Japanese Ghost Stories: Spirits, Hauntings, and Paranormal Phenomena Page 8
A famous example of a mummy is displayed at the Churenji temple, on Mount Yudono, where it sits inside its own altar. Known as Tetsumonkai, this dehydrated body with grinning skull is clothed in the vestments of a high-ranking monk: orange robe, purple and saffron sash, and a golden hood. For those who come to worship here, it offers proof of someone who succeeded in his goal of becoming a living mummy. But there are many more who failed, and Churenji is said to be haunted by the ghosts of those who could not achieve their spiritual aims.
According to the head monk, Sato Eimei, Churenji is a highly unusual place around which numerous spirits are wandering. He himself has seen a spirit on the roof, another in the cherry tree, and one more in white standing before a tomb, as well as the spirit of a monk unable to complete the mummy training successfully. He has also seen children accompanied by a woman clad in the traditional heavy robes of the Heian aristocracy, and he believes these ghosts call the temple home. One of his strangest experiences was being lifted out of his bath by an unseen force and dropped some distance away into a big, wooden tub. Checking the quality of his morning shave one day, he found that a long beard had immediately grown in. To deal with this supernatural event, he at once ritually purified himself.
Women workers at the temple also report bizarre happenings. A glass door shook so violently that one worker thought it was an earthquake. The head monk, however, said it was the spirit of someone about to die, and sure enough, that evening one of the worker’s close acquaintances died unexpectedly. Another temple worker recalls the ringing of the doorbell, followed by the sound of footsteps in slippers. But when she went to look, nobody was there.
Ghosts or no, even now ascetics come to Churenji to undertake a thousand-day period of training, during which time they eat only gingko nuts and walnuts, the purpose being to rid the body of excess water in preparation for becoming a living mummy. And each year, in the latter part of August, a period of strict training on Mount Haguro manages to attract believers from throughout Japan and from varying walks of life. The path of the ascetic, even for those accustomed to the conveniences of modern living, retains strong appeal.
While grown men and women train at Dewa Sanzan to become mummified, another Yamagata locale boasts a fish that may have yearnings to be human. At Tsuruoka City is the Zenpoji temple. Behind the temple is a garden and pond in which there lives a fish with an eerily human face. As it swims toward the edge of the water, its features appear decidedly unfishlike. There are apocryphal stories all over Japan of fish with human faces, but this is reportedly the first one whose existence has been conclusively proven. At the center of the pond stands a statue of a dragon deity, and locals say that it is not surprising that such a spiritual, mystical place should have a special, mystical fish.
But it’s not only fish in Japan that may have aspirations to be human. In Gifu Prefecture, in central Japan, there stands a persimmon tree that is believed to grow human hair. The tree can be found at the Fukugenji temple, in the town of Yoro. Many supernatural happenings are said to have taken place at this temple, frightening away even the monks, and today no monk lives there. Behind the temple, in the cemetery, is a persimmon tree which old-timers such as Yamahata Arakichi swear is haunted. At night, the tree is often enveloped by an eerie blue light, and when the alleged hair growing on a branch of the tree is burned, it smells like human hair. Over the years, the tree has become associated with bad luck and accidents. Several decades ago, for instance, two young villagers decided to remove the hair from the tree. Within a month, one youth developed a fever and died; the other died in an accident. In 1978, a group of hikers visited and picked persimmons from the tree. Returning home, they, too, had a very bad accident.
As the history goes, in 1681 a certain Ishii Mitsunojo’s father was killed by Akabori Gengoemon in Osaka. The son, then a twenty-six-year-old samurai, pursued his father’s killer to take revenge, but instead was himself murdered by Akabori, who then fled to safety. Almost twenty-nine years later, the third and fourth Ishii sons, Genzo and Hanzo, finally traced Akabori’s whereabouts and killed him. Ishii Mitsunojo lost his life when Akabori dragged him by the hair and cut his throat. Ishii’s body was buried under the persimmon tree, and people say that his deep sense of revenge shifted to the tree, which absorbed the nutrients from his body and began to grow human hair. At one point, the mature tree fell over, but a new tree sprouted, also bearing hair. Next to the tree is a small stone memorial to Ishii, whose spirit is still believed to haunt the spot where he died. In 1971 a professor at Tokyo Agricultural University examined the hair and declared that it was really a plant that closely resembles human hair. But locals here remain unconvinced and for safety’s sake never come too near the persimmon tree that glows blue in the night.
