Yurei Attack!: The Japanese Ghost Survival Guide

by Hiroko Yoda

  Who knows? You could well make some fearsome new friends.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Close Encounters

  HOICHI THE EARLESS

  YUTEN SHONIN

  ONO NO TAKAMURA

  Only a handful of individuals have had run-ins with the dead and lived to tell the tale. These are their stories.

  Close Encounters: 37

  HOICHI THE EARLESS

  Close Encounters: 37

  HOICHI THE EARLESS

  Name in Japanese: 耳なし芳一

  Gender: Male

  Occupation: Biwa-hoshi (lute player)

  a.k.a. Mimi Nashi Hoichi (Japanese pronunciation)

  Born/Died: Unknown. 14th or 15th century?

  Lived in: Shimonoseki (Westernmost city of Japan’s main island of Honshu)

  Description: Bald head; Blind from birth; Usually seen carrying a biwa lute

  Method of contact with spirits: Accidental

  Existence: Fictional

  Claim to Fame

  This gentle and talented monk’s painful encounter with the angry dead ranks as a classic — some would say the classic — Japanese ghost story.

  In order to appreciate Hoichi’s tale, you need to understand a key point of Japanese history: the rivalry between the Genji clan and the Heike (also known as Taira) clan. In 1180, the Genji launched a coup d’etat against the Heike, who controlled the nation through their child-emperor. The civil war ended five years later at the brutal Battle of Dan-no-Ura¶¶. Driven to desperation by the relentless Genji forces, the Heike launched a small armada of boats in a last-ditch attempt to retake the initiative by sea. But a hail of Genji arrows pounded the Heike fleet. Knowing their ambitions had come to an end, the entire Heike clan, including the young emperor, leapt to their deaths in the murky, turbulent waters rather than suffer the humiliation of surrender.

  The Story

  Late one summer evening, Hoichi whiled away the hours waiting for the heat to fade by playing tunes on the Japanese lute known as the biwa. Blind from birth, he had been trained in the instrument from childhood. Now a young man, Hoichi was an expert strummer. His skills had earned him both local renown and room and board at the Buddhist temple in which he currently lived.

  The abbot had stepped out to perform a funeral service, leaving Hoichi alone save for the chirping of crickets and the strains of the lute. But late that night, as he played yet another classic song, Hoichi heard the sound of determined footsteps approaching. Even without sight Hoichi knew at once they were not those of the head priest.

  A voice boomed out. The man introduced himself as a samurai. His lord had heard of Hoichi’s skill, and requested that the lute-player recite the tale of Dan-no- Ura for him as he gazed out over the straits where the tragic battle had unfolded. Hoichi could hardly refuse the direct request of such an eminent man, and allowed himself to be led to his residence.

  Settling himself on the stage, Hoichi began to play for an assembled crowd. He could hear the sound of silks rustling and a great many voices speaking in the exalted language of the Imperial court. He was among royalty.

  His fingers flew across the strings of the lute, mimicking the sounds of flying arrows and ships cutting through the surf as accompaniment to the epic battle-poem. At its climax the assembled let loose a cry of anguish at the bitter suffering of the Heike clan. They entreated Hoichi to come back again for the remainder of the week — six more nights.

  The next morning, the worried abbot asked where Hoichi had been. Unusually reticent, Hoichi mumbled something about a private engagement. Concerned about the young man, the abbot quietly asked two of his monks to shadow the luteplayer on his next excursion. It took them five nights to find him, and what they saw chilled them to the bone: Hoichi sitting alone in midst of the Heike clan graveyard, playing furiously, surrounded by uncountable balls of glowing blue flame — hitodama, an unmistakable sign of the dead.

  The monks spirited the protesting Hoichi back to the abbot, who coaxed the tale of the mysterious samurai visitor and subsequent concerts out of the musician. Hoichi was in grave danger, explained the abbot, bewitched by the spirits of the very clan of whose tale he sang. There was only one way to save him.

