The Dark Side of Japan: Ancient Black Magic, Folklore, Ritual

by Antony Cummings

  The Twenty-Eight Lunar Mansions

  A table of the twenty-eight lunar mansions from the Book of Ninja (1676).

  The Japanese imported the concept of the twenty-eight lunar mansions; these are twenty-eight positions in the night sky that are identified by twenty-eight different constellations. When a person plots them all, the night sky is divided into twenty-eight divisions, like looking out from the centre of an orange. When the moon rises in ‘X’ mansion, it is said to be in the mansion of ‘X’. This is how they used to plot the lunar month, and in connection with the solar calendar they mapped out the year (in quite a complex way).

  The Star of Defeat

  The constellation Ursa Major in the form of a dragon, taken from the secret scrolls of Mubyoshi-Ryu. The full teachings can be found in The Lost Samurai School.

  Hagun is the evil star, or the star of defeat. In the constellation Ursa Major it is the star Alkaid, the one at the very end of the ‘handle’. In military matters, if an army was under this star or in the direction of this star then they would be considered to be in a negative position and a place of defeat. This had to be balanced with aspects of real tactical advantage, but this was a discussion between the gunposha (normal tactician) and the gunbaisha (esoteric tactician) and a warlord would set up position on the advice of both.

  12

  DARK CURIOSITIES AND SUPERSTITIONS OF ANCIENT JAPAN

  The following section will take a look into the dark heart of Japanese superstitions, those elements on the fringe of mainstream belief that create a web of fear and force people to counter the unknown with ritual actions and trinkets of protection. It will provide those short stories that will fill five minutes by the fire with a slice of horror.

  Plants

  On the Ryukyu Island chain, the Japanese climbing fern (Lygodium Japonicum), a form of creeper plant, is used to capture evil things. You can wear them as headdresses or amulets or you can make wreaths of them and place them around your home or objects to help keep the area pure. The belief is that the tangling nature of the plant will entangle the spirits of the dead or evil entities within it, ensnaring them.

  Also, the use of a loop made from straw and maiden grass (Miscanthus sinensis) or the pointed leaf of the Pandanus tree (Pandanus odoratissimus) will help purify a person or food offerings. It should be tied to a person or left with offerings at shrines.

  Mountains

  Mountains have always been sacred to many, and Japan is no different. In its most basic form, Japanese mountain worship can be divided into three sections.

  I

  Conical dormant volcanos. The sleek sides of these majestic monoliths are worshiped by many, and the most famous of these – perhaps one of the most famous mountains on the planet – is Mt Fuji. Alongside Fuji, there is also Mt Chokai, Mt Taisen and Mt Kaimon, all holy mountains in their own right. These mountains are worshipped by many, but they are often venerated by sailors and fishermen in particular as the place where the gods or spirits of navigation reside.

  II

  As a water source. Mountains are also worshipped as the source of water for the local areas. Two terms come into play here: Yama no kami (spirit of the mountain) and Ta no kami (spirit of the rice paddy). These two spirits are thought to dwell in the mountains and the fields around the mountain (sometimes they are combined and sometimes the same spirit moves from mountain to field). Their task is to bring water and promote bounty in agriculture.

  III

  As a place of the dead. A mountain has its base at ground level and yet reaches to the heavens. Therefore, in the minds of the old Japanese it is quite literally a ‘stairway to heaven’. This means that some mountains are the place where spirits of the dead dwell and ascend to heaven or simply make their next home. Often mountains or islands will appear in banka, which are Japanese funeral songs/poems in which a family express their lamentation for the dead.

  One dark legend about mountains is the story of Mt Ibuki in Omi. Upon its peak lived a malevolent deity, but the samurai Yamato Dake ventured deep into the mountain intending to kill the demon-god. On his way up he saw a pure white snake (sometimes a boar) and thought of this as a good omen, a message from the gods; however, it was in fact the evil god leading him to his doom. The samurai walked into a malicious mist that drained him of his energy and made him appear drunk. He was only saved from death by drinking from a holy well on the mountain, which brought him back to his senses.

  There is the tale of Utsurai Sayo, who summoned demons, devils and spirits on a mountain and bound them with reed. Having magically bound them, he left them under a peach tree as food for tigers. Because of this, a continuing tradition (mainly in China) is to take figurines made from peach tree wood and to tie them up with reeds on the last day of the Chinese year; this is done for protection against evil spirits.

  Once a man was walking in the mountains when he saw a robe of feathers hanging from a tree, and when he took the robe a figure came out and asked for the robe back; the figure was in fact an angel and needed the robe in order to fly. The man, returning the robe, watched as the angel flew into the sky and performed a dance above Mt Fuji.

  The Horse River

  There is a river called Banyugawa (Ba means horse). It is said that the shogun was attending the opening ceremony of a bridge which crossed this river when all of a sudden there was an evil squall, and in the thunder and darkness came ghosts and spirits, making the shogun’s horse bolt into the river, where it drowned.