Human hair is also the focus of a temple, this time in Hokkaido. The Mannenji temple houses the “Okiku Doll,” a thirty-centimeter-high Japanese doll that was the beloved toy of a girl named Okiku. When the temple first received the doll, its hair was cropped. It has since grown to be some twenty-five centimeters long, reaching almost to the doll’s knees. Every March 21 has been designated the doll’s hair-cleaning day, and although the hair is regularly trimmed, it allegedly grows several millimeters again within a few months.
The tale behind this doll concerns a boy named Suzuki Eikichi, who visited Hokkaido in 1918, probably to see the marine exhibition. On Tanuki-koji, Sapporo’s famous shopping street, he bought this doll for his two-year-old sister, Okiku. On January 24 of the next year, however, Okiku died suddenly. The bereaved family placed the doll in the household altar and prayed to it every day in memory of their lost daughter. Over time, they noticed that the doll’s hair had started to grow. In 1938 Suzuki and his family moved to Sakhalin, and the doll was offered to the Mannenji temple. People believe that the dead girl’s spirit clung to the doll, where it resides today. One examination of the doll supposedly concluded that the hair is truly that of a young child.
Sapporo also draws people eager to snap the ghostly image of a woman with long hair sitting in the Heiwa Waterfall, which cascades prettily in the city’s Nishi Ward. When the weather is right, local residents and tourists alike line up with cameras focused on the spot in the river where the woman’s image appears. The waterfall has been featured in several television programs focusing on the supernatural, and there was even a cassette recording made of what some say is the voice of a spirit calling for help. One reporter recalls the feeling of being pulled into the river against his will, and Sato Koshun, a monk of the Nittoji temple, reports that the same thing happened to him more than twenty years ago. Some power he could not fight dragged him down so that he fell into the water.
Hokkaido even claims its own version of “Nessie,” the alleged sea monster of Loch Ness, in the north of Scotland. Japan’s Lake Kushiro has a mysterious underwater inhabitant called “Kushii,” (from “Kussie”) and, as with Nessie, sightings have been regularly reported.
Speaking of underwater inhabitants, Tono City, in Iwate Prefecture, has a resident kappa, or family of kappa. Local tales tell of the kappa attempting to drag horses into the water to eat them, and a kappa is said to have written out a testament to his actions, a confession which is still kept by one of the area’s families. The Tono kappa has been discussed by the ethnologist Yanagida Kunio, who chronicled the Tono vicinity’s strange tales in his Tono Monogatari (Tales of Tono). Another local family has for centuries been given the honorary tide of “family of doctors,” because they make and use healing recipes taught to them long ago by the kappa. One particularly useful medicine is effective for boils or abscesses, and the paste-like concoction was sold all over Japan up until the early Showa era.
Another working alliance between humans and supernatural beings can be found at Oe, in Kyoto Prefecture. This mountain village of six thousand residents adopted the oni Shutendoji as a symbol of economic revitalization by launching a regular festival in his honor in 1982. There is now a Japanese Oni Exchange Museum,
as well as an International Oni Association, established in 1994, with about 350 members. Shutendoji, whose name means “saké-drinking boy,” was a legendary demon who lived in the mountains and terrorized the Kyoto area by robbing villagers and kidnapping young women. His story is one of the medieval tales known collectively as otogi-zoshi.
