by Hiroko Yoda
Note that this wasn’t an exorcism — Michizane was far too powerful for that; remember the lightning bolts crashing down inside the palace walls? Rather, it was an extravagant show of respect, the closest thing to an official apology the Imperial court could muster. The successful effort formed the cornerstone of what could be called “onryo appeasement strategy” for centuries thereafter: venerating those the Emperor had wronged by elevating them to the status of gods.
Today, Michizane is better known as Tenjin, the Shinto deity of scholarship. So forget about surviving — a modern-day encounter with Michizane is all about passing. Passing your big test, that is. Millions visit his shrine annually for a leg up on their examinations. So stop worrying about ghost attacks and crack those books! Dazaifu Tenmangu Shrine is located just 30 minutes from the city of Fukuoka by train; the nearest station is “Nishitetsu Dazaifu.”
Know Your Onryo
Precocious young Michizane at age 11, composing a poem with brush and ink. Print by Yoshitoshi.
Michizane is the archetypical onryo in the most precise definition of the term. While the word is bandied about today to refer to all sorts of angry ghosts, originally and most correctly onryo applies only to those spirits bent on vengeance against the Imperial family.
Michizane’s spirit reacts triumphantly to his belated recognition by the Imperial Court. By Yoshitoshi.
We aren’t exaggerating or overstating the case when we say that the Imperial government took the haunting seriously. A historical text from 1292 called Gukansho shows that the affair still remained a hot topic more than three centuries later. The thirteenth-century author theorizes that the gods orchestrated Michizane’s posthumous reappearance as an example of the repercussions of false accusations, which can give an otherwise good man the necessary credentials, so to speak, to come back as an angry ghost.
Another sign of official respect: Michizane’s face appeared on the 5-yen bill, which went out of circulation in 1929.
Furious Phantoms: 09
EMPEROR SUTOKU
Furious Phantoms: 09
EMPEROR SUTOKU
Name in Japanese: 崇徳天皇
Gender: Male
a.k.a. Sutoku Joko; Sanuki-in; Akihito
Born: 1119
Duration of Reign: 1123 - 1142
Date of Death: September 14, 1164
Age at death: 45
Cause of death: Epic familial “dis”
Type of ghost: Onryo
Distinctive features: Generally speaking, Sutoku’s ghost does not physically manifest itself.
Place of internment: Kagawa (island of Shikoku)
Location of haunting: Heiankyo (Kyoto)
Form of Attack: Deaths, droughts, bringing down entire regimes
Existence: Historical
Threat Level: High
Claim to Fame
Emperor Sutoku is another “traditional” onryo of the sort that specifically haunts the Imperial family. The product — and victim — of a complex web of political alliances and intrigues, his story is a fascinating reminder that even at the top of the “org chart,” so to speak, life isn’t any walk in the park.
Although well known as a historical figure, Sutoku is even better known for turning into one of Japan’s single angriest ghosts. After reading his story, it isn’t hard to understand why.
The Story
Sutoku was ostensibly the child of Emperor Toba and his official consort Fujiwara Shoshi, though a good deal of circumstantial evidence indicates he was actually the product of an affair between Shoshi and Toba’s father, the former Emperor Shirakawa. Although Shirakawa had relinquished the reins of leadership to his son, he kept a stranglehold on power behind the scenes. Young Sutoku represented one of his prized pawns in this game of thrones. Once Sutoku reached the ripe age of five, Shirakawa ordered Toba to abdicate. Normally, Toba would be named regent in this sort of situation. But in times of old, a father always “outranked” his son — particularly when said father was a former emperor himself. Toba seethed from the sidelines as Shirakawa manipulated the new child-emperor to his own ends. Even by the torrid standards of Heian politics, it was a bitter pill to swallow.