  That evening, the abbot and his acolytes stripped Hoichi and painted the characters for the Heart Sutra on every surface of his body, even the soles of his feet.

  TOOLS OF THE TRADE

  The Heart Sutra (Hannya Shingyo in Japanese) is a fundamental Buddhist scripture. Its meaning resists easy analysis, but it begins with the words “form is emptiness, and emptiness is form.” The current Dalai Lama translates the sutra’s key mantra as:

  “Go, go, go beyond, go thoroughly beyond, and establish yourself in enlightenment.”

  If Hoichi’s tale is to be believed, painting the sutra in its entirety on the body of an individual can hide their presence from the dead. Note that this only serves as a visual camouflage; it does not mask sounds. Total silence is a requirement as well.

  The abbot instructed Hoichi to wait for the samurai but remain utterly silent and still, no matter what happened, until the warrior went away. The sutra, explained the abbot, would protect him.

  The samurai arrived late that evening. He called for Hoichi again and again, but the musician remained silent, his arms and legs folded as if in meditation. But then Hoichi heard the frustrated warrior sigh: “no sign of him save for this pair of ears. I must return them to my lord to prove I have attempted to obey my orders.” The abbot had forgotten to inscribe Hoichi’s ears with the holy text!

  Hoichi felt a pair of iron-cold hands grab his ears and tear them from the sides of his head in a single fluid motion. Even amid the pain and spray of blood, the lute-player remained totally still and silent. The servants found him still sitting in the lotus position the next morning, drenched with the blood from his wounds.

  Profusely apologizing for his oversight, the abbot personally nursed Hoichi back to health. And as word of the weird tale spread, so too did Hoichi’s reputation. Before long, he found himself a wealthy man, engaged in the activity that satisfied him most; playing his lute for appreciative audiences, who came in droves to see Hoichi the Earless.

  Surviving an Encounter…

  Lafcadio Hearn, who first reported this tale, claimed that “in former years, the Heike [ghosts] were much more restless... They would rise about ships passing in the night, and try to sink them; and at all times they would watch for swimmers, to pull them down.” Note the past tense. Attacks of this sort are unknown today.

  Still, it can’t hurt to take precautions. A preventative prayer to the lost souls of the Heike at the family grave in Akama Jingu isn’t a bad place to start. It’s located just a short drive from JR Shimonoseki Station. (We highly recommend doing this during daylight hours.)

  In the unlikely event you do find yourself invited to a ghostly party by long-dead samurai, make sure to find a monk who’s familiar with the Heart Sutra and handy with a brush and ink. Oh, yeah — don’t forget those ears.

  The Heike Gani crabs found off the coast of Shimonoseki have a distinctive shell pattern reminiscent of a samurai’s facemask. Legend has it these crabs are the souls of the Heike, reborn deep in the ocean depths.

  ______________________

  ¶¶ One of the few survivors on the Heike side was Ukai Kansaku, who you read about in chapter 3.

  Close Encounters: 38

  YUTEN SHONIN

  Close Encounters: 38

  YUTEN SHONIN

  Name in Japanese: 祐上人

  a.k.a.: Saint Yuten The Exorcist of Edo Sannosuke (childhood name)

  Gender: Male

  Occupation: Part Shaman, Part Buddhist Priest

  Sect: Jodo

  Lived: 1637 -1718

  Lived in: Edo (Tokyo) and others

  Method of contact with spirits: Prayer, ritual, and a willingness to listen

  Existence: Historical Fact

  Claim to Fame

  Yuten Shonin is Ja
pan’s most famed exorcist. His most well-known adventure involved appeasing the angry spirits of Orui and her brother Suké, whom you read about in chapter 1. But this was just one of many similar spirit-cleansings he performed throughout Japan. His knack for dealing with the dead came from an uncanny ability to decipher their stories, making him more of a “ghost-counselor” than “ghost-buster.” He approached haunting and possessions with the analytical mind of a private detective, interviewing those involved to unravel the story of whatever spirit had taken a hold of the victim.

