Toshiden: Exploring Japanese Urban Legends: Volume One

by Tara A. Devlin

  Now, there are several things this case and My Neighbour Totoro have in common. To start with, the characters of Satsuki and Mei both represent the month of May; Satsuki being the name of the fifth month in the lunar calendar, and May being the fifth Western month. The Sayama Incident took place during May. My Neighbour Totoro is also set in Tokorozawa City, which is right next door to Sayama. The hospital Satsuki and Mei go to visit their mother in also exists in the Sayama Hills.

  The victim in the Sayama Incident was a high school girl who also had an older sister, and after she went missing people often saw her sister looking for her. It certainly brings to mind how Satsuki sets out to find Mei in the film, doesn’t it? Once the high school girl’s body was found, her older sister went into such shock that people reported her as saying “I saw a monstrous cat,” and “I ran into a giant tanuki.” If this is true, it’s easy to see how the ideas for the cat bus (monstrous cat) and Totoro (a giant tanuki) came about.

  But that’s not all. There’s a scene in the movie where Mei goes missing after going out to visit her mother in the hospital. A sandal is discovered in the river, and in reality that sandal was Mei’s. She fell into the lake and died. Satsuki, not wanting her grandmother or the locals to be sad, lies and says that it’s not Mei’s. She then heads out to find Totoro, the god of death, in order to find Mei’s spirit. Satsuki heads into the underworld of her own accord, jumping into the cat bus, the bus that ferries souls, in order to find her sister. Eventually she meets up with Mei, but by this point Satsuki is already no longer of this world herself, and in their last scenes neither girl appears to have a shadow. In the end, Mei gets her wish and sees her mother, but because both she and her sister are spirits, they can’t meet her directly. They leave corn on her windowsill, and head back to the underworld.

  ABOUT

  This legend has been covered fairly extensively in the Western media because the coincidences behind it are far too numerous for it all to simply be a coincidence.

  While never confirmed or denied, it’s highly likely that the Sayama Incident at least forms the basis of My Neighbour Totoro’s story. You have two sisters, one of whom goes missing and the other sets out to find her, along the way seeing strange creatures that the real life victim’s sister claimed to have seen. The story’s location was inspired by Tokorozawa City, located next to Sayama (and hence My Neighbour Totoro) and several hints to Sayama are given in the film, such as boxes with the kanji for “Sayama Tea” on them. The victim’s real life sister also committed suicide over what happened, which leads into the second part of the legend where Mei and Satsuki are dead all along.

  Rumours became so heated that in 2007, Studio Ghibli had to step in and confirm that Totoro wasn’t the God of Death and Mei wasn’t really dead. The reason the girls didn’t have shadows in the end was simply an animation mistake. But the date they addressed the issues? May 1. 44 years to the day after the Sayama Incident. Another coincidence? I’ll leave that for you to decide.

  Where’s Wally?

  You’ve heard of the book called Where’s Wally?, right? You have to find Wally, a man wearing a red and white shirt with glasses on a page full of people. It’s a picture book that became a worldwide sensation in the 1990s. It was also popular with children in Japan, and a lot of people enjoyed it. But there’s a terrible secret hidden behind Where’s Wally?.

  30 years ago in England, an eight-year-old boy went missing. It was a terrible incident, and one month later his body was found. The police investigated the case desperately and a male suspect was arrested. His name was Jim Jack, and he was a mentally ill man who had killed over 20 children in the past. At trial Jim was found to not be responsible for his actions and he was sent to a mental hospital. However, a few years later Jim escaped. He was put on the wanted list once again and they still don’t know where he is.

  A short while later a certain picture book was published. It came with a warning to pay close attention in order to find the escaped Jim as soon as possible. That’s right, that book was the one that took the world by storm: Where’s Wally?. Wally represented the escaped Jim, and the red and white shirt that people so affectionately came to know him by was, at the time, the uniform of those incarcerated in mental hospitals.

  ABOUT

  This legend first rose to prominence in Japan when it appeared on the TV show Yarisugi Koji. The Where’s Wally? books, known as Wally wo Sagase! in Japan, are incredibly popular even today and you can still find them in bookstores across the country. And while it’s true that the black and white stripes that prisoners are often known for wearing originated in England, there’s no truth behind the statement that mental hospital patients wore red and white striped uniforms.

  So how did this legend come to be? First and foremost, Wally’s outfit does resemble a prisoner’s outfit, just in different colours. And the entire point of the books is to search for a missing man, much like police looking for a missing suspect. It is likely that this is how the original rumour started, and once it was picked up by a TV program, it became even more widespread.

  Kleenex commercial

  It’s said that this particular Kleenex tissue commercial is cursed. In the commercial, a child dressed up as a red demon and an actress called M-san are sitting together, getting along, while a box of tissues sits in the middle of the screen. Tissues fly out of the box and into the air, sheet by sheet. In the background you can hear a woman singing in English.

  The child who played the demon role is no longer with us. He died of a mysterious illness. This misfortune then spread. One of the staff who worked on the commercial died in an accident in the sauna. Then the actress, M-san, had to withdraw for a brief period due to neurosis. It’s said she gave birth to a child that looked like a demon.

