A Gathering of Spirits: Japan's Ghost Story Tradition: From Folklore and Kabuki to Anime and Manga

by Drazen, Patrick

  The kneeling Yukiko, with the daimyo looking on, turned her back to the dying woman, so that she might hold onto Yukiko’s shoulders and be lifted up. “My lady, please tell me how best I can help you.”

  “This way.” The old woman seized Yukiko’s shoulders and lifted herself to her feet. But suddenly, she pushed her hands inside Yukiko’s kimono and grabbed the girl’s breasts.

  “I have my wish!” the old woman shouted, laughing wickedly. “I have the twin cherry blossoms! I could not die until I got my wish. Now I have them! Ah, such delight!”

  With those words, she fell forward upon the crouching Yukiko, and instantly died.

  But this was not the end of the story; only the beginning.

  In some strange way, the old woman’s cold dead hands had attached themselves to Yukiko’s breasts. Any attempt to remove them drew blood. A Dutch physician[94] was summoned, who confirmed that the dead hands did not merely clutch at the live girl’s body; the skin of the fingers had actually fused and become one with the skin of Yukiko’s breasts. For the time being, the only thing to do was to cut the hands off at the wrist. This was done, and the hands soon shriveled and darkened like the hands of a mummy.

  However, there were times that the hands would stir, moving of their own accord. And nightly, at the Hour of the Ox, the dead hands would squeeze painfully, torturing Yukiko. They would only stop at the Hour of the Tiger.[95]

  Shortly thereafter, Yukiko became a Buddhist nun, shaving her head, and making daily offerings so that the jealous spirit of the hands could find rest. However, the tormenting hands were still attached to her the last time anybody spoke to her, which was seventeen years after the death of the daimyo’s wife. After that, nothing more was ever heard of her.

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  The point of the story is clear in Hearn’s title: Ingwa-banashi, “A Story about Ingwa.” Ingwa is a Japanese Buddhist term referring to bad karma, to the evil consequences of misdeeds committed in the past, or even in a previous incarnation. But the concept is a bit more complicated than simple cause and effect; Hearn writes that “the dead have power to injure the living only in consequence of evil actions committed by their victims in some former life.” So, while there was fault on the part of the daimyo’s wife and her anger at the girl who had usurped her place (an anger which she kept hidden but was still very real), Yukiko shared some of the blame, whether in this life, by alienating the daimyo from his wife, or by something done in another life. Needless to say, these questions are never easy to solve.

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  Hearn tells a more hopeful story in Kwaidan, his 1904 collection of ghost stories. Again, the mood is that of a Buddhist moral lesson. The story takes place in Niigata prefecture, in the northwest of the main island of Honshu, which is a popular resort for skiing in the Japanese Alps and vacationing in the local volcanic hot springs. Niigata has been home to many prominent Japanese, including two major pop culture names: manga artist Rumiko Takahashi and the late Yoshifumi Kondo, lead animator for Studio Ghibli.

  71. O-tei Returns

  Long ago, a man named Nagao Chousei lived in Niigata. His father was a physician, and Nagao was trained in medicine. When he was still young he became engaged to O-tei, the daughter of a friend of his father. The two were very much in love, but they agreed to wait until Nagao had finished his medical studies. Unfortunately, O-tei’s failing health would not let them wait. When she was fifteen years old and he was nineteen, they both realized that the end was near for her.

  “Surely the gods know what is for the best,” she told Nagao. “I would wish to live even a bit longer, but my strength is failing and would only cause pain to me and be a burden to you. My hope is that we will meet again.”

  “Surely we will,” Nagao answered, “in the paradise of the Pure Land.”

  “No, my love; here on this earth. Although I will be buried tomorrow, we will meet again, if you wish. But you must be patient, my beloved, for I must be born again, and grow to be fifteen years old again.”

  “Do not worry,” Nagao answered. “Waiting will be a joy as well as a duty.”

  “And you do not doubt at all?”

  “Dear one, I wonder only how I will know you in another body.”

  “Alas, only the Buddha and the Heavenly Gods know how and when and where we shall meet again. But, if you are willing to wait for me, I know that I shall find you once again. Remember my words…”

  And, with that, O-tei closed her eyes and breathed her last.

