A Gathering of Spirits: Japan's Ghost Story Tradition: From Folklore and Kabuki to Anime and Manga (12 page)

With so much attention being paid to Hachiko, it’s no wonder that there are no ghost stories about this loyal dog. Spirits can get disgruntled when they are neglected, or when the proper rites have been slighted. Hachiko will never have anything to worry about in that regard. (Elsewhere in this collection, we hear repeatedly from ghosts who have been neglected.)

Back in Shibuya, Hachiko’s statue sits in a noble pose, forever waiting for his master. And, appropriately, his statue, the best-known landmark and meeting place in Shibuya, is where hundreds of people every day sit and wait for their friends.
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Enough of Man’s Best Friends; ghostly cats are completely different.

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While dogs are part of the cycle of twelve animals in Chinese astrology and Buddhist lore, cats appear irregularly. They are in the Vietnamese version of the Chinese zodiac, replacing the Hare.
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The Cat and the Hare share many of the same capricious, mysterious qualities, and it’s no wonder that there are legends of demonic and ghostly doings surrounding Japanese cats.

 34. The Vampire Cat of Nabeshima

This is actually a relatively recent story, dating from the Sengoku era (1568-1615).

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A long time ago, the Prince of Hizen had in his house a lady of rare beauty, called Otoyo. Among all his ladies she was the favorite, and none could rival her charms and accomplishments. One day the Prince went out into the garden with Otoyo, and remained until sunset, when they returned to the palace, never noticing that they were being followed by a large cat. Otoyo retired to her own room and went to bed. At midnight she awoke with a start, and became aware of the huge cat watching her; when she cried out, the beast sprang on her, tearing out her throat. Then the cat, having scratched out a grave under the veranda, buried the corpse of Otoyo, and assumed her form.

The Prince knew nothing of all this, and never imagined that a monster had slain his mistress and assumed her shape. As time went on, the Prince’s strength dwindled away; his face became pale; he looked like a man suffering from a deadly sickness. Seeing this, his wife and his councilors became alarmed; they summoned physicians who prescribed various remedies for him, but these only seemed to make him worse. He suffered most of all in the night-time, when his sleep would be troubled by hideous dreams. His councilors appointed a hundred guards to watch over him; but, towards ten o’clock at night, the guards were seized with sudden drowsiness, and one by one every man fell asleep. Then the cat came in and attacked the Prince, feasting on his blood until morning. Every night the same thing occurred, with no one the wiser.

At last three of the Prince’s councilors determined to see whether they could overcome this drowsiness; but by ten o’clock they too were fast asleep. The next day their chief, Isahaya Buzen, said, “Surely the spell upon my lord and his guard must be witchcraft. Let us seek out the chief priest of the temple and beseech him to pray for the recovery of my lord.” They went to the priest Ruiten of Miyo-in and hired him to recite sutras so that the Prince might be restored to health.

One night at midnight, when he had finished his religious duties and was preparing to sleep, he heard a noise outside in the garden, as if someone were washing himself at the well. He looked down from the window; and there in the moonlight he saw a handsome young soldier; he washed and then stood before the figure of Buddha and prayed for the recovery of the Prince. Ruiten looked on with admiration; and the young man, when he had finished his prayer, was going away; but the priest stopped him.

“I am Ruiten, the chief priest of this temple, praying for the recovery of my lord. What is your name?”

“Ito Soda, and I serve in the infantry of Nabeshima. Since my lord has been sick, my one desire has been to assist in nursing him; but, being only a soldier, I am not of sufficient rank to come into his presence.”

When Ruiten heard this, he shed tears in admiration of the fidelity of Ito Soda, and said, “Every night the retainers who sit up with him are all seized with a mysterious sleep, so that not one can keep awake.”

“Yes,” replied Soda, after a moment’s reflection, “this must be witchcraft. If I could sit up one night with the Prince, I would see whether I could resist this drowsiness and detect the demon.”