  It’s said that the song used in the commercial was the cause of all these sorrows. This was not the type of song you would normally use in a commercial but instead a cursed song that had been used in Black Masses before. The translated lyrics said, “Die, die, one by one I will curse you all until you die.” If you happen to sing this song all the way to the end, it’s said you will most certainly die afterwards.

  Moreover, viewers who recorded the commercial on video, a new technology at the time, noticed the red demon changing into a blue demon, and the woman’s voice singing the song in the background transformed into that of an old woman. This cursed commercial has become a taboo of taboos in the industry.

  ABOUT

  This commercial was released in 1985, long before the internet was a common fixture in households and during a time when VHS players were not yet commonplace. Two versions of the commercial exist, and you can watch both of them on the internet right now. A young boy dressed as an oni, a red demon, sits with an actress on some straw and flings Kleenex tissues into the air. In the next commercial, the little boy oni seems upset, so the woman gives him a kiss before flinging some tissues into the air herself. “It’s a Fine Day,” a song written by English musician Edward Barton and sung by Jane plays in the background. It’s all rather innocent and nothing particularly screams out that this commercial is cursed. So how did the many rumours come to be?

  CURSED RUMOURS

  The following are just some of the legends that surround this cursed commercial:

  Staff who worked on the commercial died one after the other, with many also becoming injured or sick.

  A cameraman died of burns thanks to an accident in the sauna.

  Nobody was alive during the time the commercial aired on TV.

  The actress went crazy and retired from the industry. She was hospitalised in a mental institution and in the end hung herself.

  The boy who played the demon died when his internal organs exploded.

  After filming, a staff member was involved in a gruesome car accident resulting in their death.

  Another suffered nightmares and sleep paralysis for three days and three nights before dying mysteriously.

  Another’s head was ripp
ed off.

  The song that plays in the commercial is cursed.

  The song proclaims, “Die, die, one by one I will curse you all until you die,” in German.

  After viewing the commercial, you will die.

  After viewing the commercial, you will be cursed.

  After viewing the commercial, many people commit suicide.

  If you recorded the commercial and played it back on a second sound channel, the young woman’s voice would become hoarse, like an old woman.

  If you playback the recorded commercial, the red demon will turn into a blue demon.

  These are just some of the most common rumours surrounding the commercial, but as you can see, no-one who worked on it went on to live a happy life, if they even lived at all. Not only that, if you watch it yourself you’re also likely to die. But is there any truth to the rumours?

  One of the biggest claims is that the staff members who worked on the commercial died, one after the other, and that none of them survived until this day. In particular, it’s said that one staff member died whilst in the sauna. However, this rumour already existed at the time in relation to another case. On April 8, 1986, popular idol Okada Yukiko committed suicide, first by slashing her wrists and filling her apartment with gas, but when that didn’t work and she was taken to the hospital, she jumped out the seventh floor window. A rumour soon began to spread that the cameraman who filmed her dead body was later found dead himself in the sauna. Somehow this legend made its way to the oni Kleenex commercial even though it was proven false in both cases.

  What about the actress who went crazy and was institutionalised after the commercial and gave birth to a demon baby? As I’m sure you can imagine, this one is flagrantly false. The actress in the commercial is Matsuzaka Keiko. Matsuzaka has had a long and illustrious career in the industry and is still working today. She was never institutionalised, nor does she have a secret demon child, although she does have two regular human children now.

  How about the boy then? Journalists supposedly assaulted the boy in November 1985 with rumours of his passing. Obviously the boy was still alive as they interviewed him about his purported death. The boy’s name was never publicly released, but there are stories that he went on to further film work, and at the very least he never died as a result of filming the “cursed commercial.”

  But what about the cursed song? This one is a lot easier for English speakers to demystify. Look it up on YouTube and give it a listen yourself. It’s important to keep in mind, particularly in 1985, that the English ability of the average Japanese person was near non-existent. While we know the song is English because we speak it, the average person watching TV in Japan did not, which made it easier for rumours to spread that the song was actually in German, and that it was cursing all who listened. It would be comparable to an English speaker with no foreign language experience listening to a song in Czech, only to be told it was actually Polish. Oh, and now you’re cursed because it was telling you that you’re going to die. As for dying after you hear it? If that were the case, nearly every Japanese person born before 1985 would be dead by now. Spoiler alert: they’re not. Japan still has a healthy ageing population, and having listened to the song several times myself, I am also still alive. Or perhaps I am writing this book from the grave. That would make for some great marketing.

  You can also test the rumour that the red demon changes into a blue demon after repeated viewings yourself. As you can probably already guess, the demon’s colour doesn’t change. But it sure made for a cool story back in the VHS days.

  HOW DID THE RUMOURS SPREAD?

  As we’ve discussed, these commercials aired in 1985, long before the internet was available to spread and debunk rumours within minutes. Yet this urban legend was known Japan-wide and was popular enough for journalists to seek out the young actor who supposedly died because of his role as a demon.

