Yurei Attack!: The Japanese Ghost Survival Guide
Page 8
The Attack
Just as the candy-seller tried to will himself into action, the woman glowed for a moment as if lit by some inner flame and promptly vanished from sight, her eyes never leaving his face the while.
The graveyard was dark and quiet once again. Coming to his senses, the shopkeeper made his way to the grave at which she had last been standing. It was a fresh one, he could tell. But there was no sign of the woman, or even the candy.
He heard sound, familiar yet utterly out of place. Straining to listen, the shopkeeper picked up the distinct yet muffled strains of a baby’s wail. It couldn’t be.… The shopkeeper dropped and pressed an ear to the ground. Now there was no mistaking it. The crying seemed to issue from the very grave itself!
Rushing to the temple, the shop-keeper returned with the monks — and a shovel. Hurriedly they excavated the grave, pulling the coffin from the ground, the baby’s wails growing louder all the while. And prying off the lid, they found a perfectly healthy newborn, candy gripped in his tiny hand, held lovingly in the arms of a dead woman dressed entirely in white.
It was her.
Upon hearing the candy-seller’s strange story, the monks surmised that the woman, who had been pregnant when she died, had somehow managed to give birth to her child in the grave. In Japanese funerals of the day, bodies were traditionally provided with six sen to pay the ferryman at the River Sanzu (Japan’s River Styx); and these very coins were the ones she had used to purchase the candy that kept her child alive within the confines of their coffin. How fortunate that the candy-seller had chosen to follow her on that final night!
Surviving an Encounter:
Lucky for you, a certain candy store in Kyoto produces hard candies for just this sort of occasion: the Yurei Kosodate Ame (“Ghost Child-Rearing Candies”). The shop is called Minatoya and is located in Kyoto’s Higashiyama ward, just a stone’s throw from Rokudo Chinnoji Temple. It certainly can’t hurt to stock up for those times you run into phantom mothers … or their children. Where else can you buy this kind of “insurance” for just 500 yen?
For those not able to visit Kyoto, the Shinjuku branch of Tokyo’s Isetan department store carries the candies as well.
Yurei Kosodate Ame.
Sad Spectres: 17
THE OKIKU DOLL
Sad Spectres: 17
THE OKIKU DOLL
Name in Japanese: 人形
Gender: Female
Occupation: Being a doll
Created: ca. 1918
Height: Roughly 16 in (40cm)
Type of Ghost: Haunted doll
Distinctive Features: Standard Japanese doll; Dressed in kimono; Long, jet-black hair
Place of Internment: Mannenji Temple, Hokkaido
Form of Attack: Freaking people out with endlessly growing hair
Existence: Real
Threat Level: Low
Claim to Fame
A surprising number of Japanese claim to be scared of dolls — not Barbie dolls or plush toys, but traditional Japanese dolls of a certain style. Those searching for the roots of this terror need look no further than the Okiku doll. It is the prototypical, stereotypical haunted doll of folklore. The Okiku doll occupies much the same spot in the Japanese heart as “Chucky” does in that of Americans, with one major twist: the story isn’t fiction, and the doll resides in a certain temple to this very day.
The Story
The tale of the Okiku doll is of relatively recent vintage. It begins on Friday, August 15, 1919, when an eighteen-year-old by the name of Eikichi Suzuki took a trip to see the Semi-Centennial Exposition. The event, held in downtown Sapporo, commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the island of Hokkaido’s opening to settlement. The largest exposition ever held outside of a major city at the time, it featured dozens upon dozens of exhibits dedicated to local industries such as mining, logging, agriculture, and marine biology. Representatives from as far away as Sakhalin, Korea, and Taiwan sponsored pavilions. Close to 1.5 million people visited over the month-long course of the expo. It was a grand affair, the grandest Hokkaido had ever seen, and Eikichi must have been eagerly anticipating it, for he went soon after it opened.
