This is in response to a reader question about a particular yurei picture, specifically Hokusai’s manga yurei.

Katsushika Hokusai is probably Japan’s best-known artist internationally. His print The Great Wave off Kanagawa, from the woodblock print series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, is without a doubt the most famous work of Japanese art. Like most artists in the Edo period, Hokusai illustrated supernatural scenes from famous kabuki plays and popular hyakumonogatari kaidankai tales. In 1831, he created five prints in a hyakumonogatari series that are still some of the most famous Japanese ghost prints.

The particular yurei in question, however, comes from a different period in his life. In 1811, at the age of 51, Hokusai changed his professional name to Taito, and began work on a series of sketchbooks and small images he called manga. The word manga (漫 画) translates directly to “frivolous pictures,” and Hokusai’s manga series were originally meant to be a quick money-making venture that would attract new students. The manga series was very popular, and Hokusai created fifteen volumes in total.

This yurei image comes from the 13th volume, one of the three not published during Hokusai’s lifetime. This yurei is not from any particular story, but just seems to be a “frivolous picture” of a yurei that Hokusai drew. The text next to the picture say simply yurei, with no other identification. It is a very usual depiction of a yurei in that it is winsome rather than scary. But it does include the standard Edo period yurei characteristics of pale skin, white kimono, black hair, and no feet.

The yurei is part of a four-paneled series of mythological creatures. The yurei is in the top left, with a picture of a Yamauba underneath. On the right side in the top left is a tengu, and underneath that is a mountain yokai called a Hihi. Hihi is the Japanese word for baboon, and at the time a baboon was no less a fantastical creature than a mermaid or tengu.

It is clear from looking at the original that the picture has been color-corrected. The original impressions from Hokusai’s manga series were three-colored, black, gray, and pale flesh.

Here are three more yurei from Hokusai’s 15-volulme Manga series.

Iga no Tsubone– Volume 05

Iga no Tsubone serves double-duty as an actual historical person as well as a folkloric figure. She was the wife of Kusunoki Masanori, an Imperial serving in the court-in-exile for the Emperor Go-Diago.

The story goes that Sasaki no Kiyotaka was an unsuccessful advisor to Emperor Go-Daigo. Sasaki advised the Emperor to attack Ashikaga Takauji’s armies, despite the weakness of the Imperial position. The result was disaster, and Sasaki was ordered to commit seppuku, ritual suicide, as atonement.

Sasaki’s yurei returned to haunt the Imperial court-in-exile after his death, appearing in the form of a tengu. ( It is not uncommon for members of the Imperial court to return after death as tengu instead of normal yurei.) The ghost of Sasaki no Kiyotaka tormented the court-in-exile, until finally the lady Iga no Tsubone confronted it in the palace gardens, and persuaded it to leave.

The scene of Iga no Tsubone confronting the yurei of Sasaki no Kiyotaka was a very popular one and appeared in many ukiyo-e woodblock prints of the Edo period. The artist Yoshitoshi Tsukioka included this scene of Iga no Tsubone in both his “One Hundred View of the Moon” and his triptych “Famous Women of Japan.”

Oiwa and the Buddhist Monk Yuten – Volume 10

By far the most famous ghost story of Japan, and the most famous ghost in Japan, this is a scene of Oiwa from the kabuki play Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan. Oiwa was a woman cursed from birth with being ugly. Despairing of any happiness, she was finally married and had a baby with a poor ronin named Iemon, who eked out a living as an umbrella maker. Iemon somehow won the heart of the beautiful daughter of a well-off neighbor, and realized that the only thing standing in his way was his wife and child. He secured a vial of poison that he gave to Oiwa, which didn’t kill her but only caused her eye to droop and her hair to fall out. Disturbed, Iemon finally outright killed Oiwa and her baby. Oiwa returned to haunt Iemon and his new bride and family until she got her revenge.

This image of Oiwa from the Yostuya Kaidan is highly unusual, in that the vast majority of pictures of Oiwa (and there are hundreds, if not thousands) have her facing off against her husband Iemon. Instead, in this scene she is confronting the Buddhist monk Yuten. In some versions of the story, it was this monk who supplied the poison to Iemon.

Hokusai has another, much more famous print of Oiwa from his Hyakumonogatari series. That image is the famous scene of Oiwa’s face appearing from a lantern to confront Iemon.

Okiku and the Buddhist Monk Mikazuki Jyounin – Volume 10

Another of Japan’s most famous ghosts, the story of Okiku and the Nine Plates is usually told as the Bancho Sarayashiki. In the tale, Okiku is an innocent maid who breaks one of the ten plates that are the heirloom of the family she works for. In his wrath, the master of the house has Okiku thrown down a well where she dies. Every night, her ghost rises from the well and goes to the house to count the plates, shrieking horrifically when she gets to number nine.

The story of Okiku has as many variations as there are old wells in Japan, each claiming to be the original. This picture is based on a version where a monk hid nearby when Okiku rose to count the plates. As she counted the plates, and reached the final ninth plate, the monk shouted “ten,”and Okiku, satisfied that she had finally finished her count, dissipated to the afterlife.

Like Oiwa and Iga no Tsubone, there are several ukiyo-e woodblock print versions of the Okiku story.

Translated from Nihon no Yurei

Ueda Akinari’s “Ugetsu Monogatari” is a nine-story collection of tales of the mysterious and strange. It is a pedantic work, designed by the author largely as a display to flaunt his own body of knowledge. In the nine stories, Ueda wrote about the nature of yurei. Among them is the story “The Chrysanthemum Vow,” the gist of which goes like this:

In the country of Harima there was a post-town called Kako that stood as a relay station for official messages. Living there in honorable poverty and relative safety was an old mother and her son, who was named Hasebe Samon. One day Samon saw a visitor coming into town. The visitor was sick with a high fever and in obvious pain. Terrified of a contagious infection, the people of the tiny post-town gave the stranger a wide berth. Hasebe alone took pity on the stranger and brought him into his own home where he cleaned him and nursed him slowly back to health.

The visitor was from Shoue, in Izumo. His name was Akana Soemon. He had served as a mentor in strategy and tactics to the Lord of Toda, Enya Kamonnosuke , but one day when Akana was out delivering a message to Sasaki Ujitsuna of Oumi, a man named Amako Tsunehisa betrayed and attacked Lord Enya Kamonnosuke. Sadly, Akana’s patron died in the ensuing battle. Soemon pleaded with Ujitsuna to take up the sword and exact revenge on Amako, but aside from some pretty speeches Ujitsuna did nothing. The lack of action on the part of Ujitsuna was upsetting, so Akana decided to leave Oumi and return home to Izumo. But on the journey back he fell ill.

Akana was overwhelmed by the kindness he had been shown by Hasebe, and the two became sworn brothers. At the beginning of summer, Akana wished to stay with his new companion but he still needed to fulfill his original purpose and return to Izumo to check on his holdings. After that was taken care of, Akana promised to return to Hasebe’s house for a lengthy stay.

Akana promised to return to Kako before the season had a chance to change into fall. He set the day at September 9th, the day of the Chrysanthemum Festival. Akana gave his most solemn vow to Hasebe that the festival would not pass without his return. That said, Akana set out for Izumo.

In time, the promised day arrived, September 9th. From the very earliest light of morning, Hasebe Samon busily prepared for his dear friend’s return, and when preparation was done he waited patiently. Noon came and went with no sign of Akana. Soon it was evening, and even as the sun was sinking into the West Akana did not arrive. After waiting well into the night, Hasebe told his mother that she should retire, and that he would continue his vigil alone. It never occurred to Hasebe that Akana would not fulfill his vow.

Waiting still, as he looked beyond the door of his house, Hasebe saw the faint glow of the Milky Way above, and the dim illumination of the setting Moon. In the distance, he heard the sound of ocean waves breaking, and he could clearly hear the barking of the family dog. The fading moonlight outlined dark silhouettes of the mountains. As he stood in the doorway without any intention of entering, Hasebe watched the night scene.

