Yurei Attack!: The Japanese Ghost Survival Guide

by Hiroko Yoda

  Shinzaburo’s neighbor, a fortuneteller, overheard the regular midnight chatter and grew suspicious. He peered into Shinzaburo’s home through a crack in the wall. What he saw chilled him to the bone. For Shinzaburo was carrying on an animated conversation with a pair of desiccated corpses, their kimono stained and tattered, their eye sockets gaping holes.

  The next day, the fortune-teller confronted Shinzaburo, who reluctantly confessed his plans to elope. But he refused to believe what the fortune-teller told him about Otsuyu’s true form. After much back and forth, the fortune teller convinced Shinzaburo to pay a surprise visit to the neighborhood where Otsuyu claimed to live. Shinzaburo wandered from door to door asking after the pair; but the neighbors claimed no knowledge of any young women living there. On his way home, Shinzaburo took a short cut through the local cemetery at Shin-Banzuin temple, and that is when he spotted them: not the girls, but a pair of fresh grave-markers bearing the names “Otsuyu” and “Oyone.”

  Rushing back, the terrified Shinzaburo consulted the abbot of his local temple, who prescribed consecrated ofuda talisman slips to be pasted over his abode’s every opening to keep the spirits at bay. In spite of his feelings for Otsuyu, Shinzaburo knew he had no choice but to oblige. Night after night, he desperately tried to ignore the heartbreaking wails of Otsuyu and Oyone, in turns angry and piteous, issuing from beyond his walls.

  Desperate to help her mistress, the ghostly Oyone threatened Shinzaburo’s servants, a married couple who had long served the ronin. With their own fates at stake, the husband and wife bargained with the ghost, demanding 100 ryo — an astounding sum — in return for betraying their master and livelihood.

  The rest is history. It isn’t known where or how Oyone obtained the money, but obtain it she did; and Shinzaburo’s treacherous servants peeled just one ofuda from a crack in the wall of their master’s residence.

  The next morning, Shinzaburo was found dead in his bedchamber — his face a grimace of terror, and beside him the skeleton of a long-dead woman, its arms thrown around his neck in a final, eternal embrace. At the behest of the abbot with whom he had first consulted, Shinzaburo was buried alongside Otsuyu and Oyone.

  The Attack

  A product of a more genteel era, The Tale of the Peony Lantern is circumspect as to what precisely occurred within the walls (and more specifically, the bedroom) of Shinzaburo’s mansion, but one can surmise the general details.

  Surviving an Encounter

  Otsuyu’s fate was inextricably linked to that of her lover; his death effectively released her from her bondage to this Earthly plane. But while you’ll never run into Otsuyu herself, unrequited love is no less powerful a force today than it was in medieval Japan. Should you find yourself in a similar situation, take a page from Otsuyu’s tale and stock up on consecrated ofuda talismans (for convenience, we have included samples on p. 188). Pasting them on doorways, window frames, and over potential entrances is the time-honored method for keeping out all sorts of bogeymen — and women — out of one’s home. You are safe as long as they are in place.

  A word of warning for frustrated teens and/or adventurous sorts. Ghost-chronicler Lafcaido Hearn said: “the spirit of the living is positive, the other negative. He whose bride is a ghost cannot live.” (Remember, Shinzaburo did not die with a smile on his face.)

  The Literary History

  The Tale of the Peony Lantern first appeared in Otogiboko (“A Child’s Amulet”), a 1666 collection of short stories by the Buddhist monk and writer Asai Ryoi, which consisted of adaptations of old Chinese tales reworked for a (then) modern Japanese audience. Although well known, Otsuyu’s story didn’t truly take off until 1884, when it was expanded into a rakugo performance — a form of one-man verbal stage show. This led to an 1892 kabuki version, a performance of which happened to be seen by the one and only Hearn, who retitled the story “A Passional Karma” and included it in his 1899 book In Ghostly Japan.

  Trivia Notes

  Peony lanterns are an archaic form of illumination once used during the Obon festival. They were so named for the faux peony petals affixed to their tops.

