On an interesting side note, buying burial plots in modern Japan is now so expensive that “grave apartments” have started to spring up around the country. Here you can buy a small plot within a much larger crypt to keep your family’s remains for a price many times cheaper than a regular burial plot. No news yet on whether the yurei in these grave apartments are constantly complaining about their neighbours’ noise, but you never know…
Exclamation Point Road Sign
Have you ever seen a yellow road sign with a black exclamation point on it before? According to the Road Traffic Law, if you see one of these signs it signifies “other dangers.” Underneath the exclamation point the sign should list what danger it is: for example, weak gravel by the side of the road, a sudden steep incline, and so on. In order to understand what the particular danger is, you must read what is written underneath the exclamation point.
However, there are some signs that don’t include this information. They only have an exclamation point and nothing else. In reality, these signs are placed where ghosts have been seen, and so they serve as a warning to all that ghosts are nearby. The Ministry of Transport is unable to officially acknowledge the presence of ghosts and the danger they pose to the public, so they place exclamation point signs in dangerous areas to let the public know.
ABOUT
Signs featuring exclamation marks are used all over the world and generally mean “other dangers,” like they do in this legend. The “other danger” is usually specified in text underneath the sign, but sometimes in Japan you might come across a sign that is just an exclamation point and nothing else, or otherwise just says “warning” beneath it. In that case, what is the danger? If you believe this urban legend, it’s ghosts!
It’s not difficult to see how some people may have come to this conclusion. The signs are supposed to specify what the danger is so you can avoid it. If it says beware ice, you can drive more slowly. If it says steep slope, you can prepare yourself for a sudden uphill drive. But if the sign is empty or just says “warning,” what am I supposed to be wary of? Japan has a long and rich history of yurei, so it doesn’t take much of a push to think that might be the reason why.
Rumours of these signs are particularly prevalent around Aoyama Cemetery in Tokyo. Numerous urban legends exist regarding the area, but this one states that these signs mysteriously appear and disappear throughout the park. If you happen to run into one, you need to get out of there right away, because it means dangerous ghosts are nearby.
THE TRUTH
Never fear, however. There is an easier and less haunted answer at hand. The reason these signs without warnings exist is very simple: the warnings are too long. Sometimes there might be a lot of trees growing by the side of the road that jut out at dangerous angles, making it difficult to see around corners and, especially in the dark, playing tricks on people’s minds. It’s a little difficult to explain all that in just a few letters, and so they write nothing at all. They place a general warning sign, which means you should be extra careful about all of your surroundings after that point.
Probably a good idea to always be wary of ghosts on Japanese roads though. Just in case.
Gomiko-san
In the mountains of N Prefecture there exists a woman named Gomiko-san. She roams the mountains late at night, and if you happen to run into her, she will scream, “Don’t throw me out!” She’ll then cut you into pieces, throw your remains in a trash bag, and then dispose of you.
ABOUT
Gomiko-san first appeared on the internet in the early 2000s, and all we know of her is what’s stated in the legend. Where she’s from is left vague on purpose, but considering it starts with N, it can only be Niigata, Nagano, Nara, or Nagasaki. These prefectures are spread out across most of Japan, so she could be anywhere (and isn’t that the charm of urban legends?), although many internet users place her in either Niigata or Nagano.
It may not be immediately apparent to English speakers, but Gomiko-san’s name is a pun on her M.O. Gomi means rubbish and ko is a common suffix for girls’ names. She is literally “Trash Woman,” and she disposes of people by cutting them up, putting them in a rubbish bag, and then throwing them away.
Later additions make it supposedly impossible to run away from her unless, if you’re in a group, you split up and run in different directions. This will leave one person subject to certain murder and trash disposal while the others escape; presumably to live the rest of their lives with the knowledge that they abandoned their friend to an actual Trash Woman in the mountains.
Interestingly, Gomiko-san features in the movie Noroi no Gotochi Toshi Densetsu~Hokkaido/Tohoku Hen~ as an urban legend from Hokkaido. The movie came out in 2011 and gives no explanation as to why Gomiko-san is suddenly a Hokkaido legend when she very specifically comes from a prefecture that starts with “N.” Still, if you wish to watch a found footage film of people getting cut up and placed in trash bags, Gomiko-san has you covered.
Watching Woman
A student injured himself and was taken to hospital. Thankfully, the injury was only minor, and he was told he would be out of the hospital before the week was up. However, the hospital he was staying in was said to be haunted. The boy didn’t believe in ghosts, so even when his friends told him about it, he paid it no mind.
Late one night, the boy woke up and needed to go to the toilet. The hospital seemed creepy at night, but he stumbled over to the toilet anyway. He stood in front of the door and heard something.
Rattle… rattle rattle…
Something metallic was echoing down the end of the hallway.