Just then, from out of the silhouettes of the mountain, Hasebe saw the shape of a person begin to appear. The figure did not walk, but floated as if carried on the wind. Although it seemed impossible, when Hasebe looked closely he saw the shape of his friend Akana Soemon. Exactly as promised, Akana Soemon had kept his vow and come on September 9th, the day of the Chrysanthemum Festival.

But the Akana Soemon that arrived was not the man of this world that Hasebe had been expecting. Only Akana’s spirit had appeared.

Akana’s shade told his story to Hasebe. Once in Izumo, Amako Tsunehisa had Akana placed under house arrest and kept him there, making it impossible for Akana to keep his vow and arrive for the Chrysanthemum Festival. Akana had pondered this for awhile. He reasoned that even if it was impossible for his physical body to make the journey of a thousand ri to see his friend, his spirit alone would have no problem traveling that great distance. And so with his own hand and his own sword, Akana freed his spirit and traveled on the wind in order to keep his promise. Once Akana told this story to Hasebe, his spectral form vanished and Hasebe was alone once again.

After expressing the extreme fidelity of these two friends, Ueda Akinari notes that you should not become attached to frivolous people, or wrap your fate with those who will not pay in kind.

The Chrysanthemum Vow can be seen as a template for this kind of yurei story. If we compare it to other Tokuhon-shu stories popular with Edo period readers, we see the similarities. It stands to reason that the yurei of Akana Soemon came to visit Hasebe Samon, and did not just blindly return to the house where he had stayed. If Hasebe had been elsewhere, then Akana would have found him there and appeared before him. This element of ghosts is one of the unique points of Japanese yurei.

In other words, Japanese yurei have a specific goal in mind, a purpose. If they are seeking a person, they will find them no matter where they go or where they hide. There are some exceptions, most notably the story in my first chapter (Translated as The Scared Yurei) where I tell the story of a ghost of Ginza who wished to get revenge on the person who killed her, but, being still afraid of the murderess even in death, deigned to appear at the kindly old lady’s home next door. But this kind of story is rare, and ignores the rules of Japanese yurei.

Translator’s Note: Those familiar with Lafcadio Hearn will probably reconize his version of this story, recorded as Of a Promise Kept in A Japanese Miscellany.  This is a shortened, less poetic version of the tale told just as a recap for the book Nihon no Yurei.  The story originally appeared in Ueda Akinari’s Ugetsu Monogatari.

Translated from Mizuki Shigeru’s Mujyara

In Saisetan, located on Fukue island in the Goto archipelago of Nagasaki prefecture, there are legends of things that have the power to enter and possess humans. These things (ikiryo, shiryo, dobutsu-rei, kappa, and the curses of various deities of Shinto and Buddhism) are called inen. They cause various illnesses, changes in personality, and spiritual distress. There is also a type of shaman who can speak directly to the inen, interpreting their demands and negotiating the price that must be paid. These shamans are known as Honin.

At one time, there was the wife of a farmer who had a strange growth on the side of her body under her armpit. It was painful, and because of the tumor she couldn’t sleep at night. She went to the doctor and had the malignant growth removed several times, but it always grew back. Three times she was operated on, and with no success. She finally paid a call on a honin. The honin said “In your house there are many spirits. These are not the beneficial spirits of your ancestors. They are desperate things who want something from you. It is the spirits who have caused this growth on your body. Here is what you must do to appease them. Go home, make a great feast, and set it on your largest plate. Set the plate under a large tree near your house and leave it there, making the proper supplications to the spirits.”

It was long the tradition of the village that the once-prosperous farmer’s wife’s house was built on top of an ancient graveyard. The spirits interred there wanted the humans to honor them and hold regular memorial services, and they made their desires known by causing illnesses such as skin diseases, tumors, and even insanity.

You can read more details about inen in the book “Spiritual and Magical Powers” by Sasaki Miki.

Translator’s Note:

The word inen is written in katakana, and thus has no meaning other than being a name.

Translated and adapted from Hyakiyako Kaitai Shisho and other sources

Be careful when you pull up a bucket of water from an ancient, abandoned well. You might get more than you bargained for if a kyokotsu 狂骨—which translates literally as “crazy bones”—springs up from the bucket like a Jack-in-the-Box to deliver its curse.

Clad in a white burial kimono, kyokotsu almost look like a classical yurei but they lack the black/white contrast due to shocks of white hair that spring from its bleached-white skull. Kyokotsu appear as little more than bones wrapped in a shroud, springing from a well.

The yokai is best-known from Toriyama Sekien’s Edo-period yokai print-book “Konjyaku Hyaku Kishui” or  “Supplement to the Hundred Demons of the Past.” Author Kyogoku Natsuhiko also recent featured a kyokotsu in his book “Dream of the Kyokotsu.”

Sekien’s original woodblock print was accompanied by this text:

“Kyokotsu rise from the bones in the well. It is said that whosoever commits the horrendous act of abandoning august bones will find it impossible to abandon the horrendous wrath that follows.”

Sekien’s text seems to explain that kyokotsu appear from a well in response to some wrongdoing and bearing a terrible grudge. Seiken also claimed that the regional-dialect term “kyokotsu,” meaning “violent” or “furious,” is an allusion to this yokai. However, while such a term does exist, specifically in Tsuki-gun in Kanagawa prefecture, there is no concrete evidence linking either the term or Seiken’s picture to an older folktale.

It is much more likely that the opposite occurred, that Seiken heard the term “kyokotsu” and decided to invent a yurei to match—much like if an English-language author decided to create a monster called “Lazy Bones” after the pre-existing term. To get the image for his yokai, Seiken was probably just playing on works, combining the local term “kyokotsu” (crazy bones) with “gyokotsu,” which means bones from which all of the meat has fallen off. He might also have been influenced by the words “keikotsu” or “sokotsu” which can mean drifter or wander, but also can be phrased as “someone from the bottom.” It seems likely that Seiken was influenced both by these words and by the old belief of an inexhaustible grudge that can come from the bottom of wells.

There are several Japanese folklore stories—involving both yokai and yurei—that involve the bottom of a well. In Japanese folklore, water was a channel to the world of the dead, and the bottoms of wells were directly connected. Wells also served as a convenient hiding place for murders committed in the dark of the night, and the superstitious believed that any such-disposed of corpse was capable of a powerful curse. Those who died from falling in wells, by accident, suicide, or murder, were thought to transform into shiryo and haunt the well. The spirit connects to the well itself, rather than where they were murdered, and their curse is likely to fall on anyone who used the well and not specifically targeted to the murderer.

A cursed set of bones is another typical trope in Japanese folklore and does not need to be connected to a well. In her book “Nozarashi Monogatari,” the literary scholar Sawada Mizuho wrote a similar story of a weather-beaten, abandoned skull that gets its revenge.

The biggest difference between the kyokotsu and typical Japanese folklore tales of skeletal ghosts is the element of disparity between the spirit form and the physical remains. In most stories, the spirit resembles a typical Japanese yurei—with a physical, full human body—even while the discovered remains are nothing more than a pile of rotting bones. The kyokotsu is rare in that Sekien drew the spirit in skeletal form as well. Because of this, kyokotsu is most often identified as a type of yokai, being a possessed skeleton, rather than a type of yurei, a Japanese ghost.

Translator’s Note:  The manga series “Bleach” has a character called Katen Kyōkotsu that uses the same kanji as this yokai, but seems to have no other relationship.

Translated from Mizuki Shigeru’s Mujara

In Goto city in Nagasaki, on the morning of the 15th day of the Obon festival of the dead, it was said that an evil wind blew. Anyone who felt the caress of this evil wind would fall sick and collapse. This day also happened to be the traditional day for visiting the graves of ancestors. It was believed that the souls of the unworshiped dead flew on the winds.

