Toshiden: Exploring Japanese Urban Legends: Volume Two

by Tara A. Devlin

  Sukima-onna’s popularity continues to grow, and for a yokai that has been around since the Edo Period, she just seems to be hitting her stride. After all, the modern world is full of tiny gaps. You never know where she might be…

  Human-faced Dog

  A young man was working late at night at a restaurant. It was about time to close, so he carried the kitchen garbage out the back door to the trash as he always did. The back door faced a narrow alley, and being that it was late, there was no pedestrian traffic.

  “There’s a dog going through the rubbish…”

  When he looked over, a single dog had its head thrust in the restaurant’s trash, rummaging through it. Thinking it a nuisance that would run away if he approached it, the man dragged his large bag of rubbish over.

  Most wild dogs would run away at the sight of a human, but this one continued to give its undivided attention towards the trash. Not wanting the dog to scatter the restaurant’s garbage any further, the young man yelled at the dog.

  “Hey! Quit making a mess!”

  The dog slowly turned to look at him. But it wasn’t a dog. Its body was that of a dog, but its face was human…

  ABOUT

  The legend of the human-faced dog, or jinmen inu in Japanese, started to spread across Japan in the late 1980s, particularly amongst elementary school students. It became so popular that it caused a swath of “human-faced” legends to emerge, with tales of human-faced fish and human-faced spiders, amongst others. If you could think of it, there was probably a tale of a human-faced version somewhere. But where did it come from, and why was the human-faced dog so popular?

  HISTORY

  Legends of where the human-faced dog came from are almost as varied and famous as the original tale itself. In 1973, Tsunoda Jiro published a manga called Ushiro no Hyakutaro. One of the characters was a ghostly dog named “Zero,” who communicated telepathically with the protagonist and possessed a human face. A few years later, in 1978, the movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers was released, which also featured a dog with a human face. Dogs with human faces were clearly not a new idea, but these may have planted the first seeds in the public imagination of the legend that was yet to come.

  One popular theory for how the human-faced dog came to be can be found in the inaugural issue of Quick Japan magazine. Quick Japan published a report stating that journalist Ishimaru Gensho, then a writer for the magazine Popteen, colluded with Popteen’s editorial department over a reader-submitted story. That story was about a human-faced dog. He took the story—without publishing it—and expanded on it to create his own work. It was this story that then created the human-faced dog boom of the early 1990s.

  Japanese actor Matoba Koji later appeared on the nighttime television show Downtown DX, and there he claimed that he and his friends often joked about stray dogs with human faces. This made human-faced dog stories even more popular, helping the legend spread further.

  On the radio program Bakusho Mondai Cowboy, comedian Tanaka Yuji told a story from one of his friends that claimed to be the origin of the urban legend. According to him, an urban legend club at a certain university in Tokyo wanted to research how legends spread amongst young children. They created fake posters and went around asking children about the human-faced dog, deliberately spreading misinformation. While wearing white lab coats, they asked elementary school students, “A dog with a human face has escaped from the research centre, have you seen it?” These same university students supposedly added an ending to the story that featured the dog saying “leave me alone” in response to people approaching it.

  Furthermore, in 1988, the TBS radio program Super Gang: Teens Dial featured a special on the human-faced dog. This particular show had a large influence on spreading the legend around the country, and over 150 people called in that very same night to report they had seen a human-faced dog in the flesh. So many people called in that many were left on hold, unable to get through.

  Whether any of these stories, or a mix of these stories, are the true origin, nobody has yet come to an agreement on. Tales of creatures possessing a human face, such as the kudan (a human-faced cow), or the nue (a mixture of various creatures, much like a chimera, and sometimes said to possess human features) have been around for hundreds of years. In fact, in the book Gaidan Bunbun Shuyo, written by author Ishizuka Hokaishi in 1810, he tells the tale of a dog in the town of Tadocho, Edo, who gave birth to a puppy with a human face. A showman catches wind of the strange birth and buys the puppy to put in his show, selling out crowds with its incredible popularity. There was a real-life superstition at the time that intercourse with a female dog would cure syphilis, which led to rumours and tales of puppies being born with human faces.

  According to fellow Edo writer Kato Ebian, on April 29, 1819, a puppy was born in the Nihonbashi area with a human face that became the talk of the town. Folks who told him the tale said the dog had a face like that of a monkey. Some tile block prints made during the era also portrayed these human-faced dogs as having human front legs to go with their faces.

  VARIATIONS

  There are two main stories told about the human-faced dog. The first and main story is the one mentioned earlier. Some versions of this tale go a little further, with the dog turning to look at the man with an exhausted look on his face and saying “Leave me alone,” like the version supposedly spread by university students. He’s also been known to mutter “I’m free to do what I want,” “Shut up,” or “Oh, it’s just a human.”

  Other versions have the dog able to jump over six metres into the air on the spot, and in some, the dog is actually an escaped experiment from a research facility.