  Yoshitoshi’s interpretation of “Botan Doro” from his 36 Ghosts series, showning Otsuyu with Oyone carrying a peony lantern.

  Sexy & Scary: 04

  THE LADY ROKUJO

  Sexy & Scary: 04

  THE LADY ROKUJO

  Name in Japanese: 六条御息所

  Origin: The Tale of Genji, ca. 1001

  Gender: Female

  Date of Death: Not applicable

  Age at death: N/A

  Cause of death: N/A

  Type of ghost: Ikiryo

  Distinctive features: N/A

  Location of haunting: Bedchamber of Lady Aoi

  Form of Attack: Causing of illness

  Existence: Fictional

  Threat Level: High

  Claim to Fame

  Spirits don’t always represent the souls of the dead. A textbook case in point concerns that of Lady Rokujo, a high-ranking courtesan in the Imperial court of the Heian era, a thousand years ago. She was the source of an extremely rare and quite dangerous phenomenon known as an ikiryo — a sense of resentment so powerful that it separates from the human body to stalk victims, often without the owner’s awareness or consent.

  The Story

  Lady Rokujo’s story is one of the most famous episodes in The Tale of Genji, an eleventh-century work of fiction considered by many scholars to represent the world’s first modern novel.

  In the Imperial courts of Heian Japan, discretion and control of one’s emotions were paramount to the nobility. This even extended to romantic affairs, which were conducted obliquely, with the pursuer and his prospective partner separated by screens, communicating at first almost exclusively by exchanging lines of poetry. Even the ends of relationships followed a proscribed trajectory, with a man expected to sooner or later move on to another conquest and the woman expected to quietly acquiesce to his departure. Human nature being what it is, however, things didn’t always play out according to protocol.

  Married to the Crown Prince, Rokujo was but a hair’s breadth away from becoming Empress of Japan. But the untimely death of her husband stripped Lady Rokujo of her rarefied status and consigned her to social purgatory at the ripe age of twenty-seven (an old biddy by the standards of the day). Then she found herself involved in a quiet but torrid affair with a younger man: the legendarily frisky aristocrat-playboy Hikaru Genji.

  Ladykiller though he was, Genji quickly found himself swept away by Rokujo’s beauty, wit, and elegance, and they carried on discreetly, if not in exact secrecy, for some time. But Genji, a rising star in the Imperial court, found himself increasingly saddled with duties both official (attending ceremonies) and unofficial (attending to the ever-growing number of conquests he’d racked up among the court’s various ladies-in-waiting). And to top it off, he reconciled with his legal wife, the Lady Aoi, now pregnant with his child. Sidelined from the one source of pleasure in her life, Lady Rokujo had already gone into a slow burn. But when a member of Aoi’s retinue “dissed” her in public, Rokujo’s resentment flared to life. Literally.

  The Attack

  Night after night, Lady Rokujo sank deep into dreams that dissolved into a repeating nightmare. In them, she found herself hovering over the sleeping Lady Aoi, whom she brutally snatched by the arm and proceeded to drag, strike, and whip against the walls of the bedchamber in fits of violence utterly alien to her reserved waking self.

  These were no ordinary dreams. Aoi actually fell ill, taking to her sickbed for the remainder of her pregnancy, weeping inconsolably, and lapsing into choking fits. She wailed that “something alien” had entered into her. The best onmyoji exorcists money could buy divined that some tremendous accumulation of malice had erupted like a pox upon her soul, but were powerless to stop it; the best they could do was arrange a séance between Genji and the spirit inhabiting Aoi, in the hopes he could soothe its anger.

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p; Surviving an Attack

  The most insidious aspect of the ikiryo is that the individual generating it often remains completely unaware of the fatal effects their jealousy is having upon others. In this case, it is fortunate both that the Lady Rokujo connected her dreams with the sufferings of the Lady Aoi and that she was at heart a good woman. In spite of the humiliations she had suffered, Rokujo truly wished no physical harm upon Genji’s wife or child. She focused her entire being on trying to banish her lover from her thoughts — no mean feat, as anyone who has deliberately tried to forget something will know. While Rokujo did not exactly succeed, the effort combined with the séance caused the ikiryo to release its hold. Unfortunately, though Aoi subsequently gave birth to a healthy baby boy, the combined strain of the pregnancy and psychic attack contributed to her death from natural causes several days later.