Since olden times, the people of Japan believed in and feared the unworshiped dead, called muenbotoke ( 無縁仏). Farmers blamed everything from droughts, to strong winds, to infestations of insects on these unhappy spirits. And so, during the Obon festival of the dead, along with the usual offerings of rice and sake to the ancestor spirits of the family, they would try to calm the spirits of the muenbotoke and the Buddhist hungry ghosts, so that they would not lay their curse on any living person. But some of these spirits would not be calmed, and so on the morning of Obon these vengeful souls would take flight on the wind and become the shōrōkaze.

It was not just evil spirits that used the wind to travel. The kami spirits of Shinto were also known to flow with the winds. For example, in the middle of March the wind from the East was called the kami-kudashi, and in the beginning of October when the kami gathered in Izumo for their annual meeting it was said that they traveled from all corners of Japan on the wind. And of course, the most famous of all is the kami-kaze, the God Wind that saved Japan. But of these all, only the shōrōkaze is counted amongst the yokai.

Translator’s Note:

The Shōrōkaze uses the kanji 精霊 (shōrō – ghost) + 風 (kaze – wind). 精霊 as a term for ghosts is interesting in that it has two different pronunciations, each with different connotations. The most common reading of 精霊 is seirei, and means ghosts or spirits in the Western tradition. When proncounced shōrō, as it is here, the word carries Buddhist meanings. So it is appropriate that the shōrōkaze is associated with Obon, the festival of the dead.

Further Reading:

Check out other yurei tales from hyakumonogatari.com:

How Do You Say Ghost in Japanese?

Goryo Shinko – The Religion of Ghosts

The Gratitude-Expressing Yurei

Translated from Mikzuki Shigeru’s Yokai Zukan

The moon hangs in the sky like the blade of a sickle, giving off a dim glow. A ghostly air permeates the scene, and from a thicket of bamboo emerges the form of a single yurei.

An emaciated body wrapped in a kyokatabira, the traditional white burial kimono, this figure is the very epitome of a yurei. Our eyes are instantly drawn to the clenched teeth from which dangles a pale, severed head. Held tightly by the hair, the yurei shows no sign of allowing its precious bounty to drop, and its expression challenges anyone to make it try. And while the eyes of the dead, severed head are closed, the eyes of the yurei look as if they could pop out of their eye sockets at any moment. An unearthly light surrounds the yurei and its head. The scene is blood curdling.

The head is painted in vivid colors, but we do not know its story. There must have been some terrible curse, some tragic event, to produce such a terrifying circumstance.

Although there are other paintings along similar themes, in this work the artist Kawanabe Kyosai has emphasized the horror, the eerie nature of the image. Kyosai is known as a master of yurei paintings, and surely this is one of his masterpieces.

Translator’s Note

This is Mizuki Shigeru’s commentary on a famous painting by Meiji-era artist Kawanabe Kyosai (河鍋暁斎; 1831-1889). Known as the last great painter in the Japanese style, Kyosai was said to be the inheritor of Hokusai and the other great ukiyo-e masters, although he did not study under Hokusai.

This painting, titled simply Yurei-zu (幽霊図), meaning “Picture of a Yurei,” is india ink on silk and was painted in 1870 – The 3rd year of the Meiji period. The painting is currently housed in the Fukuoka City Museum.

The story of this particular painting is not known, and indeed there may be no story. Kyosai painted a few portraits of yurei carrying severed heads. The reason for this is usually related to a story from Kyosai’s youth. As a nine-year old boy, he found a severed head by the side of a river, and brought it home to study and play with it like some discovered toy. When his parents found the head and ordered Kyosai to throw it back in the river, he did so only after he drew the head from every angle, fully studying his gruesome find.

Further Reading:

Check out other yurei art from hyakumonogatari.com:

Hokusai’s Manga Yurei

More Hokusai Manga Yurei

Translated from Mikzuki Shigeru’s Yokai Zukan

Here we have yet another yurei portrait, but this one gives an impression of sadness instead of fear. The title of this piece is ubume (姑獲鳥), which makes a reference to a Chinese yokai that took the form of a bird. This yokai entered Japanese folklore as the spirit of a woman who had given birth, and stories are told of a ghostly woman who wanders through town carrying her child in her arms.

This image of the ubume (産女) is the one drawn by Sawaki Sushi in Hyakaizukan (百怪図巻; “The Illustrated Volume of a Hundred Demons”) and by Sekien in Gazu Hyakki Yagyō (画図百鬼夜行; “The Illustrated Night Parade of a Hundred Demons”). Kyosai’s painting is of the same genus. In fact, Kyosai’s painting is so similar to that of another artist, Kano Tosen’s work “Umesachi,” that it could almost be considered a reproduction.

The ubume’s clothing and hair are swept back by the wind. She covers her face with her sleeve. The whole scene is one of plaintive sorrow.

Further Reading:

Check out other yurei art from hyakumonogatari.com:

Yūrei-zu – A Portrait of a Yūrei, a Japanese Ghost

Two Tales of Ubume

Hokusai’s Manga Yurei

Translator’s Note

This is Mizuki Shigeru’s commentary on a famous painting by Meiji-era artist Kawanabe Kyosai (河鍋暁斎; 1831-1889). Known as the last great painter in the Japanese style, Kyosai was said to be the inheritor of Hokusai and the other great ukiyo-e masters, although he did not study under Hokusai.

This painting is of a traditional type of ghost known as ubume. Ubume can be written with two sets of kanji, either 姑獲鳥 or 産女. The more typical one is 産女, which translates as “birthing mother.” Ubume are said to be ghosts of women who died in childbirth, or died with their still living child in their womb who is then born from a dead mother. They wander the streets trying to buy sweets and to get care for their still living child. In still other legends their child is as dead as they are. The kanji Kyosai used to title his painting, 姑獲鳥 translates rather strangely as “bird-catching mother-in-law” and shows the Chinese origin of the name. As stated by Shigeru, the Chinese ubume can take on a bird shape.

Kyosai probably used this archaic kanji to give an allure of mystery to his work, and to show his knowledge of Chinese.

Translated from Mizuki Shigeru’s Mujara

This is a legend from Kagawa prefecture, and is one of several legends about someone out for a walk who runs into a mysterious band on the road, and dies as a result.

The Seven Pilgrims cannot be seen under normal circumstances. According to legend, only those with the ability to wiggle their ears can see them unaided. Everyone else has to look beneath the legs of a cow in order to make the invisible visible. Cows in particular are said to be sensitive to the presence of the Seven Pilgrims. If a farmer is out walking with his cows, and they come to a sudden stop at a crossroads, the wise farmer bends down and peeks from between his cows’ legs until he is sure the coast is clear. But, if he sees seven dark pilgrims walking single file … then his time has come.

Along with the Seven Pilgrims, Kagawa prefecture also has the legend of the Seven Boys. This is essentially the same story as the Seven Pilgrims, substituting a group of wandering young boys. The Seven Boys are also encountered on crossroads, and because of this the Nakatado District of Kagawa is spotted with long-abandoned crossroads where no human dares to walk.

The Seven Pilgrims and the Seven Children are most likely the same entity. Whether they look like weary travelers or small children, in truth, no one knows. No one has ever survived an encounter.

In Kochi prefecture, there is a similar legend of the Seven Miseki . They say that people who drown in the ocean are chained together in gangs of seven. The number is always seven, and there is a hierarchy. In order to gain their freedom and go on to the afterlife, the Seven Miseki need a new member in the form of a drowning victim. Then, the ghost in the front gets to heaven, while the rest of the members move up a rank. And the Seven Miseki feel no need to wait for an accidental drowning. They will kill if they can, to gain new members and free themselves from their torment.

So powerful is this bond that not even invoking the Nembutsu (prayer to the Ahmida Buddha) can help the Seven Miseki. Far better to save your prayers for yourself, and hope that they don’t come to you one night, looking for someone to step into the back row.

Translator’s Note

As I have said before, Japanese folklore runs the gambit from funny, to strange, to terrifying. After doing Eyeball Butt, I was in the mood for a monster that was honestly scary. Well, except for looking between a cow’s legs … that’s just weird.