And so things remained until Shirakawa’s death fifteen years later. Taking a page from dear old dad’s playbook, Toba used his newfound parental seniority to force Sutoku to accept Toba’s own four-year-old son Konoe as an adopted child. Sutoku readily agreed. (Adoptive parent or not, the rules of succession stated he would be named regent when Konoe eventually took power.) But Toba had another trick up his sleeve. When Konoe took the throne that same year, Toba forced Sutoku to sign a wavier stating that Sutoku was actually Konoe’s brother. Thus stripped of his parental authority, Sutoku could only watch helplessly as Toba took control of child-emperor Konoe from behind the scenes.
Alas, Konoe was a sickly child, plagued by illnesses and misfortune. He died at the age of 14, seemingly paving the way for Sutoku to get his own son on the throne. But it wasn’t to be. Konoe’s grieving mother swore that Sutoku had cursed her poor son to death. And so Toba blocked Sutoku yet again, installing his third son, Go Shirakawa, as emperor instead.
In a famous legend, his physical weakness was caused by a dangerous creature called a Nue - see Yokai Attack!
Saddled with a family tree that looked more like a football play diagram than a genealogical chart, Sutoku had had enough. He launched a coup d’etat against Emperor Go Shirakawa in an incident known today as the Hogen Rebellion. But Sutoku was quickly defeated, and the emperor banished him to the distant island of Shikoku as punishment.
Sutoku took his fall from grace surprisingly well. He entered a monastery, devoting himself to religious studies. Over the course of many years, he prepared a set of five key Buddhist sutras copied out in exquisite calligraphy. He sent the texts to Emperor Go-Shirakawa as an olive branch, begging that “at least the traces of my brush be allowed to enter the capital.”
The emperor deeply mistrusted the scrolls, convinced that Sutoku had imbued the sutras with a curse of the sort that had felled Konoe years earlier. And so the he refused the gift, ordering them returned — in shreds, according to some accounts.
The Attack
Seeing the scrolls again, Sutoku sank into a cold fury. He swore that his eternal soul would haunt the Imperial family for all time, scrawling intricate curses in his own blood. Consumed body and soul by his hatred, his fingernails grew long and his hair longer. He spent the rest of his days vowing to bring the emperor and his lineage down to the level of commoners. He died in 1142.
In fact, the very next year the Imperial family began suffering all sorts of misfortunes. Go Shirakawa’s son and successor, Emperor Nijo, died at just twenty-one, while massive fires raged through the city and insurrections broke out throughout the land. Famine followed.
Then things got worse. In an ironic twist, Sutoku’s earlier defeat in battle had set up the entire Imperial court for its downfall. The rebellion sparked a rivalry between the Genji and Heike clans, with the samurai wresting control of the country from the aristocracy in the epic Battle of Dan-no-Ura in 1185. Within half a century the Imperial family had been reduced to mere figureheads.
How had it all gone so wrong, so quickly? Pundits of the day knowingly pointed to a single reason: Sutoku’s furious spirit.
Surviving an Attack
There’s nothing the average person can do to save themselves from the sorts of calamities that an angry spirit such as Sutoku causes. The only real way to achieve “release” is by venerating the angry spirit in question.
When the Shogunate finally collapsed and the Meiji Emperor took power once again centuries later in 1868, one of his first official acts was ordering the construction of a shrine to Sutoku in downtown Kyoto. Even 700 years after his death, Sutoku’s onryo still struck fear into the hearts of powerful men.
Sutoku unleashes a storm on the hapless citizens of Heiankyo in this 19th century woodblock print by Utagawa Kuniyoshi.
Yokai Buddies
Sutoku’s legend only continued to grow after his death. By the Edo period, some six centuries later, he was described as one of the top three most dangerous supernatural forces in Japan — the other two being a nine-tailed fox-yokai called “Tamamo-no-mae” and the legendarily hard-drinking demon-yokai “Shuten Doji.” While he is most definitely considered to be an angry spirit and not a monster, Sutoku is a perfect example of the gray zone that exists between yurei and yokai in Japan.
Print showing Minamoto no Yorimitsu (Raiko) with four hand-picked warriors fighting the demon yokai Shuten Doji.
