Toshiden: Exploring Japanese Urban Legends: Volume One

by Tara A. Devlin

  As with many legends of this nature, the game is said to be the creation of several university students. They wanted to study how and how far an urban legend would travel, so they created the story on purpose before distributing it to the internet. As the legend states above, it first appeared on 2chan in April 2006 and has been a fixture of supernatural challenges ever since. But how do you play it? Let’s take a look.

  HOW TO PLAY

  You’ll need the following items before you start:

  A stuffed toy that has legs and arms attached with thread.

  Rice.

  Sewing needle and red sewing thread.

  Kitchen knife or box cutter.

  Cup of salt water.

  Nail clippers.

  For those stupid enough, animal meat, their own hair, and blood (this is entering the taboo area).

  Now that you’ve prepared all your items, here’s what to do with them:

  Prepare everything by 3 a.m.

  Remove all the thread from the stuffed toy.

  Put rice inside the toy.

  Cut your nails with the clippers and put a fragment in the toy. Then sew it back up with the red thread. If you were brave and/or stupid enough to also prepare meat, hair and blood, put these in now as well.

  Once you’ve finished sewing the stuffed toy back up, continue to wrap the red thread around it and then tie it up.

  Give the toy a name.

  At this point you are ready to start the game. Here’s how you do it:

  Turn towards the toy and say, “First, I’ll be ‘it’,” three times.

  Go to the bathroom and submerge the toy in a bathtub full of water.

  Leave the room and turn off all the lights in the house, leaving only the TV on. Make sure the TV is only displaying white noise. Close your eyes and count to 10.

  With the knife or box cutter in hand, make your way back to the bathroom. You can head straight there or you can wander for a bit. What’s important here is the atmosphere.

  Once you’ve returned to the stuffed toy, say, “I’ve found you, OO (the toy’s name),” and stab it with the knife.

  Next, say “Now you’re ‘it’,” and leave the toy with the knife stuck in it. Now it’s your turn to hide. A closet or anywhere is okay, just make sure you hide, and make sure you have salt water with you.

  Strange and supernatural things will occur, but stay in your hiding spot. You must remember to finish the game within two hours, however.

  So, these are the basics, but there are a few more rules you must keep in mind while playing:

  You must not leave the house while playing.

  You mustn’t turn any lights on. You may only use a torch, and even then, only if it’s truly dangerous.

  Make sure you keep the salt water near you at all times.

  Stay quiet when you’re hiding.

  Don’t play for longer than two hours.

  Always make sure to play alone.

  If you live with family at the same time you play the game, it will affect them as well.

  You must remain calm.

  If something feels wrong, end the game right away.

  How exactly do you end the game? So far none of the rules have mentioned it, right? Ending the game is actually quite simple, or it is in theory. Take a swig of the salt water, and with it in your mouth you must make your way back to the stuffed toy. In general, the stuffed toy should still be in the bathroom where you left it, but there have been cases of the toy supposedly going missing or being found in other parts of the house. Either way, you must find the toy and pour the contents of the salt water cup over it, and then the salt water from your mouth. The order is very important. Cup first, mouth second. Then repeat “I win” three times and it’s game over.

  Once you’ve finished, you must make sure to burn the stuffed toy. This is also very important. By this point the thing probably has a major grudge against you for all its undergone, so best to kill it with fire to be sure.

  The following is a rather famous account of someone who played Hitori Kakurenbo and later posted about it on 2chan:

  I just got done playing Hitori Kakurenbo and some serious shit went down, do you guys mind if I tell you about it? It was seriously insane, so I’d like your permission before I say anything.

  Ah, sorry guys, I’m gonna tell you my story, anyway.

  You’ve heard about Hitori Kakurenbo and how dangerous it is, right? That game where you do something and you might die, yeah? I wanted to play it but I was too scared, so I ended up playing my own version. Hear me out.

  First, this is how I prepared.

  I put salt and a little of my own blood inside a Teru Teru Bozu (a Japanese handmade doll that resembles a Western ghost). I was alone at home, so I made sure to lock the house. I turned off all the lights and filled the bathtub with water, then put the Teru Teru Bozu in the water before hiding. And you can hide anywhere, but you can’t go outside. At least, I had vague memories of that, anyway.

  Here is where things got dangerous.

  After I put the Teru Teru Bozu in the tub you’re allowed to freely move around for a minute, right, but after one minute has passed, you can’t move. There was nowhere to hide in the bathroom.

  After one minute passed I called out twice, “Teru Teru Bozu-san, Teru Teru Bozu-san, I’m ready!”

  Here is where the real action starts. Scaredy-cats should stop reading now.

  I decided to hide under the kotatsu (heated table). I was scared, so I made sure to take my phone with me. Five minutes passed, but nothing happened. I figured that playing the game with my own style was no good and was about to give up when I heard something. I was excited, like, no way, it can’t really be here.

