A Gathering of Spirits: Japan's Ghost Story Tradition: From Folklore and Kabuki to Anime and Manga Read online

  A Gathering of Spirits: Japan’s Ghost Story Tradition

  From Folklore and Kabuki to Anime and Manga

  Patrick Drazen

  iUniverse, Inc.

  Bloomington

  A Gathering of Spirits: Japan’s Ghost Story Tradition

  From Folklore and Kabuki to Anime and Manga

  Copyright © 2011 by Patrick Drazen

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  iUniverse books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

  iUniverse

  1663 Liberty Drive

  Bloomington, IN 47403

  www.iuniverse.com

  1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)

  Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

  Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

  Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

  ISBN: 978-1-4620-2942-6 (pbk)

  ISBN: 978-1-4620-2943-3 (ebk)

  Printed in the United States of America

  iUniverse rev. date:06/22/2011

  Contents

  CHAPTER 1: TO GET THINGS STARTED

  01. “Tell me …”

  CHAPTER 2: THAT’S THE SPIRIT

  CHAPTER 3: SHALL WE DANCE

  02. My Mother, the Hungry Ghost

  03. Don’t forget me

  04. “Don’t shoot!”

  05. Blue Roses

  06. “I’m running away!”

  CHAPTER 4: “I’LL BE YOUR GUIDE”

  07. The Red Hydrangea

  08. “The afterlife sure seems to have a lot of rules.”

  09. The Ring

  CHAPTER 5: A LIKELY STORY

  10. The Neglected Wife

  11. Barefoot Gen—His Mother’s Bones

  12. A Bolt of Lightning

  13. Attached to the House

  14. The Hungry Ghost

  15. Remembering Mother

  16. The Return of Nobunaga

  CHAPTER 6: HYAKU MONOGATARI (ONE HUNDRED STORIES)

  17. Dead Air

  CHAPTER 7: CEMETERIES IN JAPAN

  18. “Daddy will find me.”

  CHAPTER 8: SUICIDE

  19. The Glorious Princess

  20. For the love of the game

  21. The Da Vinci Code

  22. Mirror and Bell

  23. The Temporary Suicide

  CHAPTER 9: CLASSIC JAPANESE GHOST LITERATURE

  24. Genji and Lady Rokujo

  CHAPTER 10: OKIKU OF THE PLATES

  25. “six, seven, eight, nine …”

  CHAPTER 11: OIWA AND THE YOTSUYA KAIDAN

  26. “You killed my father, and now me …”

  CHAPTER 12: NOH DRAMA

  27. The Flutist and the Warrior

  28. Modern Western Noh: “The Gull”

  CHAPTER 13: KAIDAN KASANEGAFUCHI

  29. A Curse for Father and Son

  CHAPTER 14: PRINCESS OF THE DARK TOWER A/K/A TENSHU MONOGATARI (STORY OF THE CASTLE TOWER)

  30. Because of a falcon

  CHAPTER 15: CATS AND DOGS

  31. Because even a dog should rest in peace

  32. Mission accomplished

  33. Whose ghost is it?

  34. The Vampire Cat of Nabeshima

  35. A Cure Worse Than the Disease

  36. Hello Kitty

  37. “So you were a kitten?”

  38. The Boy Who Drew Cats

  39. “At first, I only meant to keep her a few days …”

  CHAPTER 16: BEYOND THE ANIMAL KINGDOM

  40. I want my princess

  41. Death by Tree

  42. Returning as a “Bug”

  43. A Lustful Demon

  CHAPTER 17: HOUSEHOLD GHOSTS: ZASHIKI

  44. “Brother, poor brother”

  45. One Hundred Hiccups

  46. “Who are you?”

  47. For a potato chip

  48. Gift Exchange

  CHAPTER 18: SPIRITS, SICKNESS AND SURGERY

  49. Can a surgeon heal what’s wrong with a ghost?

  50. On a snowy night

  51. Just Two Students Chatting

  CHAPTER 19: AT THE MOVIES: SOME CLASSIC POSTWAR JAPANESE GHOST FILMS

  52. Witness from Beyond

  53. Welcome Home

  54. Domestic Disturbance

  55. Swallowing a Soul

  56. “Hey! Haven’t you heard? You’re living in a haunted house!”

  57. Seven Days

  CHAPTER 20: SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHY

  58. Dangerous Crossing

  59. Family Snapshots

  60. Preserve the Moment

  61. A Yukionna

  CHAPTER 21: SCHOOL GHOSTS

  62. One Hundred for One

  63. A Ghost in the Garden

  64. One Last Thing to Do

  65. School Spirit

  CHAPTER 22: THE SCHOOL BOARD—KOKKURI-SAN

  66. “I’m not a dog!”

  67. “Didn’t I say you’d be cursed?”

  68. The Coin and the Angel

  69. The Devil’s Spell

  CHAPTER 23: GHOSTS AND SEX

  70. “I have the twin cherry blossoms!”