Furious Phantoms: 10
KOHADA KOHEIJI
Furious Phantoms: 10
KOHADA KOHEIJI
Name in Japanese: 小幡小平次
Gender: Male
Occupation: Kabuki Actor
Born: ca. early 1700s
Date of Death: ca. mid 1700s
Age at death: Unknown. Presumably 30-40.
Cause of death: Drowning
Type of ghost: Onryo
Distinctive features: A face only a ghost could love; Amputated right hand; Hand/fingers can operate independently
Place of internment: Asaka Swamp
Location of haunting: Edo
Form of Attack: Physical manifestations, illusions
Existence: Based (loosely) on a true story
Threat Level: Low (for the average person)
Claim to fame
You’ll be forgiven for not knowing his name, but you just happen to be looking at one of the most famous ghosts of a bygone era. In the early 1800s Koheiji was a superstar. In fact, kabuki actors believed he was such a force of nature that they shied away from even discussing him unnecessarily– a nineteenth century “He-who-must-not-be-named.” Kohada Koheiji is the protagonist of an 1803 book called Fukushu kidan Asaka no Numa (“Asaka Swamp: a Strange Tale of Revenge”) by Santo Kyoden, a man some consider to be Japan’s first modern novelist. Supposedly based on the life and violent murder of a real-life kabuki actor, it proved so popular that Santo penned a sequel several years later, called “Asaka Swamp: The Next Day’s Vengeance.” As you can probably tell from the titles, this was exploitation fare par excellence, custom-tailored to hook the reader with an outrageous betrayal and then satisfy with bloody revenge. The public ate them up, while the critics decried them as “mishmash” and “ludicrous.”
These were the equivalent of modern-day bestsellers, and it wasn’t long before famed playwright Tsuruya Nanboku IV penned an adaptation for the kabuki stage. His 1808 drama, disarmingly named Iroiri Otogi-zoshi (“The Colorful Storybook”), proved as popular as the books. Woodblock print artists one-upped each other with increasingly gruesome portrayals of the ghost. The Edo-era equivalent of a Freddy or Jason, Koheiji began making unofficial cameos in productions by other playwrights, giving rise to the term Koheiji-mono — basically, “the Koheiji-verse” — to describe the growing list of works in which he appeared.
Utagawa Toyokuni’s take on the ghost. 1820’s woodblock print from the peak of Koheiji’s fame.
The Story
Koheiji wants nothing more than to be a star of the Kabuki stage, but there’s only one problem: he isn’t very good. He practices constantly but simply can’t land a part. His teacher resorts to bribing producers in an unsuccessful attempt to get the fledgling actor on stage.
But Koheiji’s luck is finally about to change. One day, he’s approached for a major role in an upcoming production.
“You’ve got the perfect face!” enthuses the director.
“For what?” asks Koheiji, hardly able to contain his excitement.
“A ghost!”
A backhanded compliment to be sure. And a ghost …! This was a superstitious era, and ghost roles were a double-edged sword, often believed to invite danger and misfortune for the actors who played them. But Koheiji was hardly in a position to say no.
As things turned out, Koheiji did so well that he landed another ghost role, and another, and another. Before long he’d become Edo’s go-to guy for playing dead people. Koheiji had found his niche.
Koheiji may have earned his spot in the limelight, but it didn’t change the fact that he’d never been a particularly sharp tack. He didn’t even notice that his wife Otsuka was carrying on a torrid affair with his pal, a kabuki orchestra drummer named Sakuro. Wanting Otsuka for himself, Sakuro hatched a scheme to kill Koheiji on a fishing trip. When Koheiji cast his line, it was caught by one of Sakuro’s confederates, who dragged the hapless actor from the boat to his death in the murky waters.
After fishing the body out of the river, Sakuro frisked it for money and valuables he could use to pay his accomplices. When he reached into Koheiji’s sopping kimono, the dead man’s right hand streaked out and griped his wrist. Sakuro screamed. One of the accomplices lashed out with his sword, severing the corpse’s limb mid-forearm.
Shaken but resolved, Sakuro headed back home to tell Otsuka the good news.
“I killed Koheiji.”
