them were already dead. Their limbs were severed when they died. The final woman, the one missing her head, was still alive. It was this woman who sent the photo in to the program because she feared it was cursed, and she would be next.

  The program invited the woman to appear so they could prove the curse wasn’t real. It was a late night live program, so the woman’s mother accompanied her to the studio. However, right as they arrived, the woman was hit by a car and her head cut off. The mother, shocked and confused, picked up her daughter’s still bleeding head and carried it upstairs to where the show was filming live.

  People inside the studio screamed when they saw her, and for just a second the severed head appeared on camera before they panicked, swung the camera to the roof, and then turned it off entirely. It was only a few seconds, but this footage was broadcast all over the Osaka area. Thanks to that, the program was thereafter cancelled.

  ABOUT

  Totsuzen Gabacho was a variety program that aired from October 5, 1982 to September 24, 1985. It ran in the 10 p.m. slot for an hour and occasionally featured a corner where the hosts shared scary stories, ghost photos, etc. And, if you believe the legend, also once aired live footage of a woman’s severed head.

  There was a period where if you typed “Shofukutei Tsurube” into a search engine in Japanese, one of the first suggestions that would show up would be “severed head.” Other more pertinent news has booted that term out of the list recently, but that’s how popular this urban legend was, and continues to be.

  But is there any truth to it? Did a woman really send in a cursed photo, only to die on her way to the studio to prove it wasn’t real and have her shocked mother carry the head on stage before a live TV audience?

  THE TRUTH

  You don’t have to dig too far to discover that this legend is just that. No such photo ever appeared on the show, no such woman was ever invited, and despite people going back through all the final episodes of the show—which was supposedly cancelled after this incident took place—nobody ever found anything even remotely resembling what happens in this story.

  Thinking about it rationally, the story itself already seems unlikely. How would a woman manage to carry the severed head of her daughter all the way up to a live studio broadcast from outside the building without anybody seeing or stopping her? Like most television programs in Japan, the studios are located in large skyscrapers in the city and people need to get through a variety of receptions, elevators, and security before they can get to where they’re going. It’s extremely unlikely that this would ever occur, but even if we suppose that every single person was asleep that night—because it was a late night broadcast after all—and not a single person managed to capture it on tape as it aired, there is another reason we know this story to be fake: the creator of it came out and said as much.

  On February 18, 2001, Shofukutei appeared on Saigo no Bansan and spoke publicly for the first time of the rumours. He straight out denied that anything of the sort had ever happened. “How did such an outrageous story even come about?” he said. “I could understand it if they made the story up about someone scarier than me, but it goes entirely against my character!”

  Japanese television personalities have certain traits and characteristics they portray, much like an actor playing a role (for example, the airhead, the angry woman, the womaniser, etc), and Shofukutei was a comedian. He was the funny guy. Why would people try to use him as the basis for a scary urban legend? It would be more believable if it were a personality who was known for being darker, basically.

  It turns out there was a good reason for it being Shofukutei, however. At the same time Totsuzen Gabacho was running, Shofukutei also hosted a radio program called Nukarumi no Sekai. For some unknown reason, a listener of that show created the story and shared it. Here’s where it gets a little muddy, because there are also versions of this legend that don’t involve Totsuzen Gabacho at all, but instead it was said to happen while Shofukutei was hosting Nukarumi no Sekai. That version goes as follows:

  When Shofukutei Tsurube was working as a DJ on radio, he received a letter from a listener.

  “I went on holiday with three of my friends and had a stranger take a photo of us. A short while later our friend sent the picture to all of us, but apparently, we were all headless in it. After that, the friend who sent me the photo and the two others died in accidents. I’m the only one left! I’m not brave enough to look at the photo myself, what should I do?”

  Worried, Shofukutei called the woman directly.

  “I looked at it! I’m gonna die!” The woman was in a panic.

  “If you’re that worried about it, bring the photo to me right now,” Shofukutei said. The listener agreed, and the program continued.

  However, after a long commercial break, Shofukutei could be heard crying. The woman he had spoken to earlier on the phone had died on her way there.

  “It’s my fault. I did this…” Shofukutei’s voice echoed lifelessly from the speakers.

  It’s likely that this version of the legend was the original, and the creator of the story admitted that it was something they made up. Over time, embellishments were added and somehow the woman without a head in the photo actually lost her head in an accident on the way over. The radio program was changed to the television program Shofukutei was appearing on at the same time, and an extra grizzly bit of horror was added to the end. The woman didn’t just die, her mother carried her severed head all the way up to the program and it appeared on live TV. Admittedly, this is far more gruesome and horrifying than the radio version, which is also likely why it’s the most popular version today.

  So no, there was never a severed head live on late night television. Just an imaginative story that took on a life of its own and grew to be a horrifying legend still talked about nearly 40 years later.

  Mysterious Vinyl String

  Tantei! Knight Scoop started airing in 1988, and even today it remains a popular TV program in the Kansai area. They investigate all sorts of requests from listeners, and for 20 years now they’ve been sending out comedians and entertainers to discover the truth behind these stories.

  However, in all these years the show has been on the air, there has only been one investigation that they halted and decided no
t to pursue any further.

  The year was 1992. People were discovering numerous vinyl strings attached to guard rails and telephone poles around Konoikeshinden in Osaka. Nobody knew what they meant. Finding it strange, the public requested Tantei! Knight Scoop to investigate. Kitamura Masahide, better known as TOMMY’s Masa, one half of a popular manzai duo, was dispatched to check it out.

  He discovered the strings tied in various places around town, and even while he was investigating the number of strings grew. Only ten minutes had passed since he last investigated and returned to find even more, setting the members back in the studio on edge. In the end he discovered that a pole behind a particular gas station was covered in countless strings, causing studio members to scream in horror.

  However, at the end of the episode, a note was displayed signalling an end to the investigation, and the program wouldn’t be taking any further tips from the public. Many suggested the strings were just leftovers from signs hung in the area, but locals said they’d never seen any signs there before.

  After the show, members of the local government collected all the strings, and nobody ever found out why they were there to begin with. In reality, however, the show discovered who really put the strings there. When they asked her why, she answered, “I don’t know why… I just had to.”

  ABOUT

  Tantei! Knight Scoop first aired on March 5, 1988, and is still on the air today. It’s a variety program where various comedians work together as a “detective agency” and take on requests from viewers to get to the bottom of things. The show is based in Osaka, but they venture out into other areas of Japan when necessary. This particular episode featuring the mysterious vinyl strings aired on March 20, 1992. The “detective” was TOMMY’s Masa, who was dispatched to Konoikeshinden in Osaka after the show received a letter from a troubled clothing store owner. That letter was as follows: