The following is another tale, this one of a mountain cat spirit. One day a young samurai knight took shelter in a temple, where he intended to spend the night. Just before midnight there came to him the illusion of a dancing and shrieking troop of cats, who cried out, ‘Tell it not to Shippeitara’, at which point the cats faded away. The next day the samurai enquired in the village and found out that Shippeitara was a great dog belonging to a vassal of the prince. He also discovered that one of the young maidens of the village was to be sent in a cage to a mountain spirit to be used as a human sacrifice. The samurai took it upon himself to free the maiden – in classic chivalric form – and secured the use of the great dog Shippeitara. The samurai placed the dog in the cage instead of the maiden and travelled to the mountains. The men who had helped get the cage with the dog to the appointed place ran away, and only the bold samurai remained. At the appointed time came the troop of cats as expected, but this time they were accompanied by a giant tomcat who was the incarnation of the evil mountain spirit. The knight waited for his moment, and as the great cat was laughing in anticipation of devouring another maiden the samurai opened the cage and the powerful dog attacked the feline leader, taking it in his jaws and giving the samurai time to kill the evil creature. The dog then made short work of the other cats, and the village was jubilant at the success of the adventure.
It was considered by some extremely terrible to kill a cat, as they were magical creatures; to kill one would bring bad luck for seven generations. To prevent this seven-generation curse, certain measures could be taken.
In Okinawa they would hang the dead body of the cat from a tree or bury the cat at a crossroads where three or four roads intersect. On the Ryukyu island chain (an arc from Kyushu to Taiwan including Okinawa), if you kill a cat with a car, the car will be haunted by the cat’s dead spirit. To counter this, bury the cat at the edge of the town with cooked rice, bean paste and salt. On the same islands, cats are sometimes eaten for medicinal purposes.
In Akita, if a cat or dog dies you should spit on it three times and walk around the corpse three times to dispel the bad luck; if you do not do this, the spirit of the animal will haunt you. Alternatively, you can leave the corpse in a bamboo forest.
If someone is born in a year of the Snake, a cat will not stay with them.
If a black cat crosses your path, move backwards sixteen steps, or you will be cursed.
If you leave a cat with a dead body, the body will dance.
Pigeons
An old shamanic tradition states that if a pigeon enters your house and flies to the east on leaving, all is well – it may even mean you are about to go on a journey overseas. If it flies to the west and then lands in a graveyard, someone will die.
Crows
An ancient shinobi poem tells us of crows (all 100 poems can be found in Secret Traditions of the Shinobi):
かど出にからすの声のきこゆるは はんなるぞよきちやうはつつしめ
(When you leave home, if you hear a crow call an odd number of calls, it is lucky [for your mission]. Thus, an even number suggests that you should be careful)
Additionally, unmarried girls should avoid eye contact with crows.
Butterflies
A fluttering butterfly, meandering its way into a room between the paper-lined sliding doors could, according to tradition and to Hearn, be inhabited by a soul from the realm of the dead. These beauties could be harbingers of death; it is said that when the rebel samurai Taira no Masakado was about to revolt a host of butterflies flew into the streets of Kyoto, where it was taken as an indication of the numbers who were about to die. Tradition holds that the soul of a person can become, or enter, the butterfly before death. The soul of a dying person may occupy or form the shape of a butterfly to declare its intention to leave the land of the living. More positively, if a butterfly lands within the guest room of the house, the person that you most love will be arriving shortly. The butterfly can also identify the position of an enemy so that vengeance may be achieved.
Mosquitoes
Like the butterfly above, the mosquito has connections with those who have passed to the other side. These tiny creatures can be the reincarnation of a human, brought back to the world as a tiny pest, sentenced to drink blood due to transgressions in a previous life; people so afflicted are known as jiki ketsu gaki, which is a form of blood-drinking creature.
Ants
In Taisu in old China there was a man who worshipped a goddess, day in and day out. One day while at worship a woman in a yellow robe came to him and said she was the goddess he was so devoted to. She rewarded him for his service by letting him understand the language of ants. From her golden robe she pulled out a box which contained an ointment. The goddess dabbed this ointment on his ears and told him to find some ants and stoop down to them and listen. He began to venture off but came across some ants before he had even left the threshold of his house. Bending down, he listened to them. At once he heard them talking and their conversation was of treasure. One ant said to another, ‘Let us move on from this cold and damp place as the buried treasure here will not let the sun heat the soil.’ Hearing this, the man got a spade and found jars of treasure, making him rich – but never again did he hear the language of ants.
Even up until relatively modern times, hotels would put up signs which demanded that ants should pay a fee for using a room. Because ants do not like to open their wallets, they see the sign and do not enter the hotel.