“Are you drunk?” she laughed. “Koheiji got home a little while ago. He’s in the other room.”
The Attack
An apprehensive Sakuro finds the sliding fusuma door into the adjoining room stuck. Unbeknownst to him, a rotting hand is clamping it shut from behind. He forces the fusuma open with a shove, sending the hand’s fingers flying and filling the house with an atrocious stink. This convinces Otsuka that her husband really is dead, but she tells Sakuro to suck it up — “after all, he’s just a ghost.”
Bad move. Things only get stranger. A man materializes in bed between Sakuro and Otsuka as they sleep one night. Later, a water-logged corpse peers in through the mosquito netting. The pair start seeing Koheji everywhere, even during the day. Returning from the local tavern one night, Sakuro spies a man running into the bedroom. Infuriated, he rushes after with sword drawn. But there is no man; the woman had been sound asleep. Shocked awake by the commotion, she instinctively reaches out to block the blade — losing the fingers on her hand in the process. (Are you sensing a motif here?)
Gangrene sets in. As Otsuka wastes away, Sakuro casts about desperately for help in ridding his home of Koheiji’s unforgiving spirit. He hears a scream from the bedroom; when he rushes in to check, he finds Otsuka missing, the walls and ceiling splattered with blood and chunks of scalp. Eventually Sakuro loses everything, laying in bed dreaming of swamp-water filling his lungs — a nightmare from which he never awakes.
How to Survive
Koheiji is a classic example of a ghost hell-bent on revenge. Unlike his counterpart and spiritual successor Oiwa-san, however, he isn’t known to stalk victims in the modern day.
That is, unless, you happen to be a kabuki actor. That’s a different story. At the peak of Koheiji’s popularity, rumors of accidents, illnesses, and other troubles befalling those actors who portrayed him swirled through the kabuki scene. As such, actors kept discussions of him to a minimum. Perhaps following suit wouldn’t be a bad idea. In fact, maybe you should just go ahead and turn the page now.
Hokusai’s wonderfully ghastly portrayal of a waterlogged and decaying Koheiji pushed the envelope of acceptability in woodblock prints. From 1830.
Furious Phantoms: 11
SAKURA SOGORO
Furious Phantoms: 11
SAKURA SOGORO
Name in Japanese: 佐倉惣五郎
Gender: Male
a.k.a. Kiuchi Sogo (actual name)
Date of Death: Sept. 24, 1653
Age at death: 48
Cause of death: Crucifixion
Type of ghost: Onryo
Distinctive features: Battered and bloody; Bound to wooden cross; Often seen alongside his wife, who is in similar condition
Place of internment: Narita
Location of haunting: Narita
Form of Attack: Incessant manifestations
Existence: Historical
Threat Level: Extremely dangerous (if you’re a hatamoto) - se
e below
Claim To Fame
In times of old, conventional wisdom held that anyone who lost their lives in an unsuccessful bid for justice would return as a spirit hell-bent on vengeance from their oppressors. Perhaps nowhere is the phenomenon more clearly illustrated than in the brutal tale of “peasant martyr” Sakura Sogoro.
There is scant evidence that he actually existed, but the story is all too plausible. This was an era when those above could treat those below them with total impunity — at least from the justice of man. Justice beyond the grave, however, was a different matter.
The Story
The hatamoto, nobility with titles and land-holdings bestowed directly by decree of the Shogun, had virtually free reign over the inhabitants of the lands they owned. Lord Hotta, the hatamoto of Sogoro’s village of Kozu (in the vicinity of what is now the city of Narita) happened to be greedier than most, squeezing the peasants below him of every last grain of rice — the currency of the day — to fill his already swelling coffers.
In spite of their fertile lands, the farmers of Kozu found themselves driven to the brink of poverty and starvation while their landlord lived high on the hog, ignoring their repeated pleas for reductions and deferments. A few pooled money and attempted a bribe, which Hotta happily accepted, and then ignored. Driven to the brink, many villagers were forced to sell heirlooms and even their own homes to make ends meet; others fled in the night, praying for greener pastures elsewhere.