In the year 987, many people, especially girls of the aristocracy, had gone missing in the Kyoto area, all said to be victims of Shutendoji. So the court astrologer, Abe no Seimei, finally divined the demon’s whereabouts on Mount Oe. One of those missing was the son of Fujiwara Michinaga, and this powerful lord informed Emperor Ichijo (986–1010), who ordered four samurai to destroy the demon. They refused out of fear, and the emperor then dispatched Minamoto no Yorimitsu and Fujiwara no Yasumasa to kill Shutendoji. After praying for strength at several Kyoto shrines, the two warriors and their followers set out on November 1, 995. En route, they met an old, white-haired man who advised them to change their costumes to those of yamabushi, and to hide their armor in their baggage. Shutendoji apparently liked not only saké, but also mystic seekers. The son of Fujiwara Michinaga was a devout disciple of the Buddhist Tendai sect, and many benevolent demons had gathered to protect him after his capture, confusing Shutendoji, who proved unable to get close enough to kill him.
The warriors then encountered an old woman who claimed to have been kidnapped by the demon more than two hundred years previously. Because her muscles and bones were so hard, the demon had spared her and instead made her his washerwoman. She directed them to Shutendoji’s hideout, a grisly scene of rotting corpses, mounds of bones, and assistants preparing human sushi. Pretending to be lost in the mountains, the group begged for overnight shelter. Shutendoji, who appeared as a clever-looking boy, agreed, and spent the night drinking and talking about himself and his exploits. Before coming to Mount Oe, he had lived on Mount Hiei, leaving only because the founder of the Tendai sect also had chosen to live there. Shutendoji had tried to scare off the monk by transforming himself into a huge, menacing camphor tree, but the monk saw through the ruse, and ordered the tree to be cut down. Shutendoji escaped to Mount Oe, where he had been hiding since 849, awaiting his destiny.
At last Shutendoji fell into a drunken slumber, and the warriors prepared their attack. During sleep the demon assumed his true form, a monster with a great red body, the left foot black, the right foot white, a blue left hand, a yellow right hand, and an enormous head with fifteen eyes and five horns. Four samurai held him down as Minamoto and Fujiwara tried to cut off his head, with Shutendoji shouting orders to his helpers to fight. When the head was cut off, it flew in a rage and sank its teeth into the helmet of Minamoto, who used his sword to gouge out two of the demon’s furious eyes. When the head dropped, the group carried it back to Kyoto, where it was publicly shown and then placed in the Byodoin temple.
At Oe’s Japanese Oni Exchange Museum, more than two hundred masks of demons from around the world have been collected, and the library has some four thousand books and documents concerning devils and demons. There are also about fifty demon roof tiles, some dating from the sixth century. Such roof tiles are still used in Japan as good-luck charms to drive off malevolent forces that may mean harm to the house and its inhabitants. To date, the association between Oe and Shutendoji, considered a dicey move when it was first proposed, seems a success. The once-sleepy village now attracts more than two hundred thousand people a year.
Between Kyoto and Tokyo, on the old Tokkaido highway, is a famous stone known as the “Nightly Weeping Rock.” A pregnant woman in the Edo era was traveling to meet her husband when she was attacked and murdered by a robber. Her blood spilled on a large rock, which embodied her spirit and each night began to weep. A detailed rendering of this poignant legend was made by the print artist, Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797–1861), who portrayed the bereaved husband holding the newborn baby in his arms as the ghost of his wife relates her sorrowful tale. Legend has it that Kannon, the Goddess of Mercy, had somehow rescued the child and reared it on a diet of sweets. In one version of the story, the ghost then aided the unhappy widower in avenging her untimely death.
Another talking rock is said to be found at the Monju Senji temple, in the town of Kunisaki, in Oita Prefecture, Kyushu. A human voice, heard by several persons undergoing Zen training here, issues from the stone statue, but so far nobody has been able to catch the meaning. A stone tomb at the Daisenji temple, in Iwate Prefecture’s Morioka City, on the other hand, sounds like metal when it is tapped. This granite grave marks the burial place of Okan, the daughter of a samurai who served the Nanbu clan and area. Even now, Nanbu ironware is famed for its skilled craftsman-ship. After Okan married, she rejected the approaches of a would-be lover, who then killed her in anger. Her husband then became a monk, and Okan was revered as a symbol of the virtuous, loyal wife.