  The other main version of the story claims that if you overtake a human-faced dog while driving on the highway, you will crash and potentially die. Here, the dog is able to reach speeds of 100 kilometres per hour and will chase down cars, generally causing them to crash. Some origin stories for the dog claim he actually died in a car accident, and the human-faced dog is his spirit.

  According to yokai researcher Yamaguchi Bintaro, a lesser known version states that a middle-aged businessman committed suicide after he lost his job in a company downsizing, and through his malice, was possessed by a dog spirit, causing him to become a human-faced dog. It’s also said that if a human-faced dog bites you, you will become one yourself, much like a strange human-canine vampire with a taste for trash.

  Depending on who you want to believe, the human-faced dog is either an angry spirit (human or canine, sometimes both), a yokai, or a biological experiment gone wrong. Some legends even claim the dog was created by mutation thanks to environmental pollution!

  CHARACTERISTICS

  Popteen ran a “Final Human-Faced Dog Report” in their April 1989 issue, where they gathered data from people all around the country who claimed to have seen the animal. They concluded the following:

  Only people with a strong reikan, or ability to see ghosts, were able to see the human-faced dog. If two people were together, there was no guarantee that both people would see it.

  There isn’t just one human-faced dog. Several were seen all over the country by numerous people.

  The human-faced dogs knew they were being talked about. One second grade high school student from Kawagoe City in Saitama Prefecture claimed that one approached her to talk. She worked up the courage to ask it what it really was, and claimed the dog answered, “I can’t say right now, but now that everyone is talking about us, daily life has become more difficult.”

  Human-faced dogs never attacked people. Not a single person who came across them mentioned they had been directly attacked by the dogs.

  THE HIDDEN TRUTH

  One theory has been suggested for the human-faced dog’s popularity in modern times. It’s not just the shocking image of a human face on a dog’s body, nor the continuation of a creature supposedly seen since the times of Edo. Rather, this depiction of a human confined to the body of a dog represents the feeling of young people
’s restricted freedoms. It’s almost always young people who claim to see the dog, and while the dog itself may not really exist, the feelings behind what it represents do.

  The dog is famous for saying “Leave me alone,” “Shut up,” and “I can do what I want.” Sounds like something a teenager might say, right? Thus, those who claim to have seen the human-faced dog, of course, have not seen it, but are instead venting their frustrations at society and the rules imposed upon them by putting themselves in the role of the dog with a human face.

  Even Though You Can See Me

  Three university students were walking down a busy street. One of them looked up and saw a man in military uniform leaning against a building. He appeared to be in pain, but was doing his best to endure it… At least, that was what she thought. Perhaps a television program was filming nearby and he was just an extra. That had to be it.

  But strangely, neither her two friends walking beside her, nor anybody else on the street seemed to notice him. The girl grew scared and avoided looking at him as they walked by. Then, just as she passed him, she heard the man mutter.

  “Even though you can see me…”

  ABOUT

  It’s thought that this story was first told on television by a popular idol, although nobody seems to remember who or even when. Japanese celebrities spend a lot of time sharing funny and scary stories on television, so it’s not uncommon to attribute stories to them without remembering who exactly it was, or even when someone heard it.

  These days there are numerous versions of the same tale that all end with the ghostly figure saying to the girl passing by, “Even though you can see me…” The Japanese used, mieteru kuse ni, is rather accusatory in its tone. The ghost knows the girl can see him or her and is chiding her for pretending otherwise. It’s a gentle reminder that for those who have the ability to see ghosts, it can be rather inconvenient sometimes, and once you notice something unnatural, there’s no point in pretending otherwise. It knows, too.

  VARIATIONS

  Perhaps the most common variation of this legend involves the girl waiting at a set of traffic lights instead of walking past a soldier leaning on a building. It goes as follows:

  One night, a woman was waiting by some traffic lights on a busy street. The woman possessed a strong reikan, allowing her to see ghosts, and suddenly she felt a chill run down her spine. She noticed a woman standing on the other side of the street, waiting just like her. She was surrounded by people and there was nothing particularly strange about her, but something about the woman caught her eye.

  The lights turned green and people started crossing the road. The woman cast her eyes down to avoid looking at this other woman as she passed. Yet, when she approached the middle of the street and walked by, she heard her laugh.

  “Even though you can see me…”

  Some versions combine these two, and the girl passes a soldier at the traffic lights instead. Further stories add another element of fear by having the ghost show up at the girl’s home right as she’s on the verge of forgetting anything ever happened. That ending goes as follows:

  One year passed, and the woman was on the verge of forgetting about the man in military clothes she saw that day. Her doorbell rang, so the woman got up to answer it and saw the soldier standing on her doorstep with a gun. He fired twice, and the woman died.

  To all who hear this story, the man in the military clothes will show up on your doorstep within three days as well…

  With this version, we see the common “to all who hear this story, they will meet the same fate” added in an attempt to have the tale passed around like a chain letter. It seems to have worked, because people are still talking about it even now.