  The Violet Well

  One day a lady named Shinge was looking at violet flowers near a well when a snake attacked her. Her handmaidens threw a basket at the snake and it retreated. A young man who came by was skilled in medicine and helped to save her. Shinge grew better but then fell back into illness because she could not marry the handsome stranger who had saved her. It turned out that he was called Yoshisawa and was from the Eta class in Japan, the ‘unclean’ class. Being the daughter of a lord, she could not marry him; her father forbade it. Upon hearing this news she threw herself into the Violet Well, and her ghost is known to cry out on stormy nights with her love of Yoshisawa.

  The Ghost in the Well

  Okiku was a servant girl who broke an expensive plate from a set. The mistress of the house was greatly displeased and imprisoned her. Filled with sorrow, the girl escaped from her cell and jumped into the well, killing herself. She is often depicted as crawling out of the well with plates in her hands.

  The above two stories show how many old Japanese tales make it on to the silver screen; indeed, some of those films end up being shown to Western audiences. The most famous example is The Ring, where the central horrific figure is that of a ghost from a well.

  The Soul of the Mirror

  There was a priest called Matsumura who took up residence in a haunted house – it had a well that was very unlucky and had dragged many people to their death. One day a servant was found dead in the well, and it was a man people knew would not commit suicide. This event made Matsumura take particular interest in the well. One night a woman called Yayori came to him and said that she was the soul of a mirror that was in the well. She said that she had lived in the well by order of an evil demon who had made her entice people to their deaths but had no choice in the matter, and now that the demon was gone she would like to make a request of the master of the house. She asked him to look into the well and find her mirror and bring it out from the depths. The next day he had well cleaners go into the well, and, just as she said, the mirror was found. Upon the back was the name Yayori. He had the mirror polished and placed in a box. The spirit of the mirror came to Matsumura again and said that she was distantly connected to the current shogun, Yoshimasa. She told him to leave the house for it was about to be washed away in a flood and to take her back to the shogun. Moving the very next day, the priest visited the shogun and was rewarded with funding for a new temple and other gifts.

  Well Cleaners

  Japan used to have well cleaners. Wel
ls had to be cleaned once a year to avoid incurring the wrath of Sujin-sama, the god of wells. Two fish would be put in the well to eat the grime and keep it clean and would be brought out of the well each year when it was given its yearly scrub.

  Toenails

  One fun superstition is the concept of not clipping your nails at night, the superstition arising from a play on words: ‘Yo-tsume’, meaning ‘night and nails’, also has the phonetic meanings ‘shortening your life’ and ‘to die early’.

  Numbers

  As we have the unlucky number thirteen, the Japanese have the numbers four and nine. These are considered unlucky numbers in Japan because of the sounds they make. The number four (四 or Shi) has the same sound for the word death. The number nine (九 or Ku) has the same sound as the word for pain. Therefore, you will find that sometimes a building may or may not have a fourth or ninth floor or that someone may not give you four or nine pieces of something, such as cakes or sweets. However, this is a fading custom as Japanese culture gives way to the Western traditions.

  Shamanic beliefs show that seven is a powerful number. On the Ryukyu Island chain, there is a belief that there are seven founding siblings, seven souls in the human body and forty-nine bones in a human. Post-mortem rites happen every seven days until the forty-ninth day, and worship of the dead happens in the seventh lunar month. However, others believe that seven is unlucky and that numbers including a seven are negative.

  Internal Bleeding

  On the battlefield, a samurai may suffer from internal bleeding; to counter this they had a strange recipe to help stop the blood flow. You could either drink the blood of a grey horse, or, if the blood was not available, you could boil the dung of a grey horse, mix it in water and drink it.

  Shells

  On the Ryukyu Island chain of Japan it is a shamanistic tradition to hang a spider conch shell (Lambis chiragra) on your front door to ward off spirits that adopt different shapes.

  New Year

  ‘Ichi-Fuji, Ni-Taka, San-Nasubi’ is a Japanese memory hook which represents a superstition that is centred on the New Year. It translates to ‘Mt Fuji, a hawk, an eggplant’. Old wisdom holds that it is good luck to dream of these three things on the first or second night of the New Year, dreaming of Mt Fuji being of the greatest good luck.

  The Dead in the North

  Never sleep with your head to the north as the dead are laid with their heads to the north. From the early twentieth century onwards, Japan moved from burials to cremation; now, when bodies are awaiting cremation they are placed with the head to the north.

  Hide Your Thumbs

  When you see a hearse, hide your thumbs inside of your clenched fists. Your thumbs represent your parents, and also under the nail of a thumb was believed to be a gateway of the spirit; thus you should guard it so that the taint of death will not invade you.

  Parade of Demons

  The Hyakkiyagyo is a famous scroll of yokai monsters of Japan, but it takes its name from an event. The event concerns the dead and other such things marching through the streets of Kyoto during the night. The name loosely means ‘procession of one hundred demons at night’.

  Rebirth

  If a person dies, you can write their name in ink on the left hand of the corpse and pray that they will come back in the next life in a better position. When reborn, their next body should have a birthmark of what was written on the body and the only way it can be removed is by rubbing clay from the grave of the last incarnation upon it.