  Every day after that, Nagao made offerings to heaven in front of a memorial tombstone he had made. The memorial stone bore O-tei’s earthly name, instead of the heavenly name given to her by the Buddhist clergy as part of the funeral rites, as well as his promise to marry her if she returns to him.

  Still, Nagao was the only son of his parents, and eventually they pressured him to take a wife. Even though he did so, he made daily offerings to his memorial to O-tei. In time, both of Nagao’s parents died; so did his wife; so did their only child. Alone and sorrowful, Nagao set out on a long pilgrimage.

  One day he stopped at a mountain village famous for its volcanic hot springs, and he stopped in amazement. The young girl who came to wait upon him looked so much like O-tei that he had to pinch himself to make sure he was awake. Everything she said and did for him was an uncanny reminder of the young girl to whom he had been engaged so many years ago. Finally he spoke to her: “Forgive me, but you strongly resemble someone I used to know. Please tell me your name, and where is your home.”

  With that, the girl immediately answered, “I am O-tei, and you are my beloved Nagao Chousei, to whom I am engaged. I died in Niigata seventeen years ago, and you wrote a promise to marry me if I returned to earth in the body of a woman. You carry that promise now, sealed in a memorial stone.”

  And, before she could say anything else, she fainted dead away.

  So they were married, and lived happily together. But, oddly enough, she could never remember what she told Nagao on that day when they were reunited.

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  Ghost talker’s daydream

  This 2004 anime is based on a manga published in Shonen Ace, and suffers from some of the problems of any long-manga-turned-anime: more than a few questions come up during the course of the 4-part OAV that wouldn’t bother anyone with access to the manga. The American manga market, however, is geared currently toward the teen and even pre-teen age group, so this particular manga (artwork by Sankichi Meguro, story by Saki Okuse), would seem unlikely to be translated and published; however, it has been published in translation by Dark Horse comics. (The title is translated literally as “Vulgar Ghost Daydreams”—the first two words are the kanji “teizoku rei”, with “daydreams” written out in the Roman alphabet.)

  Misaki Sakai is a ghost-hunter, like her counterparts in Ghost Sweeper Mikami and Phantom Quest Corp., and, like her counterparts, she finds that spiritualism doesn’t pay the bills. However, her choice of a second job is unusual: a dominatrix in a sex club. The anime shows her on the job only once, and the sight of her whipping a bound, gagged and blindfolded man (identified in the manga only as “a famous Japanese athlete”) tends to leave one feeling more squeamish than aroused. It’s pretty hardcore, and a radical departure from the rest of the series’ dealings with her sexual line of work. Most of the other references involve slapstick pratfalls exposing her panties, a good deal of nudity, and jokes about used underwear and the refusal of her pubic hair to grow in; it’s all rather light-hearted compared to the whipping scene. If nothing else, that scene is the context for her constant complaints that she needs a different job.

  But other questions arise as we watch her solve the supernatural dilemma of a schoolgirl named Ai who then becomes Misaki’s informal apprentice (since she, too, can see ghosts) while a male classmate of Ai’s constantly stalks Misaki to photograph her. Questions come up, like: what happened to Misaki’s parents that caused her to be raised by her old-fashioned grandparents? Did that have anything t
o do with her ability to converse with the dead? And what is Kinue, the rope she carries that seems to have a consciousness, and obeys Misaki’s commands like Wonder Woman’s lasso? The manga would be helpful here.

  We would find out from the manga, among other things, that Masaki is only 19 years old, and therefore technically still a minor[96]. However strange the notion of a dominatrix who’s a minor may be, it’s even stranger to find out that she’s a virgin. The manga at one point flashes back to a time when Masaki was in high school, and she and her boyfriend decided they wanted to sleep together. Unfortunately, they never went the distance, since the boy told Misaki that her hairless state was a bit of a turn-off; it reminded him of his kid sister.

  Why would the manga creators offer us a heroine in this position—an underage virgin dominatrix? I think it is so that readers will see that, despite the tawdry nature of her job, she still has a shojo nature, meaning that her innate compassion, although masked by a shell of cynicism, allows her to converse with the dead in the first place. Misaki mirrors Ai in the series, and becomes a reluctant Big Sister to the apprentice Ghost Talker. This would be less likely to happen if Misaki really was as jaded and cynical as she appears.