One of the interesting things about the Seven Pilgrims is they show the fine line between yurei and yokai in Japanese folklore. The pilgrims are referred to either as “shiryo” (dead spirits) or “borei” (departed spirits), but they don’t follow the normal rules and tropes of Japanese ghosts. Generally, Japanese ghosts require some purpose or reason to manifest, whereas the Seven Pilgrims act as if they are under a curse. Unless their reason is more mysterious than we know.

The kanji used for the Seven Pilgrims is七人同行, which translates literally as “Seven Fellow Travelers,” although in this case “travelers” implies “walkers of the path” which is a reference to Buddhist pilgrims. Their alternate form, the Seven Boys is 七人童子, or Shichinen Doshi. Based on that term, they don’t necessarily have to be boys—you could say the Seven Little Kids—but that is the most common usage.

The terrifying Seven Miseki uses katakana for the name (七人ミサキ) which implies that “miseki” has no further meaning other than being a name. But I will need to look into that further. They are pretty cool and are worth their own article some day.

Further Reading:

For most ghostly tales on hyakumonogatari.com, check out:

Shōrōkaze – The Ghost Wind

The Gratitude-Expressing Yurei

How Do You Say Ghost in Japanese?

The Yurei Child

Translated from Mizuki Shigeru’s Mujara

On July 28th, Showa 30th (1955), in a heartbreaking incident 36 junior high school girls drowned on a beach in Mie prefecture. Of the nine girls who survived the incident, five had the same story to tell.

The girls were all playing and swimming in the calm waters, enjoying the gentle lapping of the waves. Without warning, the water seemed to gather together, and a dark mass rose from the surface of the ocean. The mass took the shape of people in WWII air-raid hoods, dark in color, soaking wet and pouring water from every surface. As the mass rose, the figures become more defined, dressed in old-fashioned women’s work pants. There were hundreds of them.

The girls tried to get away, but the water seemed to be sucked up towards the dark figures, dragging the girls towards them. One of the girls who survived said she felt a hand grab her leg and try and pull her under the water. She was able to break the hands grasp and make her way to the shore, but her friends were not so lucky.

Afterwards, students who were on the beach and not in the water confirmed the story and all of its details. They saw the ghosts rising and dragging the girls under the water.

After investigating the incident, it was discovered that exactly ten years before the incident, U.S. aircraft had firebombed that area, killing around 250 people. The bodies were not cremated, but were piled without ceremony into a mass grave on that beach. In this way one tragedy became two tragedies, as the ghosts of the war dead rose up again.

Translator Note:

The kanji for this is集団 (shudan, meaning “group” or “gathering”) and亡霊 (borei, which is a somewhat Gothic term for “ghost”).

This story is based on a actual event, called the Kyohaku Junior High School Drowning Incident (橋北中学校水難事件) in Japanese. The school had gone to the beach as their annual excursion, and as swimming practice for the girls. At the time, swimming had been added to the official school curriculum, but as the school had no pool swimming practice was held in the nearby, usually calm ocean.

The school principle and teachers were arrested and charged with negligence—the school was short-handed and had not brought along the required number of adult observers, and parents claimed their children were not yet strong enough swimmers to be unsupervised in the ocean. Ultimately, they were found not-guilty and cleared of charges. The girls’ deaths were ruled a mysterious, unfortunate accident. A pool was quickly built for the school, and the students no longer practice swimming in the ocean.

Observers reported a sudden swelling of the waves and a rise in the water level that drowned the girls. Of the nine surviving girls, five reported a sensation of pulling on their legs, as if the sand was sucking down on their feet, holding them down while the water rose. Several also reported seeing the dark shape of women in air-raid hoods rising from the water.

In 1956, the Ise Newspaper reported on the story of the war dead buried on the beach, noting that most of the dead had been refugees and were thus buried without name or ceremony. In 1963, one of the girls published an article in a Joshi Jishin magazine (Women’s Own Stories) called “How I survived an Encounter with a Ghost” that further spread the supernatural origin of the drowning.

Several scientific explanations have been offered for the sudden swelling of the water based on the geographical features of the beach, along the supernatural one. It is clear Mizuki Shigeru prefers the supernatural explanation.

The beach remains off-limits for swimmers. A year after the incident, a shrine was raised on the location, and a statue called the Goddess of Protecting Swimmers in the Ocean was placed on the beach as a memorial.

Further Reading:

For more tales of haunted oceans, read:

Umi Bozu – The Sea Monk

Funa Yurei – The Boat Ghosts

Nure Onnago – The Soaked Woman

Once upon a time the Obakemono Project was the coolest place on the internet to chat with like-minded folks about yurei, yokai, and other Asian and world folklore monsters. Sadly, the owner lost interest in the site and didn’t designate any other Admins before abandoning it.  The site became overrun with SpamBots, and–while a few of us fought valiantly to keep the site clean–we lost.

Like a spunky band in a zombie show, eventually we had to give up our no-longer safe haven and strike out for something new.

After a few months of testing, fiddling, and building up our own walls and fortifications to ensure the SpamBot horde wouldn’t destroy our new home, we are proud to announce the new coolest place on the internet to chat with like-minded folks about–well, you know.

Welcome to Obake Forums !!!!

There you can hang out and chat yokai, post questions, get answers, give answers, and do all of that cool forum stuff with some of the leading English-language experts on yokai and Asian folklore. People like Matt Alt (Yokai Attack!: The Japanese Monster Survival Guide, Yurei Attack!: The Japanese Ghost Survival Guide), Mathew Meyer (The Night Parade of One Hundred Demons: a Field Guide to Japanese Yokai), and–humbly–myself, Zack Davisson (Showa 1926-1939: A History of Japan, Kitaro, upcoming Yurei: The Japanese Ghost).

Some come check it out. Register. And start chatting.

Maruyama Ōkyo opened his eyes from a fitful sleep and saw a dead woman. She was young. Beautiful. And pale. Unnaturally drained of color, her bloodless skin peeked from her loose, bone-white burial kimono. Her bleached appearance was contrasted only by the thin slits of her black eyes, and by the long, black hair that hung disheveled across her shoulders. She had no feet.

What is The Ghost of Oyuki?

The Ghost of Oyuki is without a doubt the most famous and influential Japanese ghost painting.  It is the template for the entire country’s idea of “what a ghost looks like.” The white-faced, black-haired girl in the white kimono has roots in tradition, but this image–particularly the lack of feet–comes from the brush of Maruyama Ōkyo.

Although the English title is The Ghost of Oyuki, the actual Japanese title is Yūreizu: Oyuki no Maboroshi (幽霊図(お雪の幻), which translates as Portrait of a Yurei: The Vision of Oyuki. According to a note on the scroll box, put there sometime by a former owner named Shimizu, the young artist had a mistress called Oyuki who worked as a geisha at the Tominaga geisha house in Ōtsu city in the province of Ōmi, modern-day Shiga prefecture.  Oyuki had died young, how or when the note does not say; and Ōkyo mourned her deeply.  Perhaps too deeply.

One night Maruyama awoke  and saw Oyuki hovering at the foot of his bed. She stayed there for a moment and disappeared. When she was gone, Maruyama sprang from his bed and painted Oyuki exactly has she had appeared before him.

Maruyama had a reputation as the ultimate naturalist painter—if he painted something, you could trust that he had seen it.  Because of his reputation, when Maruyama appeared with his painting and his story, the people of Japan had no doubt that this was what a yurei actually looked like. And they have been honoring that image ever since.

The Ghost of Oyuki Yomihon

The story of Maruyama Okyo and the Ghost of Oyuki is told in my yomihon chapbook The Ghost of Oyuki available from Chin Music Press.

The Ghost of Oyuki is not an actual book, but a piece of “book art” commissioned from Mercuria Press in Portland, OR to support my upcoming book Yurei: The Japanese Ghost. The Ghost of Oyuki is letterpress printed and handbound in the style of an Edo period yomihon, and was produced in a limited edition of 100.

You can buy The Ghost of Oyuki exclusively from Chin Music Press. It can be ordered here.