CHAPTER FIVE
Modern-Day Hauntings
Old Edo has long since burgeoned into the megalopolis that is modern Tokyo, a sprawling mass of glass, steel, ferroconcrete, and tarmac crammed into two thousand square kilometers. Visitors impressed by this almost ceaseless kaleidoscope of glare and action seldom encounter what lies just beneath the frenetic East meets West facade. Nevertheless, under the dazzle of commerce and industry beats a primitive heart still attuned to the world of shadows. A legacy of East Asian supernatural beliefs remains. Today’s Tokyo may be a global economic center, but ghosts and other such phenomena are very much a part of everyday life, found even in the most contemporary of places.
A convincing example is the business district of Otemachi, now known internationally as an important hub of Japan’s banking and trading activities. Just beside the hundred-meter-tall building that houses the headquarters of the Mitsui Trading Company stands a monument so unobtrusive that most people walk by without giving it a second glance. For the businessmen who work in the vicinity, however, this monument is a solemn reminder that unhappy spirits have the power to disturb. It is said to mark the burial place of the head of Taira no Masakado, a disgruntled samurai who lived during the Heian period, which takes its name from Heiankyo, the old name for Kyoto. Toward the end of the eighth century, Japan’s capital was moved from Nara to Kyoto, which remained the center of government until the late twelfth century. In 939, planning to set up an independent state, Taira no Masakado named an alternative capital in Sashima, in what is now Chiba Prefecture, and declared himself the “New Emperor.” His rebellion, however, was short-lived; the following year, he was killed by Taira no Sadamori and Fujiwara no Hidesato.
As the legend goes, he died from an arrow wound, after which his body was beheaded and the head displayed in Kyoto as a warning for other would-be rebels. But three months later the head was unchanged. In fact, people said it looked the same as when he was alive, except that now the eyes were especially fierce and the mouth grimacing even more horribly in death. One night, the head, enveloped in a glowing light, is believed to have taken off and flown toward Taira no Masakado’s home in what is now Ibaraki Prefecture. On the way, it was shot down by an arrow fired by a monk at Atsuta Shrine, which today houses one of Japan’s three sacred treasures. The head dropped to Shibazaki Village, where the villagers picked it up and buried it beneath a mound in Kanda Myojin Shrine. Some ten years later the mound began to glow and shake violently. The ghost of a haggard-looking samurai appeared regularly until special prayers offered by the terrified villagers seemed to put the spirit to rest.
Later during the Edo era, Kanda Myojin was moved to a new site, but the tombs were left behind. In the Meiji era, the Finance Ministry constructed their building nearby, but it burned down in the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923. In rebuilding, the ministry destroyed the tombs and erected a temporary structure on the site. This proved to be an unfortunate decision. Reportedly fourteen officials of the ministry, including the finance minister himself, died within a short period. Many other workers became ill or were injured. Reconstruction was abruptly halted while a purification rit
ual was held. The ritual continued to be held every following year, with less and less enthusiasm as time passed, until something else happened. On June 20, 1940, on a day of heavy rain and thunder, the Finance Ministry caught fire. People remembered it was exactly one thousand years since Taira no Masakado’s death, and the finance minister ordered and announced a special remembrance ceremony.
Reports of various unexplained phenomena around the site continued for the next twenty years. In 1945, U.S. occupation forces cleared the site to create a parking area. Again there was sudden death and serious injury. This parking area was removed in 1961 so that new construction could begin, and just in case, each corner was purified with ritual salt, and the tomb once more dedicated to Taira no Masakado. These gestures seem to have been insufficient. Once construction was complete, workers in the rooms facing the tomb routinely fell ill. Many white-collar workers from nearby offices grew quite nervous, especially with reports that people who tried to take pictures around there often saw a face with disheveled hair in the camera lens. The construction company, extra cautious, had already begun the practice of praying at the tomb on the first and fifteenth day of each month. Then, the practice broadened. In fact, neighboring companies jointly formed the Taira no Masakado Memorial Committee and the bank adjacent to the tomb went so far as to send an employee from the General Affairs department to pray on the first day of every month. Sanwa Bank likewise ordered an employee to visit and pray at the tomb once a month. The bank president is also said to have donated the tomb’s donation box for the mere reason that his building cast the tomb into shadow.