  Word of his exploits spread like wildfire throughout Japan, making him a superstar both during his lifetime and after his death.

  The Story

  Yuten’s inauspicious beginnings are as much a part of his legend as his exorcisms.

  Born deep in the Tohoku countryside, at the age of eleven Yuten was sent to apprentice with his uncle in the big city. His uncle served as a priest at Zojo-ji, an opulent temple patronized by the Shoguns of Edo (now Tokyo). But no matter how hard he tried, Yuten couldn’t memorize the holy texts he needed to memorize; he couldn’t follow the rituals he needed to follow, and he generally made a total fool of himself to the point where his own uncle was forced to demote him from monk-in-training to the equivalent of temple janitor.

  Stung by his failure, Yuten fasted for days in an attempt to gain clarity. Eventually the vision of an old man appeared before him, explaining that Yuten’s insurmountable mental block was due to karma from previous lives. The only way on earth to resolve it was to fast for twenty-one more days at distant Narita-san Shinsho-ji temple. (Coincidentally, the temple has an interesting history of its own. It was built in 939 as a holy weapon of sorts, designed for prayers and rituals to place a curse upon Taira no Masakado, then still very much alive and on the warpath against the Emperor. See chapter 2 for more about this angry samurai.)

  After an arduous journey from Edo to Narita, Yuten reached the temple. Explaining his vision to the monks there, he set about an epic, twenty-one day fast before the temple’s giant effigy of Fudo Myoo, a Buddhist deity also known as Acala.

  On the very last day of his fast, the boy looked up — and came face to face with a god. The sight chilled him to the core. Scowling and fanged, powerfully muscular, bearing his customary lariat and broadsword, and wreathed in a nimbus of righteous fire, Acala was more than a match for any human on Earth, let alone a pitifully malnourished and exhausted twelve-year-old.

  The god offered the boy a choice. He could go the easy way: die here and be reborn in his next life. Or he could go the hard way: assent to having his bad karma sliced from his soul by force. Yuten didn’t even hesitate. He went the hard way.

  Switching grip on his sword, Acala plunged the massive blade into the boy’s mouth, down, down through his throat and deep into his entrails. Yuten shuddered as his heart seized. Crimson sprayed from his lips as his veins emptied, and with it his accumulated karma. As Acala withdrew the sword inch by painful inch, the child’s dry vessels re-filled with fresh blood cleansed by the deity himself. As the receding tip cleared Yuten’s mouth, his heart shuddered back to life.

  Buddhist sutra written out in Yuten’s own hand

  When the monks found the boy’s crumpled body laying in a pool of blood before the statue, they mistook him for dead. But Yuten recovered, with new life coursing through his veins — and keen insight through his mind. He was a new man. Literally.

  Returning to Zojo-ji, Yuten met with a less than warm reception. The abbot was none too pleased at the boy’s having left, no matter his reasons, and refused to accept the story about Acala. For the next six years, Yuten labored in the servants’ quarters, studying scripture on the sly. When the abbot of Zojo-ji was promoted to head a larger temple, Yuten interrupted the ceremony with a theological debate that he handily won, shocking the assembled crowd.

  Leaving Zojo-ji behind, Yuten took to the roads to help those in need, tracking down rumors of spiritual disturbances that other experts found impossible to explain or address — in essence, a one-man, Edo-era “X-Files.” Yuten had a rapport with angry spirits, and in particular angry spirits that possessed women. His battles for the souls of what were then considered second-class members of society made him a hero among commoners and a contentious figure among the male-dominated powers that be, but he never wavered from his self-appointed duty to help those most in need — taking cases regardless of their gender, social standing, or background.

  Surviving Encounters…

  …with Ghosts the Yuten Way:

  Yuten has long since shuffled off this mortal coil, but you can take a page from his playbook and attempt to learn the stories of the ghosts that terrorize people rather than trying to confront them directly. That said, this method of exorcising spirits isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s telling that Yuten seems to be the only man in history who successfully pulled it off.