Further Reading:

For more Yurei-zu, check out:

Ubume-zu – Portrait of an Ubume

Yurei-zu: A Portrait of a Yurei, a Japanese Ghost

Hokusai’s Manga Yurei

More Hokusai Manga Yurei

Translated and Sourced from Mizuki Shigeru’s Mujyara, Showa: A History of Japan, Japanese Wikipedia, Kaii Yokai Densho Database, and Other Sources

If you are walking through a mountain trail, and find yourself overcome with a sudden hunger—a soul-killing hunger that drives you to your knees like true starvation—you might need to do more than reach into your backpack for an energy bar. You might be under attack by the Hidarugami, the Hunger Gods.

What Does Hidarugami Mean?

Hidarugami is written with the katakanaヒダル (hidaru) + the kanji 神 (kami; god). Things written in katakana have no inherent meaning. However, the word “hidaru” is most likely connected with饑い (hidarui), meaning hunger. Hidarui is a colloquial term, used mainly in Gifu prefecture. Hidarugami is also sometimes writtenひだる神 using the hiragana for “hidaru,” also with no inherent meaning.

The fact that the kanji “kami” is used places the hidarugami on a higher level than most yokai, alongside such devastating deities like the Binbogami (貧乏神; God of Poverty) and Shinigami (死神; God of Death). This elevated status is due in part to arising from human spirits, from reikon.

There are other names for the Hidarutami. In Kitakyushu, it is known as the Darashi (ダラシ), in Mie and Wakayama prefectures it is sometimes called the Dari (ダリ), while in Nara and Tokushima prefectures it is called Daru (ダル). All of these use katakana for the names.

The Hunger Strike of the Hidarugami

Hidarugami are said to be the spirits of those who starved to death wandering the mountains. Because they died alone, with no marker for their grave or any ceremony, their spirits become evil and seek to share their death agonies.

They are found almost exclusively on mountain trails and passes. Hikers and travelers in the presence of the Hidarugami are suddenly overcome with acute hunger, fatigue, and numbness of the limbs. The feeling is said to be that of actual starvation. The victim is unable to move and often collapse. This attack is a form of possession. The Hidarugami enters your body. If no action is taken, the Hidarugami can cause death—actual death by starvation in a healthy body.

If you are killed, you join the Hidarugami group. In this way, Hidarugamai groups slowly enlarge to contain many souls.

Expelling the Hidarugami is easy, so long as you are prepared. Just a small mouthful of a staple food, such as rice or grain, staves off the attack and the starvation leaves as quickly as it arose. That is why—even today—hikers are advised against going into the mountains without a few riceballs or a bento to eat. Even then, they never eat the entire meal, always leaving a few grains behind in case of emergency.

Old Japanese kaidanshu and traveler’s guides are full of stories of the Hidarugami. In a story coming from 1736 a man named Senkichi was found exhausted and unconscious on a mountain trail. Unable even to speak, he was loaded into a cart and carried back to town where he was fed and recovered. Senkichi related an account of an attack by Hidarugami. Another typical story tells of a merchant crossing the Noborio Pass towards Onohara. Only a few hours after finishing his lunch he became ravenously hungry, struggling to make his way to a nearby temple. A traveler’s guide from 1861 warned of the dangers of going into the mountains without a few riceballs for protection.

Are the Hidarugami Yokai or Yurei?

Hidarugami defy simple classification, and show the complicated nature of Japanese folklore. Are they yurei? Are they yokai? Are they Gods? Yes to all three questions. (And yes, it is a trick question as all yurei are yokai. Smart catch there!)

Because Hidarugami enter the body and possess it, they are considered a type of the Tsukimono yokai – A Possessing Thing. While most tsukimono are magical animals, anything that possess can fall into this category.

Higarugami are most definitely yurei—they are referred to as either akuryo (悪霊; Evil Spirit) or onryo (怨霊; Vengeful Spirits). But they are not typical yurei. Like Funa Yurei and oddities like the Shichinin Dōgyō – The Seven Pilgrims, the Hidarugami act as a group and actively make new members. Because they are bound to their location, they would be considered a type of jibakurei (地縛霊; Earth-bound Spirit).

Hidarugami are also muenbotoke (無縁仏). This refers to the unworshiped dead, those who die without burial or ceremony. Special rites are often held on Obon, the Festival of the Dead, specifically for muenbotoke to try and get their spirits to pass one. One passage says that the Hidarugami’s grip on the world is not particularly strong—that they are a weak god—and they should be banished by a simple muenbotoke ceremony.

They are also associated with Gaki ( 餓鬼), the Preta or Hungry Ghost of Chinese and Tibetan Buddhist mythology. The association is vague and only based on the dual obsession with hunger. Gaki are those whose sins of gluttony condemn them to be reborn as foul creatures with a rapacious hunger for disgusting things such as corpses or feces. Gaki are not native to Japanese folklore, and at sometime after their importation from China a link was made between the Gaki and the Hidarugami.

Hidarugami Across Japan

Like all widespread folklore, the Hidarugami have regional variations and associations. In Wakayama prefecture, —along the ancient pilgrimage route of Kumano Kodo—there is a deep hole called the Gaki Ana, or the Gaki’s Pit. The exact location of the pit is unknown, but it is said to be someone near Mt. Okumotori and Mt. Shokumotori in Wakayama prefecture. Wherever it is, staring into the Gaki Ana is said to summon the Hidarugami.

In Shiga prefecture, possession by a Hidarugami is much more dreadful. The possessed person’s stomach suddenly swells like a starvation victim, and they begs for a bowl of rice with tea. If someone answers that they had food, but have eaten it, the possessed victim will attack with a fury, ripping open their stomachs in search of undigested bits of rice to eat.

In Mie prefecture, Hidarugami are said to attack not only humans but also cattle being moved across mountain trails.

In Kochi, Nagasaki, and Kagoshima prefectures, there are small shrines set up along mountain roads and mountain passes enshrining the kami Shibaorigami (柴折様). Making a small offering at these shrines, even something so small as laying down a few token branches of wood, is said to provide protection against the Hidarugami.

Translator’s Note:

This is the next in my series of yokai who appear in Mizuki Shigeru’s Showa: A History of Japan. A young Mizuki Shigeru encountered the Hidarugami once walking through a mountain road. He survived the attack due to finding a few stray grains of rice. It was only much later in his life while reading a book that he learned to put a name to the strange phenomenon he had encountered.

Further Reading:

To read more about Tsukimono and other sundry ghosts, check out:

Tsukimono – The Possessing Thing

Shichinin Dōgyō – The Seven Pilgrims

Funa Yurei

Translated from Mizuki Shigeru’s Mujyara

Long ago, in the town of Aizuwakamatsu (modern day Fukushima prefecture) lived a man named Iyo lived with his wife. One night the yurei of a woman appeared in their house.

At first the dead woman—who was completely unknown to Iyo—appeared outside in the garden. She knocked on the closed door and called out the name of Iyo’s wife, who was sleeping beside him. Now, Iyo’s wife was a no-nonsense type of woman. When she heard the yurei calling her name, she shouted back “Who the hell are you and what do you want?” There was no answer other than the yurei again calling her name.

Being prepared for such a thing, Iyo’s wife reached into a special box she kept near their futon and withdrew an ofuda. The ofuda was a strip of paper, prepared by a local monk, with a charm of exorcism against ghosts. Iyo’s wife hurled the ofuda at the yurei, who disappeared like smoke blown away by a fan.

However, this yurei was not finished with Iyo and his wife. The next night she appeared in the kitchen, coming out of the fires of the burning stove. After that, she was in the garden again, walking the perimeter and pounding a bell with a wooden mallet. This went on for four days.

The wife knew when she was outmatched, and went to the local shrine to enlist the help of the kami and Buddhist spirits to protect their house. She reverently prayed to anyone who would listen, and as a result their house was quiet for the night. The yurei did not appear.