Eikichi’s younger sister, Kikuko, was just three years old, too small to accompany him on his trip. But the little girl must have been in his thoughts, for on the way back home he stopped by Sapporo’s Tanuki Street, the city’s largest shopping arcade, to pick up a gift for her. It was a beautiful Japanese doll, clad in a tiny silk kimono, its ivory-colored face topped by short tresses in a style known as a “bowl-cut” in English and okappa‡ in Japanese.
It was an instant hit. Kikuko carried her new doll with her everywhere, and even took it to bed with her at night. But that winter, just after the new year, Kikuko fell ill. The Spanish Flu pandemic was raging across the globe, and the government had severely restricted travel to and from the islands in an attempt to halt its spread. While the quarantine efforts helped, they weren’t fully effective. Eventually, a quarter-million Japanese would succumb to the killer virus. Kikuko, who passed away on January 24, 1920, was one of them.
The loss devastated the family. In keeping with tradition, they placed the urn with Kikuko’s ashes in their Buddhist altar. Eikichi put her favorite doll right alongside it. The family prayed before the altar daily, as is custom. And one day, Eikichi noticed something strange.
The Attack
The doll’s hair seemed to be growing. Before long, the former bowl-cut had reached the doll’s tiny shoulders.
The family didn’t react to this discovery with fear. For their part, they came to believe that the soul of their beloved daughter had come to inhabit the doll, and continued to tend the altar daily.
Fast-forward twenty years to 1938. Eikichi’s parents had long since passed away. War was on the horizon, and Eikichi had been drafted into the Imperial Army. When he received orders to deploy to Sakhalin with his regiment, he knew he wouldn’t be able to look after Kikuko’s ashes and her doll properly. He left both with his local Buddhist temple, Mannenji, for safekeeping.
We don’t know what sorts of horrors Eikichi witnessed on the battlefields of the far north, but it is obvious that Kikuko was never far from his thoughts. When he returned after the war — narrowly avoiding being taken prisoner when the Russians overran Japanese defenses — he headed straight from the train station to Mannenji temple. What he saw there shocked him: now the doll’s hair extended almost down to its feet. Word of the doll and its strange ability spread throughout Japan.
Well-loved dolls being prepared for their send-off in a “ningyo kuyo” (doll funeral) ceremony.
Some claimed the “Okiku doll” phenomenon, as it came to be called, was the result of a young girl’s anger at having departed this world so quickly; others believed it was driven by sadness at having to part from her beloved brother and a wish to stay with her favorite possession.
We tend to embrace the latter theory, ourselves, as there is no question a deep connection existed between the two siblings. Of the rest of Eikichi’s life, little is known. But the Okiku doll remains in the possession of Mannenji, where its locks continue to grow, slowly but surely, to this very day.
The climax of the ceremony.
Surviving an Encounter
There’s nothing to fear except fear itself as far as the Okiku doll is concerned. That said, Okiku is but a representative of a phenomenon that is believed to occur throughout Japan. The concept of a way-ward soul coming to inhabit a doll, whether sad or angry, is the stuff of nightmares in Japan.
Perhaps that’s why ningyo kuyo — the practice of bringing dolls to a temple for consecration and cremation — remain common even in thoroughly modernized contemporary Japan. While this treatment is most common for disposing of “classic” figures, such as the ohina dolls that are traditionally displayed in homes during the Hinamatsuri doll festival, It isn’t uncommon to see other toys that have spent a long time in the presence of people to be given the treatments as well.
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br /> Perhaps that’s why ningyo kuyo — the practice of bringing dolls to a temple for consecration and cremation — remain common even in thoroughly modernized contemporary Japan. While this treatment is most common for disposing of “classic” figures, such as the ohina dolls that are traditionally displayed in homes during the of respect; even if you aren’t Japanese, it’s easy to sympathize with not wanting to throw some-thing once treasured by a child out with the garbage. But it’s certainly a viable option for dealing with dolls inhabited by a spirit of some kind. (That said, do you really need to? Note that Mannenji hasn’t burned the Okiku doll. Unlike “Chucky,” there aren’t any known cases of Japanese dolls — possessed or not — actually injuring their owners, save perhaps by gravity if they happen to fall off a high shelf.)