  Fortunately, ikiryo attacks are extraordinarily uncommon. They cannot be generated at will, or by pure hate; in Lady Rokujo’s case, it required the psychological “tinder” of abandonment and frustrated love, inflamed by an insult, to spark its existence. If you believe you or someone you love is suffering from an attack by an ikiryo, the best solution is to rack your brains to determine whom you may have wronged, and come up with a way to address the problem that does not involve shutting them out. In The Tale of Genji, the ikiryo is portrayed as much as the fault of Genji as that of the woman who unwittingly spawned it.

  The English translation of “The Tale of Genji”.

  Trivia

  Ikiryo are particularly problematic sorts of spooks — in many ways even more so than spirits of the dead. They are an extreme manifestation of that all too common human failing: holding a grudge. The negative energy and actions resulting from grudges are a powerful enough force even at levels below those needed to create a ferocious doppelganger. Addressing the hate and negativity that fuels an ikiryo is a far more difficult task than carrying out the measures needed to exorcize the spirits of the dead.

  There is an intriguing potential connection between ikiryo and the yokai known as nuke-kubi (See Yokai Attack!). Nuke-kubi are female creatures whose heads separate from their bodies and take flight of their own accord. According to some theories, these yokai were once normal women who, through years of suppressing their feelings for another, have lost control of an important bit of their anatomy, which takes to the skies in search of their unrequited love. In these cases it is infatuation rather than hate that fuels the transformation.

  Aoi may not have been the only victim of Lady Rokujo’s “living ghost.” A girl named Yugao (“Moon flower”), another of Genji’s girlfriends, died under mysterious circumstances as well. Print by Yoshitoshi, 1886.

  Sexy & Scary: 05

  ISORA

  Sexy & Scary: 05

  ISORA

  Name in Japanese: 磯良

  Origin: “The Kibitsu Cauldron” from Ugetsu Monogatari (“Tales of Moonlight and Rain”)

  Gender: Female

  Date of Death: ca. 1700s

  Age at Death: 18?

  Cause of Death: Heartbreak

  Distinctive Features: A former beauty, rendered ghostly; Sunken eyes; Sallow skin; Wild hair

  Place of internment: Okayama Prefecture

  Location of haunting: Village of Arai (now Takasago), Hyogo Prefecture

  Form of Attack: Manifestations; Brutal retaliation; Spiriting away of living humans; Forcible depilation (hair removal)

  Existence: Fictional

  Threat Level: High (if you happen to be married to her)

  Claim to Fame:

  Isora might not have the instant name recognition of other ghostly femme fatales like Okiku and Oiwa, but trust us, this is no spirit to be trifled with. Isora’s is a cautionary tale. Fooling around behind your spouse’s back is one thing. But certain betrayals are so egregious that the only way to bury the hatchet is in the back of the offender’s skull.

  The Story

  Long ago, in a far away village, lived a young man named Shotaro. He was the son of a farmer who worked very hard and built a small fortune, but he was not at all like his father. Instead of getting up early to till the fields, Shotaro stayed out late drinking sake and partying with the village girls. Finally, his parents got so fed up that they went and hired a matchmaker. They hoped that if they could just find the perfect wife for their son, he just might mend his wild ways. so they told the matchmaker to spare no cost in her search.

  She looked long and hard before finally coming back with a match. Isora, the seventeen-year-old daughter of the head priest at a nearby shrine. When they heard about how wealthy Shotaro’s family was, they were overjoyed. The families met and set a wedding day.

  Because he was a priest, Isora’s father decided to conduct a secret ceremony to determine the couple’s fortune: the Kibitsu Cauldron Ritual. He assembled the shrine-maidens, made holy offerings to the gods, and boiled water in a sacred wooden cauldron. If Shotaro and Isora’s future was bright, the boiling pot would make a deep sound, like a cow lowing. But the boiling pot made no sound at all. Even the insects outside stopped chirping.