  Hell

  The concept of Hell in Japanese is a difficult one to approach, and though it has not been ignored here it has been kept at arm’s length. The reason for this is that Hell is a concept predominantly brought via Buddhism, and therefore any talk of Hell in Japanese culture is heavily influenced by Indian and Chinese thought. For this short book on Japan, it is enough to understand that Japan had its own idea of Hell and that several versions existed:

  Jigoku The archetypal Hell of pain and punishment

  Yomi The Shinto version of Hell (somewhat milder)

  Ahtata (Sanskrit) A hell where the lips are frozen

  Ahbaba (Sanskrit) A hell where the tongue is frozen

  Pundarika (Sanskrit) A hell known as ‘White Lotus’ because the bones there are bleached by the cold and look like a vast array of white lotuses on a pond. (A separate but interesting connection between lotuses and hell can be seen by the figure of Kwannon, who went to the lowest section of Hell and shouted ‘Amitofo!’, at which point lotuses floated down through Hell, causing the very foundations of this under-realm to shake, releasing scores of damned souls and creatures.)

  The Regent of Hell is Yemma (pronounced Emma in Japanese), who has many aides to help him. In hell this regent may make a a soul face the reflecting mirror (the tabari no kagami) which shows the reality of the true nature of an individual’s soul back to them. The Regent of Hell and his minions are said to be fed molten copper every eight hours, and some versions have the regent with three eyes, holding a sceptre made from a holy head. In the first and seventh months, a festival was held for the Regent of Hell and his apprentices were given the day off.

  The River of Hell or the River Styx has its counterpart in Japanese mythology and is called the River of Three Roads, Sanzu no Kawa or Sai-no-kawara. On the banks of this river there is a hag called Shozuka Baba who is 16 (sometimes 60) feet tall and has large eyes. She robs the dead of their clothing and hangs the garments up on trees. She does this with the aid of her consort, Ten Datsuba, to gain the 3 rin payment required. However, her life is not all roses, as the deity Jizo is constantly there to protect children from her scavenging. People of a bad nature are led to Hell by Kakure Zato, the blind guide. At times the children in Hell build small towers of stones; the demons knock them down, which makes the laughing children cry and run for the protection of Jizo.

  Mummies

  On Mt Yudono there existed a strange sect of people who are linked to the term Sokushinbutsu, which refers to a Buddhist practice involving self-mummification. The idea is simple but the execution is difficult. An aspiring future mummy will start a harsh regime of frequent fasting, intensive religious routine and mountain pilgrimages. They then move on to Mokijiki, which is the premise of only eating food from trees, such as nuts, berries, tree bark and pine needles. This diet is steadily reduced until it leads to literal starvation over a period of around 2,000 days. The overall plan is to reduce the body to an almost skeletal state and dry out the internal organs while alive. Would-be mummies have to drink from special wells which sometimes have naturally occurring chemicals that help to kill bacteria in the digestive tract so that rot will not set in. When the aspirant reaches the final stage they can be buried in a type of grave with a tube for air, still chanting and ringing bells. When their chants fail and the bells fall silent, the monks above know that the would-be mummy has died; the monks then wait an extended period of time before they retrieve the body. If successful, the body will be dry and without decay and they will thus have achieved sainthood, allowing them to be used by the shrine as an object of worship. The candidate themselves will have attained pure enlightenment and should then be released from the cycle of rebirth. However, not all make it. Many people died without success in the attempt; it is said that you can still see certain marker stones which mark the areas where many have failed this test and died.

  If you would like to see these mummified remain today you can visit them at Churenji Temple, where the remains of Tesumonkai Same and Hommyokai Shonin are held, and Kaikoji Temple in the town of Sakata, which holds the bodies of Shinnyokai Dainichibo and two other unknown mummies.

  The Emperor’s Lost Tombs

  Much like Western mysteries over the graves of Robin Hood and King Arthur, there are numerous tombs or burial sites in Japan that claim to contain lost emperors. One is said to hold Emperor Antoku, who reigned between 1180 and 1185 and went missing in a battle between the Taira and Minamoto clans. Similarly, the location
of the remains of Emperor Chokei, who reigned between 1368 and 1383, are also ‘lost’. When you travel Japan, you may therefore come upon a holy site claiming to be the last resting place of one of these rulers. However, take it with a pinch of salt as there are many more who also claim this.

  Stones of Japan

  From traditional gardens to Shinto shrines, Japan has an adoration of stone sites, from its rich Stone Age culture to burial mounds from a time long forgotten. Legends survive today of archers who thought they had struck a tiger but in fact shot and split a stone in two, or even famed swordsmen who cracked open vast slabs with a single stroke.

  One lesser-known story is that of the Death Stone, told in the play Sessho Sekki. In this tale we see the jewel maiden – a fox in disguise – take the shape of a stone, and anyone who looks at her instantly dies. However, her demonic and cursed stone form was destroyed when the holy man Genno Osho prayed towards it, shattering it into a thousand pieces. Chamberlin translated the following poem on the subject:

  The Death-Stone stands on Nasu’s moor