It was the eighth day since the haunting began. Apparently the protection Iyo’s wife was good for one night only. This time the woman’s yurei appeared directly in their bedroom, hovering over them near their pillows. Slowly she made her way to the foot of the bed, where she began to caress Iyo’s wife’s feet with her cold, dead hands.

That was enough for Iyo and his wife, who promptly moved out of the house. The ghostly woman remained a mystery; No one in the Iyo household had ever seen her before, or knew what she wanted, or why she had appeared.

Translator’s Note:

Another yurei story for Halloween. This one comes from Mizuki Shigeru’s Mujyara, and I have not been able to discover his source. As seen in Chikaramochi Yurei, Mizuki has no problem renaming stories when he thinks he has a better title, which can make it difficult to track down the originals. This may possibly just be a story he was told once.

This story is interesting because it illustrates one of the main trademarks of yurei (Japanese ghosts)—They want something. The people in the story may not always know what the yurei wants, and it can be something as simple as wanting to say thank you to someone that you didn’t get a chance to when you were alive (The Gratitude Expressing Yurei) to keeping a promised appointment (The Chrysanthemum Vow).

Mizuki makes a point in the story to reinforce the point that Iyo and his wife did not know the woman’s ghost nor what she wanted, which makes the haunting all the more bizarre from the Japanese perspective. Because they don’t know what she wants, they don’t know how to appease her.

(Of course, I think the wife in this story knew EXACTLY what the woman’s yurei wanted, and was just hiding it from her husband. The yurei is clearly only interested in Iyo’s unnamed wife, but her attentions seem like more of a sorrowful companion than a vengeful mistress. That makes me think Iyo’s wife was the one with the secret lover.)

Further Reading:

For more yurei tales of lost love and obligation, check out:

The Ghost of Oyuki

The Gratitude-Expressing Yurei

The Chrysanthemum Vow

The Black Hair

The Yurei Child

The Smoking Husband

Translated and Sourced from Mizuki Shigeru’s Mujyara, Ehon Hyaku Monogatari, Japanese Wikipedia, and Other Sources

It is said that people who die with some lingering issue—those who didn’t properly close up their lives before dying—go into the afterlife with an overwhelming thirst. They want water. They beg and cry for water. But no one can see or hear them.

This story comes from an acquaintance who I will call A-san. She lives in Musashino city, Tokyo, and one night she met these yuigon yurei. When she was in middle school, one of her classmates suddenly showed up at her house one night. She appeared at the door and mumbled the words “Water please …. Water please … “ A-san ran to the kitchen to get a glass of water, but by the time she returned her classmate was gone. A-san thought it was weird that the girl was so thirsty but she couldn’t even wait the few minutes it took to retrieve the water.

She found out later her classmate had committed suicide that very night.

Later, when A-san told this story to her classmate’s mother, she was overwhelmed by A-san’s kindness in offering her dead daughter a final drink of water, and the two of them went together to place the glass before her child’s grave.

Translator’s Note:

This story is a first-person account from Mizuki Shigeru, telling the story he had heard from a friend about a late-night visit from a yuigon yurei. The term yuigon yurei (遺言幽霊) translates somewhat literally into “last-request ghost,” and refers to yurei making some sort of plea from the living. Usually this is for a drink of water, but it can be for other things—a prayer service, for example. The water-requesting version is also sometimes referred to as a Mizukoi Yurei (水乞幽霊; Thirsty Ghost).

This illustrates how yurei have needs even after death. It is a common custom in Japan to place offerings of food and drink before graves. Usually these are just comfort foods—a can of favorite beer, a pack of cigarettes, a pack of chips. On more formal occasions like the Obon Festival of the Dead they will get a bowl of rice and ritual sake.

The story comes for Yuigon Yurei comes from Mizuki Shigeru, but he modeled his picture after Takehara Shusen’s Yuigon Yurei picture from his Ehon Hyaku Monogatari (絵本百物語 ; Picture Book of a Hundred Stories).

Takehara wote:

“Those who die without making their final testament, or with some unfinished business or desire, will find themselves thirsty in the afterlife. They will cry bitterly for a drink of water.”

Further Reading:

For more yurei stories, check out:

The Ghost of Oyuki

Shoraida – The Rice Paddy Ghosts

Gatagata Bashi – The Rattling Bridge

The Speaking Skull

Aizuwakamatsu no Yurei – The Yurei of Aizuwakamatsu

Translated and Sourced from Mizuki Shigeru’s Mujyara and Other Sources

This story takes place during the Kyoho era (1716-1736). A samurai named Hotsumi Kanji,a minor prefect in Kitakuni province, was making his prescribed annual trip to the capital at Edo one year when he stopped at an inn along the way.

From his room, he heard the most beautiful singing voice he had ever heard in his life. It was coming from one of the rooms of the inn, and belonged to a goze, one of the blind women who traveled the country making their living performing on the shamisen.

Thinking that a voice so beautiful must be attached to an equally beautiful body, Hotsumi resolved to have the woman. Discovering which room was hers, he hid in the dark, waiting for her to return. When the goze returned, Hotsumi sprang from his hiding place and ravished her, an act which the woman was not opposed to in the least.

The next morning, Hotsumi was shocked to discover that the woman with the beautiful voice was unspeakably ugly. Her hideous faced beamed at him with a look of pure joy, thinking that she had at last found love. But nothing could be further from the truth—Hotsumi quickly concocted a plan, and took the woman with him on his way to Edo. On a convenient mountain road, he pushed the ugly blind woman into a ravine, killing her. Thinking he had solved the problem quite nicely, Hotsumi continued on his business.

The following year, Hotsumi had completely forgotten about the incident. Again, the time came for his trip to Edo, and this time he stopped at a small mountain temple to spend the night. That night, the yurei of the goze appeared before him. She said to him:

“Have you already forgotten last Autumn? You played with me, and then tossed me away when you were finished. I have no eyes, but I see you now!”

She grabbed Hotsumi by his ankles and tore him from his bed. He struggled to break away from her, but his strength was nothing compared to her rage-fueled power. Hotsumi saw himself being dragged to the temple’s graveyard. The goze stopped before a certain grave, smiled slightly, then embraced Hotsumi and drove him into the earth with one strong pull.

The monks of the temple heard the commotion and ran to see what the matter was. They followed the trail to the graveyard, and after retrieving shovels they dug quickly into the earth. They soon found Hotsumi’s body, with the skeleton of a woman wrapped around it. By fate or bad luck Hotsumi had chosen the temple where the goze’s body was buried after it had been discovered down in the ravine. And she had come to claim him.

Translator’s Note:

At last, a blood-thirsty tale of ghostly revenge for Halloween! This is one of those stories that pops up in several Edo-period kaidan collections, in a few variations. I created a kind of mix of the different versions, taking the pieces I like and assembling them together into a single story. For example, Mizuki Shigeru’s version in the Mujyara doesn’t have Hotsumi being drug into the grave, but just disappearing from the hotel. But I really like the grave bits so I left that in.

The title of the story is 瞽女の幽霊 (Goze no Yurei). “瞽女” (Goze)  is one of those weirdly specific Edo period words that refers to a blind woman who played the shamisen and worked as an itinerant entertainer. If you were a blind woman in the Edo period, there were only a few jobs available to you, and goze was one of them. Either that or masseuse/assassin, or so the movies tell me.

Mizuki Shigeru’s art uses Utagawa Hideyoshi’s 瞽女の幽霊 (Goze no Yurei) as an inspiration. I don’t know if Hideyoshi was painting exactly this story, or just a painting of the “stock character” of a goze’s ghost. Mizuki Shigeru certainly elaborated on the scenery when creating his version—Hideyoshi’s is on a simple background, with the yurei walking in water.

In Japanese folklore, water has always been a pathway to the world of the dead. During the Obon Festival of the Dead yurei zoom across Japan’s rivers like a super expressway, coming home to meet their families then being sent back with lanterns floating out to sea. So Hideyoshi’s picture is more metaphysical than representational. The water is the world of the dead, not an actual river being crossed by the yurei.