  It was a bad sign. But Isora’s mother really wanted to see her married, and convinced her husband that the shrine-maidens had made some mistake. The wedding went ahead just as planned.

  Shotaro and Isora settled into their new married life. At first, everything was great. Isora happened to be a crack koto floor-harp player and entertained the family with recitals. Even Shotaro seemed to have turned over a new leaf, staying home to listen to the poetry his devoted wife composed for him.

  But you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, and Shotaro was dog through and through. He launched into a poorly concealed affair with a lady of the night named Sodé, growing so infatuated that he actually bought out her contract and set her up in a private love nest. The more Isora told him to knock his sleazy antics off, the longer he stayed away from home. Shotaro’s behavior even started embarrassing his own parents. They forbid him to leave the house until he pulled his act together.

  After a week or so of being grounded, a chastened Shotaro emerged to plead for Isora’s forgiveness. He promised to be faithful, and begged Isora for some money so that he could send Sodé away to begin life afresh in another city.

  Isora saw the money as well spent if it meant having her husband back. She sold off her prized kimono and even asked her parents for a little extra money, just to make sure. Shotaro thanked her profusely… then ran off with Sodé, never to return.

  Isora collapsed and took to her bed, unable to eat or sleep. In spite of the best medical care both families could buy, she slipped away soon after. She was gone; Shotaro had gotten away with it.

  Or had he?

  The Attack

  Shotaro and Sodé settled into a new home in a distant village. She fell ill with what seemed to be a common flu, but quickly took a turn for the worse. She began hallucinating, then wailing of an “alien presence” in her chest, and a pain so fierce she could hardly stand it. After a week of agony, Sodé passed away.

  Incidentally, physical complaints are almost word for word those the victim of Lady Rokujo’s “living ghost (p.28)

  At the cemetery, a grief-stricken but incorrigible Shotaro wasted no time in chatting up a lovely lady tending the grave next to Sodé’s. She offered to introduce Shotaro to her mistress, a beautiful woman who had only just lost her husband. Shotaro eagerly agreed to meet the widow and followed the servant to her house. For modesty’s sake, the widow remained behind a screen — a common arrangement in times of old.

  When Shotaro asked her name, the “widow” whipped the screen back, revealing herself to be none other than Isora! “Let me show you how I repay your cruelty!” she shrieked, her sunken eyes and ashen skin that of a yurei. Shotaro fainted from shock at the sight.

  He regained consciousness in an empty field. It had all been an illusion woven by his dead wife’s furious spirit! Terrified, Shotaro consulted an onmyoji (exorcist), who told him to paste cons
ecrated ofuda slips on the openings of his house and — this was critical — to remain inside for forty-two days and nights.

  But Isora’s ghost was cunning; on the very last night, she made it appear as though dawn had broken early. When Shotaro ran out to greet the sun, he was confronted with the cold light of the moon, and realized with horror that he had stepped out too early.

  Hearing a shriek, Shotaro’s nextdoor neighbor came over to see what was wrong. But there was no trace of Shotaro … except for blood-splattered walls and Shotaro’s topknotted scalp, dangling from the eaves. His body was never found.

  Surviving an Encounter

  Simple. When the onmyoji tells you to stay in the house for forty-two days, stay in the house for forty-two days. C’mon, in the internet era this is hardly a stretch. Some useful tips:

  1) Stock up on frozen foods, snacks, soft drinks, etc.

  2) Don’t forget the toilet paper, too.

  3) When you get to forty-two days? Stay one more. At this point, how much worse could it be? (Rhetorical question; just go back and re-read a few paragraphs up to see how much worse it could be. You know how bad it hurts to peel a band-aid off of hairy skin? Imagine your whole head going that way.)

  If holing up for weeks on end doesn’t suit your style, you can always just wig out. Literally! Many Japanese variety shops carry faux “chonmage” wigs for use as party costumes. If you fear Isora may be breathing down your neck, donning one of these may give you the briefest of chances to escape when she gives your topnot a tug. Even better news: at just ¥600 (US $7) a pop, you can afford to stock up.