  There’s another reason Misaki is shown as so young: youth is tied to her ability to converse with ghosts, as it is with Ai. This is ratified in a manga scene, an exchange between Misaki and another woman she meets at a hot springs in Hakone, one of many resorts near the base of Mount Fuji. This woman tells Misaki that she, too, used to work with the Tokyo police paranormal unit. Then she got married, and gradually the business of this world overwhelmed her connection with the next world.

  72. They probably don’t even know

  We may not get all the answers in the anime, but we get ghosts, and many of them are children. While the first two episodes of the OAV are based on chapters of the manga, parts 3 and 4 are essentially one long original episode in two parts, and include acts of chaos and destruction caused by the ghosts of dozens of children whose bones were unearthed at a construction site near Hakone. These ghostly children end up killing and injuring people, but Misaki excuses them: “They were just playing. They probably don’t even know they’re dead yet.” The same sort of situation comes up in the Ghost Hunt series, when a school field trip is interrupted by a landslide, killing the children and their teacher. The class, having become Hungry Ghosts, kidnap the living, not out of malice but because they don’t know how to change their situation. Mai convinces the teacher and students to allow the living to return to the world.

  The children, it turns out, were murdered by a deranged person named Ichinose. Despite this typically masculine name, Ichinose was a girl who was sexually molested by her uncle; after his death in a boating accident, she assumed a male persona and, even in death, killed children to “save them” from the molestation she suffered.

  Child molestation is virtually a theme that runs through the 4-part anime, and it’s courageous for director Osamu Sekita to tackle it. But other ghosts appear as well. The spirit of a dead soldier haunts his old family home until Misaki tells him that his parents, too, are dead and that he must join their spirits. Ai is almost killed when she tries to converse with what seemed to be the ghost of a suicide. Instead, the ghost turns into a wrathful woman who almost kills Ai, lamenting that the world shunned her in life because of her “difference.” True, her face is grotesque as a ghost, but does it reflect her looks in life? Was that her “difference”? The anime isn’t too clear here.

  As for Kinue, the rope that moves on its own, apparently it’s a “hungry ghost”. In volume 1 of the manga, Misaki tells the rope “you can feed” on the dying man who accidentally killed a toddler. When it’s through, there’s hardly any body left.

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  Eerie Queerie

  Shuri Shiozu’s 1999 manga was printed in Japan in South magazine and known simply as “Ghost!” The new English title was reportedly required for “copyright related reasons”[97] perhaps applied by Tokyopop Publishing to tip off western readers that the supernatural is mixed with shonen ai (Boy Love), although both the scares and the same-sex romance are downplayed at first.

  Mitsuo, a student at a boys’ high school who’s also something of a loner, sees dead people. These ghosts have unfinished business, they’re female (at first, anyway), and they’re definitely not out for vengeance. In fact, they possess Mitsuo and use his body to act in ways that cause Mitsuo to be labeled as gay. Most of this labeling by his classmates is more humorous than stigmatizing; one student’s comment that “This is the first time I’ve ever seen a real gay guy”, which is echoed by many of his classmates, reflect the reality that Japanese homosexuals are still very much “in the closet.” Mitsuo, after all, would not do things like ask another boy out on a date if he weren’t being possessed.

  73. An unspoken crush

  His first ghost, Kiyomi Suzaka, has only been dead for a week; in life she was a student at a girls’ high school who was hit by a car. Her unfinished business includes trying to get next to Hasunuma, a classmate of Mitsuo at a boys’ high school. He’s taller and darker than Mitsuo and looks decidedly bishonen, while Mitsuo is younger, shorter, and looks almost feminine (which is convenient when a female ghost is talking through him). Hasunuma seems to return Mitsuo’s attentions (which are really Kiyomi’s attentions). At one point, Hasunuma whips open his high-school tunic to reveal… more than a dozen ofuda. “I figured you were either schizophrenic or possessed,” he tells Mitsuo.

  Mitsuo had earlier submitted to a Shinto exorcism, but the priest was old and clueless; he assumed Mitsuo was possessed either by a fox or a tanuki, the two classic shape-shifter animals of Japanese legend. The fact that Hasunuma’s ofuda work when the priest’s exorcism failed seems to validate a belief in Shinto for the reader while giving it a young person’s perspective. Spirituality, like technology and popular culture, must keep up with the times.