  71. O-tei Returns

  72. They probably don’t even know

  73. An unspoken crush

  74. For a soccer ball

  75. I miss you

  76. The Peony Lantern

  77. Let’s Spend the Night Together

  78. Babysitter

  79. Chaperone from beyond?

  CHAPTER 24: GHOSTBUSTERS

  80. A Ghost Sweeper’s Apprentice

  81. Beware of Cat

  82. Love Among the Mummies

  CHAPTER 25: MODERN GHOSTS

  83. Taxi?

  84. Diva

  85. Only eight times

  CHAPTER 26: GIRLY GHOSTS

  86. The Possessed Piano

  87. A Killer Koto

  88. The Twins Who Weren’t Alike

  CHAPTER 27: TRAIN GHOSTS

  89. Got legs?

  90. The Girl on Platform 5

  CHAPTER 28: LIVING DOLLS

  91. Minnie

  92. The Lonely Doll

  93. Doll of Return

  94. Mary

  95. The Ghost of Moga-chan

  96. “Stalker”

  CHAPTER 29: A FEW WORDS ABOUT VAMPIRES

  97. “I don’t want to die”

  CHAPTER 30: IN A HAUNTED HOUSE

  98. A child’s feelings

  FINALE

  99. The Ghost Who Did Nothing

  100. The Ghost Story You Write

  CHAPTER 1: TO GET THINGS STARTED

  01. “Tell me …”

  One night a policeman was walking through his usually quiet neighborhood. He was bored, he was almost asleep; his job had become almost automatic. He rounded one corner… and saw someone on the ground a few yards ahead. He ran forward, and saw what appeared to be a
woman who had fallen. Maybe the heel of her shoe had given way, or maybe she was drunk; he didn’t care. At least it was a break in the routine.

  “Are you all right, ma’am?” he called out as he approached.

  “Help me up, please,” she said in a soft, very pretty voice. Her long hair hid her face. She reached a hand up; the policeman took her hand and helped her to her feet.

  “Thank you,” the woman said, raising her head. As she did so, the policeman was able to get a better look at her face… but instead he saw that she had no face. Where there should have been eyes, and a nose, and a mouth, there was nothing—just skin stretched smooth and blank as an egg.

  The policeman fell back in shock and horror and ran up the street. He didn’t even know where he was running to at first. After a minute, he saw the lights of a convenience store that stayed open all night. He burst into the store, and blurted out to the older man behind the counter what had just happened to him.

  The cashier looked at the policeman for a second, smiled, then said, “Tell me, officer; did she look… like… this?” The cashier waved his hand in front of his own face, and his features vanished, leaving skin stretched smooth and blank as an egg.

  xxx

  This ghost story, about an encounter with a nopperabou (a faceless ghost), was acted out in the 1994 Studio Ghibli animated movie known as Ponpoko[1]. It also appeared in print, in English, in 1904 in Lafcadio Hearn’s influential ghost story anthology Kwaidan. In fact, this story goes back hundreds of years, and is part of Japan’s long and rich spirit tradition. Stories about Japanese ghosts and other supernatural beings have been written, collected, adapted, reworked, and reinterpreted for centuries, and even the most modern ghost movies, manga (comics) and anime (animation) can refer back to ancient source material.

  This book is loosely based on one of these grand and ghostly Japanese traditions, begun back in the Edo period[2]: the hyaku monogatari. Literally the phrase means “100 stories,” but the assumption is that these are all ghost stories. Here’s how to play:

  Gather some friends together one night, preferably a hot summer night, along with one hundred candles. Once all of the candles are lit, someone tells a ghost story. It can be short or long, historical or recent, frightening or humorous or morally instructive—as this book will show, Japanese ghost stories come in all sorts of flavors. When the first story ends, the storyteller blows out a candle. Then the next person tells a story, blows out a candle, and so on.

  By the time the room is down to two or three lit candles, after several hours of ghost stories, everyone’s nerves should be on edge. When the last person finishes the last story and blows out the last candle, plunging the room into blackness, some say that a ghost, invisible in the candlelight, will appear. Others suggest that the party-goers count off in the pitch-black room—and one extra voice will answer.

  “My favorite thing about summer,” writes Satsuki Igarashi, one of the cartoonists of the highly successful CLAMP manga collective, “is the ghost stories… . In fact, during summer breaks I would also watch a lot of afternoon TV, and the gossip shows often featured horror stories.”[3] Unlike in America, where ghost stories are often told in the autumn around Halloween, ghost stories in Japan are associated with summer for several reasons, and we’ll look at them in greater detail later. For now, let’s just say a major reason is because of the weather; Japan, except for the northernmost island of Hokkaido, has a tropical or semi-tropical climate. The summers get very mushi-atsui (humid and hot), and ghost stories were found long ago to be an effective way to send much-needed chills up and down one’s spine.