  One theory suggests that the story of the cursed commercial spread the old-fashioned way: through monthly magazines. This allowed ghost stories and urban legends to reach large audiences rather quickly, and one magazine suggested for the spread of this particular rumour was Comptiq, an entertainment and media magazine targeting teenage boys. Comptiq magazines at the time came with somewhat lewd covers to entice these boys in. It’s not too hard to see how an urban legend such as this printed in a magazine targeted at teenage boys would quickly spread through schools like wildfire, eventually making its way home and spreading like a common cold.

  THE REAL TRUTH

  But you might be wondering how a commercial that aired in 1985 was already being passed around as an urban legend in the same year. Seems a little soon, doesn’t it? This is where things get even more confusing.

  The demon versions of the Kleenex commercial weren’t the first ones made. An angel version was released in 1977, and the initial claims of a cursed commercial were with regards to that one! When Comptiq later picked up the story in the same year the demon versions were on air, people quickly mistook them and a new urban legend was born.

  You can also watch the 1977 angel version on YouTube, and with this one it’s a little easier to see how people might think the background music was cursed. There are no real lyrics, just humming and chanting, and the music sounds like something you might hear in church or a ritual. The original legend also mentioned the “girl who appeared in the commercial later died.” Matsuzaka Keiko, who appeared in the later demon versions, was 33 at the time. Hardly a girl. But the angel version does involve a young girl, so it easier to understand how that particular part of the legend came about. Rather than being about a famous Japanese actress, the actual rumour was originally about an unknown Caucasian child.

  It is here that we see a play-by-play, by-the-book birth of an urban legend in the pre-internet era:

  Original angel commercial airs in 1977 and is a little creepy. Rumours start to spread and an urban legend is born.

  Said urban legend gestates for a few years before being picked up by a magazine in 1985, coincidentally the same year new demon versions of the commercial hit the air.

  People assume the original urban legend is talking about these new commercials instead of one that aired eight years earlier that most teenage kids likely don’t even remember.

  Embellishments are told and exaggerations are made, and the final form of the tale begins to spread even further.

  The Television’s infamous lemon

  Entertainers always appear on the cover of magazine The Television holding a lemon, but the reason for that is profound. Several decades ago, idol Okada Yukiko killed herself because of accusations of home wrecking, and after that The Television was haunted by her ghost. Nakamori Akina, another idol and friend of Okada, suggested the use of a lemon as a protective charm. The curse is so strong that Nagabuchi Tsuyoshi, the only person who ever refused to hold the lemon, was arrested not long after the shoot.

  ABOUT

  There’s a lot to unpack in this legend for readers unfamiliar with these entertainers or magazine.

  The Television is a weekly TV guide that comes with gossip, articles and other related news. It first began in 1982 and still runs today. Part of its branding involves the gimmick of cover models always appearing with a lemon. Nagabuchi Tsuyoshi, a popular singer, is the only person in the magazine’s history to have appeared on the cover not holding a lemon.

  You may remember Okada Yukiko from the Kleenex commercial urban legend. She was an extremely popular idol who killed herself in the 80s, and although the real reason why she did it was never discovered, there have been several rumours, including accusations of cheating, pregnancy and even that she was murdered.

  Nakamori Akina was another popular idol who was friends with Okada. The legend states that it was Nakamori who originally suggested the magazine use the lemon prop to guard itself from Okada’s wrath, but no explanation is ever given as to why. What links Okada, Nakamori and the lemon? No-one knows. This legend is said to have started from within t
he industry itself, so perhaps there is some behind-the-scenes knowledge that the public is unaware of, but until then the link remains a mystery.

  THE TRUTH

  The first issue of The Television went on sale on September 22, 1982, with actress Yakushimaru Hiroko on the cover. From this very first issue she was seen holding a lemon, and the tradition has continued to this day. As mentioned earlier, the only person to ever appear on the cover not holding a lemon was Nagabuchi Tsuyoshi, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

  When asked why Yakushimaru was holding a lemon on the cover, and why it has appeared on every issue since, the magazine replied, “We wanted to express the freshness of the magazine through the lemon, and use it as a way to brand our original photos.”

  So there you have it. The Television wished to express itself as fresh as a lemon, and it was a clever attempt at branding as well.

  Nagabuchi Tsuyoshi appeared on the cover on the magazine, sans lemon, in 1991 and 1993. His reason for this was that, at the time, he disliked the media and hated taking photos, thus he refused to pose with the lemon. Nagabuchi was indeed arrested in 1995 for marijuana possession. But he appeared on the cover of The Television once more in 2013, this time holding a lemon in each hand. Was this a result of the curse? Well, not really. Nagabuchi explained on TV beforehand that he felt bad about refusing them twice when he was younger, so the next time he’d appear with a whole basket of lemons. It seemed that two was enough, and all was forgiven.

  While we may never know the reasons behind this industry urban legend and what links the two idols with a lemon, it’s probably less of an actual curse and more of an attempt to stand out in a sea of weekly magazines. Clever, really.