  You can also pay your respects to the man himself at Yutenji temple, built by his disciples to honor his memory after his death in 1718. It’s located in the Meguro district of central Tokyo, just a ten-minute walk from Yutenji Station on the Tokyu Toyoko line.

  These super-cute Yuten mascots lead the way to his temple in Meguro!

  RESUME AT A GLANCE

  1685: Discovers that the spirit possessing a noblewoman was that of a housemaid her husband had seduced and forced to get a fatal abortion to keep the affair secret. It also becomes clear that this isn’t the first, second, or even third time. It’s the sixteenth. Husband loses all social standing, joins monastery .

  1690: A book recounting several of his most successful cases is published: A Tale of Salvation for Spirits of the Dead. It becomes a sensation among the “Ooku,” the harem of Edo castle that included the Shogun’s mother, wife, and concubines. Yuten’s legend continues to grow.

  1693: Kurodo Incident. A young man is forced to dump his fiancée for a higher-ranking woman. Decades later, his grown sons begin dying under strange circumstances and his daughter falls ill. Yuten sees a vision of the original fiancée, who died alone several years previous and is now haunting the family. When the husband prays in apology to her soul, the daughter is released.

  1711: The Shogun names Yuten the abbot of Zojo-ji, the same temple he’d been kicked out of as a boy.

  Close Encounters: 39

  ONO NO TAKAMURA

  Close Encounters: 39

  ONO NO TAKAMURA

  Name in Japanese: 小野篁

  Gender: Male

  a.k.a. Yakyo (“Crazy Ono” — based on another reading of his name’s kanji)

  Occupation: Court scholar and poet

  Lived: 802-853 (Heian Era of Japanese history); Resident of: Heiankyo (Kyoto) (Then capital of Japan)

  Form of Attack: N/A. The pen is mightier than the sword, with Ono.

  Method of contact: A really, really deep hole

  Existence: Historical Fact

  Claim to Fame

  Europe has Dante. Japan has Ono no Takamura. And while Dante slipped into the afterlife quite by accident in The Inferno, Ono made the trip of his own free will — again and again. Every night, in fact. Talk about a literal commute from hell.

  The Story

  Ono no Takamura is famed as one of Japan’s wittiest and most cultivated scholars, a man whose facility with Chinese characters bordered on the superhuman (his grandchildren include one of the six greatest poets and one of the three greatest calligraphers of all time). But don’t get the wrong idea. This was no quiet bookworm. Ono had a rebellious streak a mile wide and a sense of humor to match.

  Ono served for a time as the court poet to the Emperor Saga, which sounds like a cushy job until you realize that a single misspeak was enough to land you on the Emperor’s bad side — or on a boat straight to permanent exile. And Ono wasn’t your typical obsequious royal aide.

  His most celebrated feat of linguistic prowess is a perfect case in point. Set up by a political rival who cornered him into reading a series of kanji characters
that couldn’t be uttered aloud without insulting the Emperor, Ono found himself accused of treason. The Emperor asked if Ono had invented the phrase. Ono argued that his unusual ability to read any compound didn’t mean that he necessarily composed them. The Emperor put Ono’s boast to the test, demanding he decipher a new compound or face the consequences: a nonsense string of twelve characters for “child” in a row:

  子子子子子子子子子子子子

  You don’t need a degree in linguistics to recognize this as an impossible task, but Ono responded with flair, using his encyclopedic knowledge of obscure readings to deliver an amusing interpretation on the spot: “the child of a cat is a kitten; the child of a lion a cub.” After a moment the Emperor’s glare dissolved into a grin, and Ono was off the hook.

  The Story

  Perhaps Ono’s nonchalance in front of a man as powerful as the Emperor Saga is because he spent his free time hanging out with even more frightening and powerful individuals.

  It turns out that this super-scholar was leading a double life. By day he regaled the aristocracy with his sonnets. By night, he snuck out of the palace compound and down a certain well on the grounds of Chinnoji Temple. A well that led directly into the depths of hell.