“What’s that? Surgical tools on a trolley? There isn’t even a surgery room on this floor…”
The sound slowly got closer. As he suspected, a nurse pushing surgical tools on a trolley soon appeared. But the woman’s white robe was covered in blood, and the boy quickly realised that she wasn’t human.
He was dumbfounded. If he didn’t do something soon, she would find him and it would all be over! But he was injured, so he couldn’t move very fast. He squeezed into the toilet and locked the door behind him.
Rattle… Rattle rattle… Squeak…
The sound of the trolley got louder. The boy held his breath and waited for the trolley to pass. As though his wish had been granted, the sound of the trolley soon disappeared.
“Thank god, I’m saved…”
Relieved, the boy went to return to his room. He looked up and locked eyes with the blood-stained nurse. She had noticed him after all. She was hanging over the top of the toilet door, looking down at him all along.
ABOUT
This is a fairly typical Japanese ghost story. You’ve no doubt seen scenes similar to it in numerous movies over the years. Somebody hears a noise, they try to hide, think they’re safe, then they look up and realise the ghost was looking down at them all along. It’s terrifying to think about, and that’s what makes it such a good scene.
VARIATIONS
A nurse in a hospital isn’t the only variation of this story, however. Another less common but still popular version places the story in an old shrine:
A student went to visit a shrine late one night to test his courage. The shrine was said to be haunted, but the boy wasn’t afraid of anything and didn’t believe in ghosts to begin with. He was a proud boy, so he went by himself.
He wandered around the empty shrine grounds, but nothing happened. There were no ghosts, no shadows; nothing.
“Of course there’s nothing here…” he muttered, when suddenly he heard a noise coming from the trees behind the shrine. The noise drew his attention, and as his heart beat wildly in his chest, he pushed his way through the branches. Then he saw it. A woman in white clothing was hammering a straw doll to a tree.
Bang! Bang!
The straw doll was stuck to the tree with long nails.
“Ah!” The boy let out a scream before he could stop himself. The girl stopped hammering and turned to look at him, the expression on her
face ghastly.
The boy took off running, the girl hot on his heels. He ran as fast as he could, but the girl seemed more familiar with the area than he was, and she soon closed the distance.
“Hihihihihihi!” the woman screamed behind him.
‘She’s gonna get me!’ the boy thought, and then he saw some public toilets not too far ahead. He ran inside, hid himself in the end stall and locked the door. Holding his breath, he listened as stillness fell over the area. He could hear the girl’s footsteps outside, but then they disappeared.
“I’m safe…”
But he couldn’t be too sure of that. The girl might still have been outside. Filled with relief that he could no longer hear the girl’s footsteps, the boy fell asleep inside the stall.
When the boy woke up, he looked at his watch and saw it said 4 a.m.
“It should be okay now.”
He stood up and got ready to leave, but something on the ceiling caught his eye. He looked up and saw the girl in white clothes looking down at him, grinning.
She had been there the whole night.
ORIGINS
Neither the nurse nor the girl at the shrine are thought to be the original versions of this tale. The origins go back much further, to at least the 1960s and feature not a ghost, but a tengu.
In this version, a man hears the sound of geta (wooden Japanese clogs) and hides in a toilet until they pass. When he’s certain the owner of the sound is gone, he looks up and sees a tengu hanging upside down from the roof, looking at him. Tengu are often depicted wearing geta and can be quite the vicious creatures when they want to be. In the modern day, however, tengu aren’t as feared as they once used to be. Thanks to the focus on yurei in horror media, most people are more afraid of ghosts than yokai. As such, over time the tengu was replaced with a variety of ghosts in different situations, with the nurse in the hospital being the most common story passed around today.
Red Hanten
A high school girl was in the toilet when she heard something.
“Shall I dress you in a red hanten (traditional vest)?”
Rumours of the strange voice soon spread, and it became the talk of the school. Some students even refused to go to the toilets afterwards.
Troubled, the school called the police in to investigate. A strong-willed female officer agreed to go in and have a look; they were the female toilets, after all.
Suddenly, the officers waiting outside heard a voice.
“Dress me in it if you can!”
This was shortly followed by a scream. The officers rushed into the toilet and found it covered in blood, while the unfortunate female officer was lying on the ground like she was wearing a red hanten vest.
ABOUT
By now you should realise that if anybody asks if you would like something in a Japanese toilet, it won’t end well. This legend probably brings to mind Aka Manto (who you can find in Toshiden Vol. 1), the mysterious figure who haunts school toilets and asks people if they would like red or blue paper.
It turns out that this story actually came from a listener on a radio show that Inagawa Junji, the famous ghost storyteller, worked on. Inagawa told the story in 1986, although the story itself was said to take place 20 years earlier, in the late 1960s. The listener, a woman, claimed it was a true story that she experienced herself, and it took place not long after the Second World War. This is fitting with the hanten, which is a traditional short winter coat or vest that isn’t commonly seen nowadays.