Wasps
At Todaiji temple, it is said that wasps are meant to issue forth from the mouth of a statue at times of war.
Dragons
Japanese dragons are essentially from China, but one difference is that a Japanese dragon normally has three claws while the Chinese counterpart has five. Dragons are associated with water, seas, lakes and rivers, being more connected with water than with fire. However, the dragon can sometimes breathe fire or even rain, and has the ability to ascend into heaven or turn invisible. There is a legend that tells of a dragon from Yamashiro that would transform into a howling white bird called O-goncho every fifty years. When the bird came, so did great famine.
Birds
In Japan the dove can be seen as a messenger of war, having saved the life of the shogun Yorimoto. Also, a bird called Hototogisu is said to be able to travel in the land of the dead.
2
THE DEAD AND HUMAN SACRIFICE
The afterlife in Japan is based on a mixture of religions including native Shinto and Buddhism. The Japanese see the dead as not moving away but instead taking up the role of kami – minor deities who stay within the area and even become involved in the lives of humans.
The very ancient Japanese, upon finding a dead relative in the house, would abandon the house and live elsewhere. They would leave the body of the relative where it lay and offer up food and drink, light a fire outside the house and perform music and dance and hold rituals for a period of eight to fourteen days. After this they would bury the body and allow the house to become a shrine. Alternatively, a small mock house was built for the recently deceased to live in.
There is also a very old and horrific custom for the dead; this is the hitogaki, or ‘human hedge’, and involves human sacrifice. They would bury alive a number of humans in a circle around the burial place of one who has died (who was of course higher-ranking). These sacrifices were buried upright with only their heads left exposed, where they would cry and lament for the recently dead, and after a time they would die as animals would eat at their faces and heads. Allegedly, this practice was stopped around 2,000 years ago by the Emperor Suinin. However, it appears to have continued until the sixth century, when the Emperor Kotoku again forbids self-strangulation, the strangulation of others, the stabbing of thighs and voluntary suicide at the graves of the recently dead. It has been postulated that this rite never died out and that it simply changed to the act of seppuku, ritual suicide by disembowelment by sword, known in the west as hari-kari (
spelt correctly hari-kiri). This version of seppuku was known as junshi, which is to follow the lord to the afterlife in service and was not a punishment but an honour.
An older form of human sacrifice is talked about by Hadland-Davies. If the image of a bow appeared above a house, it meant that the eldest daughter was to be sacrificed by being buried alive so that the wild beasts had something to devour; this would promote good hunting.
Another tale of human sacrifice comes from a castle in Matsue, where it is said a nameless girl who loved dancing was killed and put beneath the walls to placate the old gods. If any woman or child dances in the street then the castle shakes with her rage.
One custom for burying the dead was to hang a sanyabukkero purse around the neck of the dead with three copper coins in it (three rin) so that they could pay to cross the River of Three Roads, which is known as Sanzu no Kawa. In Izumo, the price was six rin and the river was called Rokudokawa – the River of Six Roads. The parallels with the River Styx are unmistakable (and it should be remembered that ‘Styx’ translates as hate or detestation – no Christian paradise here).
The Death Tablet
This is a lacquered death tablet, a small wooden slat that has a base and stands vertically. It has the posthumous death name of the dead upon it so that the family can remember their departed, sometimes as a minor god. It has to be remembered that to the Japanese a dead relative becomes an ancestor ghost/god who needs to be nourished with food. The dead take the invisible essence of the food and become involved with family dealings, haunting the death tablets and generally staying around the family to protect and disturb the realm of the living. In short, the dead do not fade away as in Western tradition; they become powerful, controlling human affairs and nature, and therefore need to be placated.
Various Japanese death tablets.
Hair for the Dead
The hairstyle for a woman who has died and is being prepared for her funeral is called tabanegami, which must also be worn by women who are in a period of mourning. However, ghosts are mainly shown with their hair loose and flowing. Hearn states that in Japanese culture a woman’s hair is her most prized asset and to give it up is extremely difficult. A samurai who did not wish to kill his wife after she had transgressed in some way could cut off her hair and throw her out; equally, if a samurai died and his widow pledged to never see another man she would cut off all of her hair and place it in the coffin on his knees, never to let it grow again. However, most would take just one lock of hair, placing it with the dead as a token of respect.
3
HAGS, VAMPIRES, GHOULS AND GHOSTS
Japan has more than its fair share of weird and malignant creatures. This section will give a short introduction to some of the basic kinds, plus their powers and skills and the evils they commit. The subject is so vast that this introduction must not be seen as comprehensive. One word that will always crop up when looking at these creatures is yokai, a generic term to mean ‘monsters’. However, while yokai is becoming more and more familiar as a term, it has not always been a catch-all description. In medieval Japan, the term bakemono referred to numerous creatures although it specifically means ‘changeling’, something which transforms its shape (and is solid). The more childish or adolescent version of this is obake, used in children’s conversation, but if you really wish to impress you can use the more academic term kaii gensho. Whichever terms you use, you should remember that Japan was once a collection of disparate areas, sometimes lacking fixed boundaries and a unified vocabulary. Ideas and stories were not consistent, changing from place to place and from time to time.