  At any rate, I was about to leave the kotatsu and head to the bathroom when my phone started vibrating. Who the hell was calling at this time of night…? But when I looked at my phone, the power was off. At once a chill fell over me and I ran to the bathroom, but when I got there the Teru Teru Bozu was gone.

  At this point I reached peak fear levels. Honestly, I just wanted to stop. I vaguely remembered that stopping halfway through was the most dangerous thing to do though, so I decided to stick it out.

  I recalled that finding the Teru Teru Bozu and saying that I found him would end the game, so I went looking for him.

  I thought about where I should look for it when I realised I needed to pee. Why now…? I thought and reluctantly went to the toilet. There’s no way it could be in here, right? But as I thought, there was nothing there. I quickly finished my business and flushed but the toilet was clogged or something, the water wasn’t going anywhere.

  There’s gotta be something stuck in there, I thought, and when I looked closer, I saw a large wad of hair floating there. I was about to blow my stack. I was gonna take a picture and post it here but then I remembered my battery was flat. I was so worked up I ended up dropping my phone in the toilet, but I was so disgusted looking at the hair that I flushed again, and this time it went. Along with my phone…

  Anyway, I decided to keep looking for the Teru Teru Bozu. To be honest, I live in a tiny, shitty, run-down apartment, so there aren’t that many places to hide. Just the closet and the room with the family altar. I decided to go there first. The altar for my mother is there, but, well, you’ll understand more about that later.

  There was nothing in the room, but I have a single photo of my mother in there. That photo was turned upside down. So much was happening at the time though that I didn’t really notice it.

  Next was the only place left to hide… the closet. I was so scared I didn’t want to open it, but if I didn’t find the Teru Teru Bozu, the game wouldn’t end, so I prepared myself and opened it, ready to die.

  But the bastard wasn’t there… I stopped to think about where the thing could be, but then I heard a noise coming from the altar room. Huh? There was nothing there before, I thought, and went towards it.

  The altar room is an old Japanese style, but it’s still g
ot lights, right? The old “kaching” type where you pull the string and they turn on. The Teru Teru Bozu was hanging upside down from it. I was surprised to see it there, of course, but something else flashed through my head at the same time.

  In reality, my mother hung herself in this room. As soon as I remembered I passed out, for real. When I came to I was in front of the altar. I couldn’t remember what happened, but it soon came back to me. I freaked out and ran around but I couldn’t find the Teru Teru Bozu. Looking closer, I saw it was light outside and the fear dissipated.

  In the end I didn’t find the Teru Teru Bozu again, but I said, “Found you!” and unlocked the door.

  I finished the game.

  Comments and stories of people who played the game could fill their own book entirely, but here’s a few more quotes from anonymous posters on 2chan of what happened to them after playing:

  “I found the stuffed toy in a different place to where I left it originally.”

  “I saw a weird face reflected in the TV.”

  “It was after broadcasting hours but I still heard a voice on the TV.”

  “I was alone at home while hiding, but I could hear strange noises from throughout my house.”

  And a few quotes from people who were cursed by playing the game even though they followed the rules for finishing:

  “I saw a black lump looking at me from the veranda.”

  “I heard someone whispering in my ear, ‘Why? Why? Why? Why?’ But it was my own voice.”

  “I’ve been having nightmares, and my pile of video games keeps falling over by itself.”

  “I live with my grandmother, and I found her dead in the bathtub.”

  It’s perhaps good to keep in mind that even if you do play the game and follow all the rules, it doesn’t mean you’ll get off scot-free, as these totally believable anonymous people on the internet can attest to.

  VARIATIONS

  Like the version earlier that was shared on 2chan, there are several ways to play the game. Here is another popular method:

  At 3 a.m., fill a bathtub with salt water and light 10 candles around it. Turn off all other lights in the room.

  Remove the thread from a stuffed toy, put rice and a chicken heart inside, then sew it back up.

  Put the stuffed toy in the bath, say “First, I’m ‘it,’” and stab the toy with a knife.

  Say, “Now you’re ‘it,’” and hide somewhere like a closet.

  To finish the game you must remove the heart from the toy and say “I win.”

  MEDIA

  The above version can be found on the Noroi no List 4 DVD re-enacted by actors. You can also find several books on the topic in Japanese, and a movie was released in 2009 aptly named Hitori Kakurenbo. Another movie was released in 2010, and then another in 2012.

  The game is popular enough that you can find it in various corners of the Western internet as well, with videos on YouTube and posts on reddit. The English title of the movie appears to be “Hide and Go Kill,” which doesn’t exactly capture the feeling of the original, but it certainly gets the point across like a sledgehammer.

  Be careful if you decide to play hide and seek alone. You never know what you might bring back with you.

  Society

  The test only murderers can pass

  Psychology tests are supposed to be a simple, familiar way to judge a person’s character, but there are also cases where they are used in the psychiatric examination of criminals. Let’s take a look at one such test.