  Prepare for a sampling of Japanese ghosts and spirits, from sources that include the world’s oldest novel, the urban legends of contemporary Japanese schoolchildren, movies both classic and modern, anime, manga, and more. Some of the ghost stories will be actual ghost stories, designed to frighten and shock; sometimes, however, ghosts will appear in unlikely places—in romantic comedies, in sports anime, in domestic dramas, in school stories…

  First, though, we have to understand the ground-rules for dealing with the reality of spirits in Japan, especially the fact that reality itself is divided into the human world and the spirit world.

  CHAPTER 2: THAT’S THE SPIRIT

  T. R. Reid described the years he and his family lived in Tokyo while he was Asian Bureau Chief for the Washington Post in his book Confucius Lives Next Door. The title referred not just to the sage of China who lived 500 years before Christ, but also to the next door neighbors of the Reids, who embodied so many Confucian virtues. They were an elderly couple, the Matsudas, and one day Mrs. Matsuda passed away at age 78. As Reid placed flowers on the makeshift altar that had been erected in the Matsuda living room, Mr. Matsuda turned to a photograph of his late wife and told it matter-of-factly, “Cho-Cho, it’s Reid-san.”[4]

  It’s tempting for a western reader in the 21st century to dismiss this scene as the sentimental gesture of an elderly widower. Doing this, however, misses the point. Mr. Matsuda wasn’t being sentimental, or senile, or ironic. He spoke to the picture of his wife in order to communicate with the spirit of his late wife; nothing more, nothing less.

  This motif pops up often in Japan’s pop culture, and not always as practiced by elderly widowers. In one scene in the anime Princess Nine, a TV series about an elite girls’ high school that creates a baseball team to challenge the boys’ high schools, we see the girls’ star pitcher, fifteen-year-old Ryo Hayakawa, stopping before going to school to tell her father what’s been happening. It doesn’t matter that her father’s been dead for ten years; she still communicates with him through the Buddhist altar set up in the Hayakawa home (as it is in so many Japanese homes). In Ouran High School Host Club, the comic manga/anime by Bisco Hatori, heroine Haruhi Fujioka, another first-year high school student, consults with her dead mother via the altar in her apartment.

  Similarly, in the romantic comedy manga Ai Yori Aoshi by Kou Fumizuki, and its anime version, the main character, Kaoru Hanabishi, has decided to take the girl he loves, Aoi-chan, to meet his mother. He picks up flowers, incense, and food, and takes them to a cemetery. He places everything in front of his mother’s tombstone and matter-of-factly introduces Aoi to his mother as the girl who has come to mean everything in his life. Aoi-chan follows up on this, telling Kaoru’s mother about her feelings for her son.

  Kaoru, by the way, is a college junior majoring in pre-Law when we meet him; it’s hard to imagine anyone more prosaic and less given to communing with spirits. Yet Kaoru and Ryo and Haruhi do not address their dead parents half-heartedly or ironically. They expect to be heard and understood in the next world.

  This kind of spirit communication reflects Japan’s unique spiritual heritage, which is a blend of two different faiths. First came Shinto, which literally means “the path of the gods.” This animistic (based on spirits) religion has been traced back to at least the fifth century B. C. E. and has come to define Japan and its people. Shinto’s creation mythology, the Kojiki, attributed the creation of the universe to two divine sibling gods, Izanagi and Izanami; they gave birth to, among other things, the sun goddess Amaterasu, who in turn was regarded as having created the Japanese people. For much of Japan’s history, an article of faith in Shinto was that the line of Japanese emperors was descended from Amaterasu herself; this was abandoned only after Japan lost World War II and the American Occupation redefined the emperor as 100 per cent mortal.

  Most important for this book, however, is Shinto’s belief in kami, which can be translated as either “gods” or “spirits.” It would be impossible to list all of the possible kami, since they cover all of creation; they are everywhere and in everything, making Shinto a literally all-encompassing religion. Some kami are guardian spirits of particular locations, from mountains and rivers to islands to vacant lots; some kami are associated with broader geographical areas or certain warrior clans; some kami are highly abstract, associated with the natural world or ideals such
as beauty and even evil (Shinto could not imagine evil as having been the result of a separate creation).

  This last type of association may be why the 1997 Studio Ghibli animated film Mononoke-hime (Princess Mononoke) was considered almost incomprehensible when it was dubbed into English as part of a deal to bring the anime of director Hayao Miyazaki to America. That deal never anticipated a film populated by giant boar kami, giant wolf kami, little potato-headed human-like kami, and the shishigami, the spirit that governs the entire natural world.

  Complementing Shinto in Japan is its embrace of Buddhism; a majority of Japanese (84% according to one source) claim to believe in both religions at once. This is possible because the two faiths aren’t mutually exclusive, and one point where they overlap is in the realm of the spirits.