  For three days after the amateur exorcism Kiyomi’s spirit is gone; then, Mitsuo hunts for her and finds her where he found her in the first place, at the site of her death. He goes looking for her because, despite her being such a nuisance, he was lonely and missed her. He allows Kiyomi to possess him again; she tells Hasunuma about her crush on him, and it turns out that he too had an unspoken crush on her. This resolution gives Kiyomi the chance to Become One with the Cosmos, and conveniently demonstrates that Hasunuma is heterosexual. When he and Mitsuo decide that they’re now friends after all this, there’s no suspicion that it’s anything but platonic.

  74. For a soccer ball

  Mitsuo moves from a schoolgirl to an adult woman in his next ghost. Natsuko Shiiba had a set routine when she was hit by a truck at age 22: as she walked to work, she would see a young boy, Ichi Shirai, practicing with a soccer ball, and sometimes stopped to encourage him. One day, she chased the ball as it went into the street…

  She spent the next six years hating and haunting Ichi, even though he couldn’t see or hear her. But, like Kiyomi, she is no longer vengeful. She came to realize that “blaming Ichi was easier than blaming myself,” and that there were a number of variables involved in her death. Most importantly, even though the young Ichi left the ball in the street that day, to have an excuse to talk to the beautiful lady, Natsuko no longer regrets chasing the ball, nor does she blame Ichi for her death. As Mitsuo (possessed by Natsuko) tells Ichi (who turns out to be a classmate of Mitsuo), “I decided to pick up that ball of my own free will. I’m responsible for the life I chose.” Ichi had meanwhile spent six years blaming himself for her death, and refusing to ever play soccer again; after telling Ichi to forgive himself and “cherish every moment of your precious life,” she too drifts off to Become One with the Cosmos.

  This ghost story is barely about the ghosts in it at all, except for the ways they are expected to conform to the behavioral ideals of the living. The female ghosts cannot become reborn until they become yasashii. Kiyomi, who was only dead six days, couldn’t work up the cou
rage to talk to Hasunuma in life: “I hated myself for being such a coward. I kept saying I’d change eventually.” She got over her self-hatred by possessing Mitsuo and doing what she needed to do in life. Natsuko began her career as a ghost by hating Ichi, but later realized that his role in her death was just part of a larger, more complicated picture. In both cases, compassion leads these women to forgive and move on, and, perhaps not so ironically in a society still largely driven by male privilege, they could not exercise their compassion without the help of a male. A different mangaka might have had these ghosts encounter a miko, but, since the objects of their quests were both students at a boys’ high school (which becomes symbolic of the demarcation of adolescent sexual roles in Japan), it would have been much more difficult for another female to act on their behalf.

  So, does Eerie Queerie exist to teach attitudes to males or to females? Probably both, since Ghost! ran in a manga magazine that focused on bishonen. Humor and sentimentality balance each other out. In any event, any sexual paradigm exists to teach both genders what is expected of them, while in this case also teasing the reader with hints of “the love that dare not speak its name.” Neither males nor females live their lives in a vacuum, and behavioral instructions to one gender must always occur, overtly or implicitly, in context to the other.

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  But let’s get back to the bishonen boys of Eerie Queerie. Ichi now hangs out with Mitsuo and Hasunuma, even though things begin looking like a romantic triangle. In the four-part story “I Miss You,” the geometry expands to a romantic pentagram—one which incorporates both the quick and the dead.

  75. I miss you

  Mitsuo feels as if he’s being followed. Despite the diligence of Ishi and Hasunuma, the ghost of a boy in a school uniform appears to Mitsuo, and arranges to meet him in the Drama Club room after school. Once there, the ghost, named Kanau, tries to push Mitsuo out the window. Hasunuma grabs for Mitsuo, and they fall out together. They live, but Hasunuma is in a coma; as a Shinto priest (young and bishonen, of course) explains, his spirit is detached from his body. This priest, named Mikuni, has a taste for guys as well as for “playing games”—first with Hasunuma’s spirit, then with Kanau’s.