Further Reading:

For more Japanese ghost stories, check out:

The Ghost of Oyuki

The Yurei Child

The Speaking Futon

The Yurei of the Melancholy Boy

The Two Measuring Boxes

Translated and Sourced from Mizuki Shigeru’s Mujyara and Other Sources

Late at night, when you have to get up to go to the bathroom, a mysterious hand beckons you from a wall. That’s strange enough, but when you go into the room the hand was inviting you to, no one is there. Most likely, you have encountered the yurei of someone who died in that room long ago—they want something, but have only the strength to manifest a single hand to plead with you.

These kinds of stories are typical in Japan, especially in yurei in houses. Generally, they want nothing more than for someone to acknowledge their presence, and read a sutra in their honor at the local temple. Manekute no Yurei tend to gather around houses near temples, or the particularly pious, those who they feel will be able to perform the desired ceremony.They are spooky, but amongst the least dangerous of the types of yurei.

Here is a typical story from the Edo period:

An abbot was making a trip to Akiyama village, when he heard the sounds of footsteps behind him. The abbot was particularly sensitive to ghostly matters, and knew at once what it was. “Ah, that is a poor, lost soul who died in the terrible drought in this village awhile back. So sad to think it is still hanging on long past its time.”

When he arrived at the village, the abbot prepared a copy of a Buddhist sutra. This done, he returned to where he had heard the footsteps and waited for dark. Sure enough, a milk-white hand thrust out to him from the darkness. The abbot laid the sutra in the disembodied hand and began to chant the memorial service for the dead. The unknown yurei disappeared and was never heard from again.

Translator’s Note:

Another yurei story for Halloween, this one short and sweet compared to the last tale of bloody revenge. The Manekunote Yurei (招く手の幽霊; meaning招く手 (manekute; inviting hand) +幽霊 (yurei) is one of those ghosts where there was probably a story or two about it, and Mizuki Shigeru made up a name the phenomenon to include in his yokai encyclopedia. I haven’t found any other reference to the Manekunote Yurei, except for those that specifically site Mizuki as a source. However, like many of his stories the Manekunote Yurei has escaped Mizuki’s pages and into the popular imagination.

Pictures of a Manekute no Yurei on a TV show from this site.

But naming aside, this is another story that illustrates one of the fundamental principles of yurei, Japanese ghosts—they want something. Western ghosts can linger in a place like psychic residue, or play over and over again like a strip of looped film. But not Japanese ghosts. They are bound to this world by a specific desire, and when that desire is satisfied they move on. One of the most basic desires—and the most common—is the desire for more ritual. Yurei need to be properly feted before they can peacefully move on to the afterlife.

The unusual element of this story is the disembodied hand. It is atypical for yurei to manifest only a hand, and the will of the dead person must be weak indeed if that is the best that they can do.

Further Reading:

For more tales of random body parts, check out:

Tanuki no Kintama – Tanuki’s Giant Balls

Kyōkotsu – The Crazy Bones Yōkai

The Speaking Skull

The One-Armed Kappa

The Severed Heads Hanging in the Fowling Net

Japan is one of the most haunted places on Earth. In Japanese folk belief, Japan as an island is infused with supernatural powers–The very soil of the land is charged with potential, magical energy. Human beings share in this energy. Inside each human being is a reikon, a being of profound power that is unleashed on death. The Japanese fear ghosts–called yurei in Japanese–but they also honor them. And for as far back as the written word goes in Japan, they tell stories about them.

The Golden Age of yurei was the Edo period (1603-1868), an unprecedented time of peace and prosperity. People swapped ghost stories in a story-telling game called Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai that was the passion of the nation. Players sat in a circle and told stories in succession as one hundred candles were extinguished one by one. The light slowly dimmed to the rhythm of the game. In search of more stories, the Japanese people peered into every dark corner, dug up every suspicious stone half-buried in an abandoned temple, and pestered every grandparent for some snatch of an old tale half-remembered.

And the stories are good. Dead lovers returned from the grave. Parades of dead souls on the trail to hell. Ghostly hands with no purpose at all.  Below are ten of my favorite Japanese ghost stories.

Click the title of each to be taken to the full story.

10. The Ghost of Oyuki

In 1750, Edo-period Japan, Maruyama Ōkyo opened his eyes from a fitful sleep and beheld a dead woman.  She was young. Beautiful.  And pale. This is the true story of Japan’s most famous ghost painting, of the brilliant artist who painted it, and answers the question “Why do Japanese ghosts look the way they do?”

9. The Yurei of Aizuwakamatsu

A married couple is disturbed by a ghostly woman at night. Both the husband and wife claim they have no idea who the ghostly woman is, but is one of them lying? Is the woman the husband’s dead lover–or the wife’s?

8. The Black Hair

One of Japan’s most famous ghost stories, famed in the film Kwaidan and in the books of Lafcadio Hearn. But the story is older than each of these. Much older. Here is the original.

7. The Strong Japanese Ghost

One of the most offbeat stories in this list. A village woman is known for her unnatural strength, and … other attributes. After she dies, a yurei with the same unnatural strength appears to terrorize the village in which she lived.

6. The Speaking Skull

A story with Buddhist leanings, a man finds a skull on the side of the road. And the skull is feeling quite chatty, and not above asking a few favors.

5. The Rattling Bridge

It’s hard to sleep when your house is on the path of the road to hell. A man and his family see a nightly parade of ghosts making their final journey.

4. The Hunger Gods

Hunger is a terrible way to die, and all these ghosts want to do is share their pain. Is that too much to ask?

3. The Inviting Ghost Hand

A mysterious hand beckons from a dark wall. This entry explores some of the differences between Western and Japanese ghosts.

2. The Yurei of the Blind Female Musician

A ghostly tale of bloody revenge. One of the few true horror stories on the list.

1. The Vengeful Ghosts of the Heike Clan

Another of Japan’s most famous ghost stories, famed in Noh and Kabuki theater and performed over and over every year. At the end of Japan’s greatest civil war, the Heike clan lies scattered and defeated. But the ghosts of Japan never take defeat lying down.

Translator’s Note:

Apologies to my regular readers, as this is clearly existing material repacked in a list form. It’s a bit of an experiment, to try and make a posting that is a little more “search engine friendly.” And its a list, which are always popular!

I was told that picking the name “Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai” for my site wasn’t the best idea, as it is hard to say and hard to remember for non-Japanese speakers. I still think it is a cool name, but it does make it hard for people to find the site unless you already know what you are looking for.  So here’s hoping this brings in some readers who might want to read some cool Japanese ghost stories, but don’t know the language.

Translated and Sourced from Mizuki Shigeru’s Mujyara, Taihei Hyakumonogatari, Japanese Wikipedia, and Other Sources

This is a tale of the Edo period, from Tajima province (modern day Hyogo prefecture).

A down-on-his luck ronin named Kido Gyobu wandered into Tajima one day. He had heard rumors that there was an obakeyashiki—a haunted house—in town that had lay abandoned and unoccupied for years. Kido was very proud of his courage, and vowed to stay at the house as a Test of Courage.

From outside the house was dilapidated and the garden was overgrown, but it was livable. Kido took his small belongings, which were just his traveling clothes, bedding, and the two swords that it was his right to wear, and went into the house where he would live. He wandered through, kicking up dust and disturbing cobwebs. The tatami-mat floors were old and bug-ridden. The paper in the windows torn and yellow. The cooking utensils rusting. But he found nothing to evoke the terror that was the reputation of the house. Kido put it down to rural superstition, and made a bed for himself in the main room. He spent his day without incident—cooked his food. Took his bath. Drank his sake and smoked his pipe. All which lead him to think that there was nothing to fear.

That night, when Kido had put out the candle and climbed into his futon, the house suddenly lurched and began to shake violently. All of Kido’s belongings were scattered about the room, and the entire house shook like it was in the grips of some monster. Kido assumed it must be a massive earthquake, but when he steadied himself enough to look out the window, he saw the rest of the village was as calm as a pool of still water. It was only inside the house that the world was being shaken to pieces.