  There was once a family of three; a father, a mother and a child. But one day the father died in a traffic accident, and a funeral service was held for him. Many his colleagues from work attended the service. However, the mother fell in love at first sight with one of these colleagues. A short while later, she killed her child.

  Question: Why did the mother kill her child?

  The majority of people who take this test answer with “Because the child would be in the way if she remarried” or “Because she went crazy at the sudden death of her husband.” But those who are considered to be truly evil answer differently. In reality, there are two such people who gave that answer.

  “Because then she could meet that person again at her child’s funeral.”

  The criminals who answered this way? Miyazaki Tsutomu, the Little Girl Murderer, and Sakakibara Seito, the criminal behind the Kobe child murders.

  ABOUT

  The truth about whether this test is actually used on criminals or not is pretty simple; it’s not. Miyazaki Tsutomu never took such a test, and it’s highly doubtful that such an unreliable method would be used to test the psychology of criminals. How do we know for sure that Miyazaki, one of the most famous serial killers in Japanese history, never took the test? Miyazaki was arrested in 1989, but this legend didn’t pop up until many years later.

  It was thought by many people to have originated in the light novel A Lollipop or a Bullet, released in late 2004 by Sakuraba Kazuki. There is a scene in the book with a psychology test question awfully similar to the above legend, used to test whether someone is a child killer or not.

  But it appeared even before that in a PS2 game called Moonlight~The Sinking Bell Murders~, released in 2002. First editions of the game came with a “written challenge from the criminal” on the inside, in which the above legend was included almost word for word. This challenge was thought up by one of the game’s creators in 2001.

  This particular piece of psychology has a place in human history, however. There was an episode where a woman confessed to Freud that she was dreaming about her son’s funeral, but rather than being sad she was happy. Did that mean she wanted her son to die? Freud concluded that the woman had fallen in love with a man, but was suppressing her feelings for him. However, if they were to meet at a funeral, it wouldn’t be quite so salacious to prying eyes, so it wasn’t that the woman wanted her son to die, but that she wanted to safely meet the man instead.

  The answer to the question also likely has a basis in the life of Yaoya Oshichi, a woman who lived in the Edo Period in the 1600s. It’s said that she fell in love with a temple page during the Great Tenna Fire in Edo. Thinking she might meet him again if there was another fire, she attempted arson but was arrested and burnt at the stake for her crimes.

  This particular urban legend then made headlines in 2005 when it was introduced in the “Celebrity Urban Legends” section of the TV Tokyo variety show Yarisugi Koji.

  Why there are so many bridges to Shikoku

  There are three bridges linking mainland Japan to the island of Shikoku. The Kobe-Awaji-Naruto Expressway, which links Hyogo Prefecture with Tokushima Prefecture; the Seto-Chuo Expressway, which links Okayama Prefecture with Kagawa Prefecture; and the Nishiseto Expressway, which links Hiroshima Prefecture to Ehime Prefecture. These are called the Honshu-Shikoku Bridge Project and are the main highways and railroads that connect Shikoku to mainland Japan. But why does Shikoku, with such a small population, need three bridges connecting it to the mainland? There is a highly classified militaristic reason hidden behind it.

  The bridges were built in order to swiftly enable evacuation either in advance or in the event of a large disaster from the larger cities of mainland Japan. The Bridge Project was drawn up whilst the USA and Soviet Union were in the midst of the Cold War, and tensions remained high. Japan, as an ally of the US, was no exception, and feared an attack from the USSR. As such, they decided upon Shikoku as a place of safety and refuge.

  But why did they decide on Shikoku? Supposing that the Soviet Union would set its sights on American military bases to attack, Shikoku housed not even a single one. For that reason, the large and very costly project to link Shikoku to the mainland via three separate bridges was drawn up.

  ABOUT

  This particular urban legend is said to have originated in and propagated around the coastal areas of the Seto Inland Sea area. However, it’s said the idea for bridges linking Shikoku to the mainland actually began back i
n the Meiji Period (early 1900s). The chairman of Kagawa Prefecture, Okubo Shinnojo, is said to have brought up the need for a bridge connecting Shikoku to the mainland in 1889. The first steps were taken by the Sanuki Railways, who drew up plans to connect the islands via bridge. Early in the 1900s, a member of congress from Tokushima Prefecture then proposed the Naruto Bridge to the National Diet. A few years after that, the major of Kobe City buckled down on his proposal for the Akashi Kaikyo Bridge (now part of the Kobe-Awaji-Naruto Expressway).

  Before the bridges were built, the only thing connecting the islands was a ferry. However, after the Second World War there were difficulties and several ferries sank, one after the other, costing many lives. In the disorder of the post-war there weren’t enough boats to begin with, and combined with bad weather, this lead to overcrowding and thus the wrecking of several ships. Amongst those ships was the Shiun Maru, which collided with the Japanese National Railways ferry Uko Maru in thick fog. This was attributed to a lack of radar on-board, and 168 people, including 100 elementary and junior high school students on a school trip, were killed.