Hairy Science
In times of old, dollmakers often used real human hair for their dolls. In one method of attachment, a long (roughly 1-inch (25cm)) strand of hair would be folded over and attached at the midpoint to fully “flock” the head. Over time, the threads used to attach the strands can deteriorate while the hair itself remains strong, allowing the hair strands to gradually flop out to their full lengths. That said, critics feel this doesn’t explain the very regular pace of growth of the Okiku doll’s hair.
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‡ A classic kid hairstyle, named after the water-dwelling yokai known as a "kappa." (See Yokai Attack!)
Sad Spectres: 18
FURISODE KAJI (Kimono Fire)
Sad Spectres: 18
FURISODE KAJI (Kimono Fire)
Name in Japanese: 振り袖火事
Name of Subject: Umeno
A.K.A.: Osame (in Lafcadio Hearn’s retelling)
Gender: Female
Occupation: Dutiful daughter
Born: 1638
Date of Death: January 16, 1655
Age at Death: 17
Cause of Death: Heartbreak
Type of Phenomenon: Possession
Distinctive Features: No physical manifestation
Place of Internment: Honmyoji Temple
Location of Haunting: Edo (Tokyo) Area
Form of Attack: Existence: Unknown
Threat Level: Extremely High
Claim to Fame
Although Edo — as Tokyo was called prior to 1868 — ranked as one of the world’s largest cities, its buildings were constructed almost entirely out of wood and paper. Fires easily spread from home to home and escalated to epic proportions, often devastating entire neighborhoods§.
Over the course of the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries, some one hundred major conflagrations swept the city. The largest of them broke out in 1657 and raged for nearly a week, wiping out more than half of the city and killing some 100,000 people — a disaster on par with the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 or the firebombing of Tokyo in 1945. Officially, it was called the Meireki Conflagration. But the survivors knew it by another name: the Furisode Kaji, or “Kimono Fire.”
The Story
Sometimes tragedy begins with love at first sight. On a fine spring morning two years before the conflagration, a young woman by the name of Umeno was out for a walk with her mother after attending services at Honmyoji Temple. Strolling the streets of Ueno, they happened to pass a beautifully-dressed young squire to a samurai hurrying along on an errand.
He vanished into the crowd in the blink of an eye, but something about the boy had lit a fire within Umeno. She dreamed of him by night and pined for him by day. First her parents indulged her, then scolded, then began to worry. As wealthy pawnbrokers they had the money to launch a search for the mysterious boy, but with little more than a hazy, half-glimpsed memory to go by it proved fruitless.
Umeno was inconsolable. She stopped eating and sleeping. Before long the formerly healthy young woman was a shadow of her former self. In a desperate attempt to forge some connection to her would-be lover, she begged her parents to make her a kimono as beautiful as the one the boy had been wearing. They reluctantly agreed, commissioning a beautiful silk garment adorned with chrysanthemum, bellflower, and waves, identical to the squire’s in every way, save for being a long-sleeved cut of the sort worn by a woman.
The kimono served to lift her spirits somewhat, but the damage to her health had been done. Early the next year, Umeno passed away at the tender age of 17. Her distraught parents used the kimono to cover her coffin as it was transported to the cemetery, and then bequeathed it to Honmyoji Temple.
In keeping with custom of the time, the abbot of the temple sold the garment to a used-clothing dealer. The striking kimono quickly sold to another family, whose daughter wore it for only a short time before succumbing herself to illness at the age of 17. The kimono again made its way back to Honmyoji, whereupon it was re-sold to the clothing dealer. Another family purchased it for their daughter, and she too soon passed on at just 17 years old.