Inagawa reportedly investigated the woman’s story himself and discovered that the school she was talking about was used by kamikaze pilots during the war. The pilots wrote their names on the toilet wall before they left to die for their country, and after the war was over, one of their mothers visited the school. She found the names scrawled on the wall, including her son’s, and committed suicide. It was this mother’s grudge that brought about the voice asking if anyone would like a red hanten.
Inagawa’s telling of the tale involved the voice asking the question in a sing-song manner, a tune that he came up with himself. The tune became so popular that it still occasionally appears on television programs today, shocking Inagawa each time he hears it. You can find a full version of the song performed by Higuchi Mai on the CD Junji Inagawa no Kaidan - Mystery Night Tour Selection 13 “Akai Hanten [Complete Edition]”.
Of course, the story isn’t true. It was likely influenced by the likes of Aka Manto and Hanako-san of the Toilet, but it is just another in the long list of gakko kaidan, school ghost stories.
Society
Mysterious Sticker
A young man arrived home one night and noticed something strange. There was a sticker on his doorplate, so small that he wouldn’t have noticed it if he wasn’t paying close attention. He had no memory of putting it there himself. Perhaps it was a joke by one of the kids in the neighbourhood, or even a salesman. The young man peeled the sticker off and, without thinking about it, placed it on the doorplate of the room opposite him.
A few days later, the young man arrived home to find the building in an uproar. There was even a police car downstairs. He reached his floor and found several police officers coming in and out of the apartment opposite his. He asked a neighbour he was friendly with what was going on. Apparently, the woman who lived in the apartment opposite his had a scuffle with thieves. She was stabbed, and they didn’t know if she would pull through.
The police captured the thieves, who exclaimed, “Dammit! Nobody was supposed to be there during the day!”
ABOUT
Someone arrives home to find a sticker on their door they don’t remember. Without giving it much thought, they peel it off and place it on the neighbour’s door instead. A few days later, they discover said neighbour robbed and stabbed. The sticker was clearly a sign of reconnaissance by the thieves; a sign of an apartment that was supposed to be empty during the day and thus free for the taking.
According to a Japanese government survey taken in 2014, 70% of Tokyo residents lived in apartments. The average around the entire country was 42%. That’s 9.36 million people in Tokyo, or 53.5 million people around Japan living in an apartment building that same year. With so many people living in apartments, urban legends about them are also on the rise.
There are tales of apartments without fourth floors, or no rooms with the number four (four, of course, being an unlucky number in Japan because it’s also pronounced the same way as the word for “death”). Some legends even state that the number of stairs connecting the first floor to the second floor is always the same, and if you happen to come across a building that has a different number, that building is haunted.
This particular legend, however, seems to have begun life as an imi ga wakaru to kowai hanashi, a unique series of stories you can find on the internet that translates to “scary stories when you understand.” Like creepypastas, these stories are written by anonymous authors and passed around until no-one knows where they originally came from anymore. At the end they come with an explanation, letting the reader know the hidden twist that makes the story scary in case they were unable to realise it for themselves. In this case, it’s the realisation that the sticker was used as a sign by thieves of which houses to rob, and the young man unwittingly put his neighbour at risk by moving it to her door instead. But is there any truth to the story? Scarily, there is.
DOOR MARKING
This type of situation is called “door marking” and it’s well known amongst salesmen, criminals, and the security firms that fight them. The original story that became an urban legend was likely inspired by this real practice. Often the marking is done in text, rather than a sticker (you can’t peel text off), and a code has developed to let other people know about the occupants inside the house. For example:
Several stickers indicate the number of times the house has been visited.
Different colours indicate different months the house was visited.
Black signifies a difficult house to dea
l with, whether that’s a male occupant, a large family, never at home, etc.
White signifies an easy target; usually a single woman, someone who always answers the door, someone who’s likely to buy, etc.
Yellow signifies someone who is on the fence, but could be sold something else.
Gold signifies a house with money.
Other than stickers, kanji and English letters are also used:
The kanji for student, meaning students live inside.
The Japanese letter “a” for akachan, or baby inside.
The Japanese letter “i” for ikeru, meaning sales are possible here.
The Japanese letter “ko” for kowai, meaning a scary household to deal with.
The letter “M” for man inside.
The letter “W” for woman inside.
The letter “S” for a single person inside.
The letters “SS” for someone who has weekends off inside.
The letter “K” for katta, or someone who bought something.
◎ for a house with a contract completion.
○ for someone who will listen to salesmen before driving them off.
X for a house that’s no good; won’t listen or often complains.
・ for a house that’s been visited once before.
〆 for a house that’s impossible to sell to.
△ or ☆ for a house that’s on the verge of buying, but hasn’t tipped over the edge yet.
Toshiden: Exploring Japanese Urban Legends: Volume Two Page 6