With the coming of dawn, the house settled down and the shaking ended. Kido was not to be beaten so easily, and resolved to continue his stay in the house. The second night was identical to the first. The day passed without incident, but at night the house came to live and rattled Kido around like dice in a gambling cup.

Kido had enough of the house, and went to ask advice from a distant relation, a monk named Chisen, who lived in a temple in a nearby village. Chisen listened calmly to his story, and thought for a short while, and told Kido he would accompany him back to the house and stay the night with him.

The third night was a repeat of the first and second—a boring day and a lively night. With the house doing its best to dislodge Kido and Chisen or at least to smash them into something, Chisen sat calmly in the center of the main room as if meditating. He stared intently at the floor for hours as if searching for something, oblivious to the chaos around him. Suddenly, in one swift move Chisen drew Kido’s short sword—which he had tucked into his obi sash—and plunged it into a particular spot in the tatami-mat floor.

The instant Chisen plunged the stabbed into the floor, the house stopped shaking. Blood welled up from the spot Chinsen had stabbed, staining the tatami mats. But that was all. The house was silent. Leaving the sword standing upright in the floor, the exhausted Kido and Chisen settled down for some much needed sleep.

The next morning, they pulled out the knife and lifted up the tatami mat to see what Chisen had wounded. The found an odd memorial plague, reading “Eye-stabbing Sword Bear Memorial Tablet” (刃熊青眼霊位 ). Chisen’s had stabbed the sword directly into the kanji for “eye,” and that was where the blood was welling up from.

Leaving the house, the revealed this to the villagers who told them of an odd legend. Years ago, the man who lived in that house had killed a bear who wandered in from the forest one night. Fearing the wrath of the bear’s spirit, he had a memorial tablet created and a proper funeral given for the bear. But it was apparently in vain, for the bear’s spirit possessed the man and killed him, and had haunted the house ever since. Many strange things were seen in the house every night, and none had dared to stay there until Kido and Chisen.

Translator’s Note:

A definite twist to this Halloween yurei story, eh? I bet you didn’t see that ending coming! I certainly didn’t expect that when I started translating it.

This story originally comes from the Taihei Hyakumonogatari (太平百物語; 100 Stories of Peace and Tranquility). The Taihei Hyakumonogatari uses the title Tajimekuni no Yanari no Densho (但馬国の家鳴の伝承; Legend of the Crying House of Tajime), which Mizuki Shigeru changes to Tajime no Sorei (但馬の騒霊; The Poltergeist of Tajime).

Yanari is a term for a particular type of haunted house that shakes and groans without any visible cause. The kanji translates to家(house) + 鳴(cry), and Harry Potter fans would recognize the Shrieking Shack as a classic Yanari. There are Yanari legends from almost everywhere in Japan. They were popular during the Edo period, with newspapers reporting on local Yanari and particularly popular ones becoming flash tourist attractions as the curious tried desperately to glimpse actual supernatural phenomenon.

Most Edo period portrayals of Yanari show small oni and other yokai on the outside shaking the house. However, these yokai are completely invisible and only their effects can be seen.

Mizuki uses the term sorei, which uses the kanji 騒 (disruptive) +霊 (spirit). This is a rarely used term for poltergeist-style ghosts that rattle the doors and shake walls just like Western poltergeists. Thanks to the movie series, the term sorei has almost disappeared and most people just use the term “poltergeist” (ポルターガイスト) in modern Japanese.

And yes, to the unanswered question–the story ends there. It never goes on to say if Kido and Chisen were successful in banishing the spirit, or if stabbing the memorial tablet did the trick.  That part of the story is the most bizarre, as it runs counter to all other Japanese ghost stories.  Most ghosts WANT memorials and funerals and to be worshiped. This is the only one I know of where destroying the tablet ends the haunting.

All I can think of is this–that the bear spirit was not Buddhist, and resented the Buddhist memorial tablet and funeral. This makes sense in a way if you think of animal spirits as being more of the Shinto tradition than the Buddhist.  And after all, the haunting and hubbub didn’t happen until AFTER the funeral, soooo ….

Further Reading:

For more Japanese ghost and spirit animal stories, check out:

Onikuma – Demon Bear

Kimodameshi – The Test of Courage

The Cursed Mansion of Yoshioka Gondayu

The Long-tongued Old Woman

Yokai of the House

Translated and Sourced from Mizuki Shigeru’s Mujyara, Legends of Tenri, and Other Sources

This peculiar story comes from Tenri city, in Nara prefecture. In the span separating Kabata ward from Inaba ward, there is a stone bridge nicknamed the Konnyaku Bridge. This is why.

Long ago, a rice dealer named Magobei was making his way across the city at night when he went to cross the stone bridge. Before he could cross, a female yurei appeared on the center of the bridge, with a large piece of konnyaku hanging from her mouth. Terrified, Magobei dropped to his knees and began chanting the name of the Amida Buddha over and over again. When he reached the 99th repetition of the Buddha’s name, the bizarre konnyaku yurei disappeared. With the way cleared, Magobei ran home as fast as his legs could carry him.

He later heard that there had been a married couple in town who had quarreled over a piece of konnyaku, and that somehow lead to the wife’s death. The details were unclear, nor did anyone know exactly what the woman wanted. It is said that she appeared from time to time on that bridge, always with the same chunk of konnyaku dangling from her mouth. And that stone bridge has been known as the Konnyaku Bridge ever since.

Translator’s Note:

Another short and sweet yurei tale for Halloween! This one is a local legend that Mizuki Shigeru collected, from the town of Tenri in Nara prefecture. I lived in Nara for several years, but unfortunately didn’t know this story at the time. I would have gone in search of the Konnyaku Bridge!

There are actually several Konnyaku Bridges across Japan. Some have legends attached to them, like the Konnyaku Ghost of Tenri, but most likely these legends came long after the name. Traditionally, Konnyaku Bridges were low water wooden crossing bridges that tended to wobble and shake like the eponymous konnyaku. The sturdy stone bridge in Tenri being called a “Konnyaku Bridge” is odd enough for someone to create a ghost story about.

They are fairly unsafe, and most of these have been replaced by modern bridges although they retain their names. Like many vanished parts of Japan, those wobbly Konnyaku Bridges are nostalgic enough for a sappy pop song to be written about them.

Here’s a picture of a Konnyaku Bridge in Hyogo, from this blog

If you aren’t familiar with it, konnyaku is a unique Japanese food that is almost impossible to describe. The dictionary calls it “solidified jelly made from the rhizome of Devil’s Tongue.” It usually comes in a squishy block of …. yeah, OK. “Solidified jelly” is about the best term there is. So a block of “solidified jelly” that is sliced and added to salads, or boiled and added to soups like nabe and oden, or put on a stick and grilled. I made konnyaku once, and it is a process as bizarre as the food sounds. It makes you wonder who on Earth saw the nasty, starchy root called Devil’s Tongue and figured that it you pounded it and boiled it enough you could render it into something edible.

Needless to say, konnyaku is an acquired taste. I like it myself, mainly grilled and slathered with hot karashi mustard, but I know far more people that loathe it than love it. At least amongst the non-Japanese. In Japan it is just standard fare.

Oh …. And although it doesn’t relate to this story, konnyaku is known to be a killer. Because of its solidified jelly status it can literally be hard to swallow. Konnyaku has been known to get stuck in the throats and suffocate those whose throat muscles aren’t strong enough to move it down—mainly small children and the elderly. With the konnyaku hanging out of this yurei’s mouth, it makes you wonder if her husband didn’t kill her by shoving a piece down her throat. Not a pleasant way to die.

There is another story from Wakayama prefecture called the Konnyaku Yurei, but instead of the ghost of a woman it is about an old piece of konnyaku that somehow became a yokai. A story for another time.

Further Reading:

Bridges are a popular haunting spot for Japanese ghosts and monsters. Check out:

Gatagata Bashi – The Rattling Bridge

Hashihime – The Bridge Princess

The Tale of the Hashihime of Uji

The Kappa of Mikawa-cho