By now, the abbot knew he had more than just a kimono with a sad story on his hands. He called the parents of the deceased together. After discussing the situation, all parties agreed that it would be best to burn the kimono rather than see it cause further harm. And so the abbot prepared a kuyo ceremony to give the garment a proper send-off.
The Attack
The monks of the temple built a pyre to cremate the kimono according to Buddhist tradition. But in spite of performing the appropriate rituals, the spirit within was apparently unwilling to go quietly into the night.
The moment the kimono was laid atop the pyre, a sudden and powerful wind fanned the flames to frightening proportions. According to one account, a pillar of fire reached more than thirty-three feet (ten meters) into the air.
The monks, ill-equipped to deal with a blaze of these proportions, watched helplessly as the flames engulfed the temple, then leapt from rooftop to rooftop. Spreading first through the neighborhood and then into the district, the fire raged out of control through the streets of the city, apparently driven by the sheer power of a young girl denied her love and her life. Within hours, hurricane-force winds driven by the rising heat fanned the flames far beyond the abilities of even the fire brigades to deal with them. By the time the conflagration burned itself out some six days later, the Shogun’s castle lay in ruins and the remains of the city were swathed in smoke so thick that it would be days before the victims’ bodies could be located and buried.
Individual funerals were out of the question as entire families had been immolated in the blazes. As such the Shogun ordered the construction of a memorial, “The Mound of a Million Souls,” at what is now Ekoin Temple in Ryogoku district of Tokyo. Today it offers a final resting place for the souls of those who pass away without relatives or friends to care for them.
Of what happened to Umeno’s family, or the mysterious samurai boy whose handsome looks kindled a metaphoric and literal fire, no record remains. But had he any foreshadowing of what his simple appearance and disappearance would have wrought, undoubtedly the young man would have made time to stop and chat with a lonely girl on that fine spring day.
Scenes of the terror, chronicled in the 1661 book Musahi Abumi, by Asai Ryoi.
How to Survive
The kimono in question is long since gone, but you’re in serious trouble if you ever encounter a similarly possessed garment. If you choose to burn it, do so only under extremely controlled conditions.
Yokai Connection
The yokai called Kosode-no-te (see Yokai Attack!) is a kimono with phantom arms that enjoys frightening the individual who unwittingly puts it on. This rather playful behavior is a sharp contrast to the devastation wrought by the possessed garment that caused the Kimono Fire. It’s also a good example of the general difference in modus operandi between yokai (who tend to be satisfied with scaring people) and yurei (who prefer to torment and kill them).
A Fiery Conspiracy?
The fire resulted in wide-ranging changes to Edo. In the two years it took to rebuild the city, large numbers of residents “immigrated” to outer
suburbs, reducing the load on the city’s jam-packed, overburdened downtown area. Meanwhile, in an effort to create firebreaks that would halt the spread of future conflagrations, the Shogunate expanded many of the city’s narrow roads into boulevards called hirokoji — an innovation that can be seen today in Tokyo station names such as Ueno-Hirokoji. In fact, the changes were so sweeping and beneficial, rumors swirled that the government had set the fires on purpose in order to speed the process of change along.
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§ For this reason, arson was one of a handful of crimes that warranted an instant death penalty.
Sad Spectres: 19
THE FUTON OF TOTTORI
Sad Spectres: 19
THE FUTON OF TOTTORI
Name in Japanese: 鳥取の布団
Ghosts’ Names: Unknown; two young brothers
Gender: Male
Born: Unknown
Age at Death: 6 and 8, respectively
Cause of Death: Hypothermia
Type of Phenomena: Possession
Distinctive Features: Vocalization only
Place of Internment: Kannon Temple
Location of Haunting: Tottori Pref.
Form of Attack: Pitiful crying
Existence: Unknown
Threat Level: Low
Claim to Fame
This oldie but goodie is one of the first kaidan (ghost stories) to reach the Western world, courtesy of translations by the great early twentieth century Japanophiles Lafcadio Hearn and Frederick Hadland Davis.