Ghosts
In short, there are two types of ghosts. The first is shi-ryo, which is the spirit of someone who is dead. These only haunt at night. The second is iki-ryo, which is the spirit of a living person. The Japanese believed that if someone was angry enough their spirit, without them knowing it, could leave the body and attack their enemy in broad daylight. This second version is more fearful than the first as it wishes to kill. The most famous version of this is Lady Rokujo in the epic tale Genji Monogatari.
A rule of thumb for Japanese ghosts: bakemono implies a solid creature, while yurei implies an ethereal creature.
Tama or Tamashi are said to be ghosts in the form of pearl-like orbs, which could be considered as souls. They leave the body upon death and move to the next stage of existence.
‘Yoshitsune attacked by Taira spirits’ by Utagawa Kuniyoshi, 1853. The general defeated the Taira clan in the late 12th century. (Courtesy of the Rijksmuseum)
Kappa
Kappa are small, goblin-like creatures that have the body of a child, the face of a tiger (adorned with a beak) and the shell of a turtle and/or the scales of a fish. They dwell in rivers and ponds and wait for people to pass by so that they can drag them in and drown them. Interestingly, the kappa also kills humans by removing a fictional organ from the body via the anus. On the top of a kappa’s head you will find an indent which is filled with water. It is said that if this dries up or empties then the kappa will become powerless.
In the legends of Tono (discussed later), if a woman gives birth to a kappa baby after being raped, or if a kappa baby is born generations after the original copulation, then the baby is to be taken outside and hacked to death.
Tengu
The tengu, ‘heavenly-dogs’, are considered to be long-nosed goblins or demi-demons; they can also come in a form known as karasu-tengu that is half man and half crow. They are said to dwell in the mountains and are mischievous and sometimes evil. It is claimed that they teach martial arts and endow warriors with mystical powers. At times, tengu will even kidnap children. Their leader is Dai-tengu, the Great Goblin, who rules above them holding a seven-feathered fan. It is thought that tengu broke the laws of the Buddha and therefore belong neither to heaven nor to hell. Lane, in his early twentieth-century book on legends, tells us that the famed swordsman Miyamoto Musashi killed a tengu, which is no mean feat as tengu are considered expert swordsmen.
One story of a tengu is as follows. Some boys were tormenting a bird and an old man passed by and saved the bird from dying. As he went on his way a mountain hermit came to him and thanked him, declaring that he was the bird he had saved. The traveller knew that instant that he was talking to a tengu. The tengu offered him supernatural powers in reward but the man said he had no need of them and his only wish was to see the original Buddha giving a sermon. The tengu said he could transport him through time and space and show him such a thing, but that the man must say nothing and remain silent at all times. The man agreed, and the tengu took him to Vulture Mountain back in the time of the Buddha. There he saw hosts of spirits and demons and holy men listing to the Buddha. Unable to control himself, he cried out in reverence and that instant was transported back to his original position and to face a very angry tengu, who had his wings broken as punishment. The tengu scolded the man and was never seen again.
Sometimes tengu steal people and return them in a demented state; this is referred to as tengu-kakushi, or being ‘hidden by a Tengu’. One example of this is Kiuchi, a samurai who went missing; his fellows came upon his equipment strewn around and in the end found him on a temple roof, at which point he told his story. He said that he had met with a black-robed monk and a larger man with a red face. They had told him that he must climb onto the temple roof, and when he refused they broke his sword and scabbard and carried him to the roof. There they made him sit on a tray, and through magic they made the tray float; it took him through the skies to many regions across the land. After ten days of this, Kiuchi prayed to Buddha. The tray then landed on a mountain, but the mountain turned into the roof of the temple where he had begun.
Demons and Devils
Demons are known as oni in Japanese and devils are akuma. However the translation of these terms is not always straightforward. The horned oni is more of an ogre for a Western mind: large, lumbering at times, normally of a strange skin colour and armed with a massive
club. Normally oni patrol hell and do evil – as you would expect of a demon – but some oni are known to cut off their horns and try to become monks, as the horn of an oni is its weakness and power. These good demons study under a human master to find enlightenment. In the main, though, oni are evil and work in hell. Some small oni may be found tickling a monk’s head, trying to disturb him from his meditation. There is even an island of oni called Onigashima.
The Dark Side of Japan: Ancient Black Magic, Folklore, Ritual Page 2