  Ski Resort

  A man went on a trip to a ski resort. It was a weekday so there were few people around. Thinking it was a great chance to ski his heart out, he hit the slopes. He was enjoying himself immensely, but then he heard something coming from the forest next to the course.

  The man approached it, wondering what it could be.

  “Help me!”

  This time he clearly heard a voice. He entered the forest and found the top half of a woman’s body sticking out of the snow. She must have fallen into a hole.

  “I’ll get you out!” the man screamed. He grabbed her hands and pulled with all his might.

  “What the…?”

  The woman was lighter than he expected and he faced little resistance as he pulled her up. However, there was a reason she was so light. Where her lower body should have been, there was nothing. What the man thought was a hole was nothing more than a pile of snow.

  The upper body of the woman he was holding grinned at him.

  ABOUT

  This story likely brings to mind Kashima Reiko, or Teketeke, other famous legends of women who are missing their lower halves. While this particular legend isn’t as famous as those, it was likely inspired by them and makes for a neat little horror story all by itself.

  The first evidence of this story online comes from a post on 2chan on August 3, 2007, in a thread of people sharing famous scary stories. It’s unclear where this one originated from, or if it was created solely to share in the thread, but the original poster shared several scary stories that featured legs or a lack thereof. The story was then copied and shared around the internet until it became a legend in its own right. Although, considering the woman in this tale doesn’t have a name, she’s unlikely to ever reach the lofty heights of her predecessors Kashima-san and Teketeke, and the story remains known only as “Ski Resort.”

  Oshima

  Tojinbo is known Japan-wide as a suicide spot, but nearby you’ll find an island called Oshima. It’s said that the bodies of those who jump from the Tojinbo cliffs wash up on Oshima. It’s also said that if you walk counter-clockwise around the island, you’ll open the gate to the underworld and get sucked in. This is the one rule the locals make sure to always adhere to.

  ABOUT

  Oshima is a real location you can find just off the coast of Mikuni in Fukui Prefecture. Like the legend states, the island is located just a short distance away from the Tojinbo cliffs, a famous suicide spot. It’s connected to the mainland by a 100 metre long vermilion-lacquered bridge. There’s not a lot on the island; some Shinto shrines, a spring, a lighthouse, and some great views. There’s also a sign at the top of the stone steps once you enter the island that says “← Counter-clockwise Rotation”. This route will take you around the island and back to the start again, and this particular rule to go left instead of right at the fork has been followed by the locals since long ago. Those who ignore this rule and turn right will face misfortune, calamity, and possibly even death.

  Many of the people who jump from the Tojinbo cliffs are lost in the jagged rocks below, but the occasional body is swept away on the tide and washes up on Oshima a short distance away. For this reason, the locals have long believed Oshima to be haunted, and it’s a popular spot for teenagers to test their courage.

  This legend once featured on the television program Unbelievable, and starting the very next morning the island found itself flooded with tourists who wanted to see whether the rumours were true or not. Word of mouth spread that people were injured or fell ill after walking clockwise around the island, and its reputation grew. Walking clockwise leads one on a dangerous path to the other side, and that path can cause people to want to leap to their deaths from the jagged cliffs as well.

  GOING RIGHT

  But why is it forbidden to walk right? Why can’t someone walk counter-clockwise around the island? There’s a path that leads to the right, after all. What’s the difference? According to one spirit medium, there are barriers around the island that people can’t see if walking right, and these will obstruct their path. These invisible barriers are said to be the jibakurei, or ghosts tied to the island, who are trying to protect tourists from harm. But being told not to do something makes some people want to do it even more, and many tales—true or not—ar
e told of people who travelled to the island with family or friends, went counter-clockwise around the island, and then soon after leaving were involved in horrific accidents. Even today these stories are still spread on the internet, and you don’t have to look hard to find them.

  One tale tells of an anonymous poster’s older brother’s friend who visited Oshima with two friends. They walked around the island not once but twice counter-clockwise. The next day, one of those friends crashed his scooter and ended up in hospital for a month with serious injuries. The other friend was rushed to hospital a few days later with urinary stones, and then the friend was involved in a car accident while at work.

  But is this rule really that sinister, or just an old wives’ tale to get people to stay in line? After all, if everyone is going in one direction and a few people decide to go the other way, they’re bound to meet up and get in each other’s way; which, on a place with as many sheer cliffs as Oshima, can be perilous.

  FURTHER CURSES

  There’s another legend that states if you remove a stone from Oshima and take it home with you, you’ll be cursed. Oshima is designated as a quasi-national park, and is therefore protected. It might seem obvious, but sometimes it takes a scary story to stop people from doing something they shouldn’t. Some stories also claim that if you don’t complete a full lap of the island after passing under the shrine gate, you’ll be cursed. The entire island itself is home to Oominato Shrine, and is worshipped as a holy site by locals. If you’re going to visit, it’s probably best not to upset the various kami and ghosts that reside there. Be respectful, follow the path, don’t take anything, and don’t get cursed.