The priest said, “I will speak with the chief councilor of the Prince of you and your loyalty, and will intercede with him.”

“I am most thankful. I am not prompted by thought of self-advancement; all I wish is the recovery of my lord.”

The following evening Ito Soda accompanied Ruiten to the house of Isahaya Buzen; the priest went in to converse with the councilor.

“I think that I have found a man who will reveal the monster; and I have brought him with me. He is one of my lord’s foot-soldiers, named Ito Soda, and I hope that you will grant his request to sit up with my lord.”

“Certainly, it is wonderful to find such loyalty in a common soldier,” replied Isahaya Buzen, after a moment’s reflection; “still, it is impossible to allow a man of such low rank to watch over my lord.”

“Then why not raise his rank and then let him guard?”

“Let me see this Ito Soda: if he pleases me, I will consult with the other councilors, and perhaps we may grant his request.”

The next day the councilors sent for Ito Soda, and told him that he might keep watch with the other retainers that night. So he took his place among the hundred gentlemen who were on duty in the prince’s room.

Now the Prince slept in the center of the room, and the hundred guards sat surrounding him keeping themselves awake. But, as ten o’clock approached, they began to doze off as they sat; and despite trying to keep one another awake, they all fell asleep. Ito Soda took a small knife which he carried and stuck it into his own thigh. For awhile the pain of the wound kept him awake; but little by little he became drowsy again. Then he twisted the knife round and round in his thigh, so that the pain became extreme.

As Ito Soda watched, suddenly the sliding-doors of the Prince’s room opened, and he saw a figure coming in stealthily; the form was that of a beautiful woman. Cautiously she looked around her; and when she saw that all the guard were asleep, she smiled an ominous smile, and went up to the Prince’s bedside, when she realized that in one corner of the room a man was still awake. This seemed to startle her, but she went up to Soda and said, “I am not used to seeing you here. Who are you?”

“My name is Ito Soda, and this is the first night I have been on guard.”

“How is it that you alone are awake?”

“There is nothing to boast about.”

“What is that wound on your knee? It is red with blood.”

“I felt very sleepy; so I stuck my knife into my thigh, and the pain of it has kept me awake.”

“What loyalty!” said the lady.

“Is it not the duty of a retainer to lay down his life for his master? Is a scratch such as this worth thinking about?”

Then the lady went up to the sleeping prince and said, “How fares my lord tonight?” The Prince, worn out with sickness, made no reply, but Soda was watching her eagerly, and made up his mind that if she attempted to harm the Prince he would kill her on the spot. But whenever she drew near to the sick man, she would turn and look behind her, and there she saw Ito Soda glaring at her; so she had to go away again, and leave the Prince undisturbed.

At last day broke and, when the other officers awoke and opened their eyes, and saw that Ito Soda had kept awake by stabbing himself in the thigh, they were greatly ashamed.

That morning Ito Soda told Isahaya Buzen all that had occurred. The councilors all ordered him to keep watch again that night. At the same hour, the false Otoyo came and looked all round the room, and all the guard were asleep, excepting Ito Soda, who was wide awake; and so, being again frustrated, she returned to her own apartments.

Now, since Soda had been on guard, the Prince’s sickness began to get better, and there was great joy in the palace. In the meanwhile Otoyo, seeing that her nightly visits bore no fruits, kept away; and from that time the night-guard were no longer subject to fits of drowsiness. This coincidence struck Soda as very strange, so he went to Isahaya Buzen and told him that Otoyo was a demon. Isahaya Buzen reflected for a while, and said, “Well, then, how shall we kill the thing?”

“I will go to the creature’s room, as if nothing were the matter, and try to kill her; but in case she should try to escape, order eight men to lie in wait for her outside.”

Having agreed upon this plan, Soda went at nightfall to Otoyo’s apartment, pretending to have been sent with a message from the Prince. When she saw him arrive, she said, “What message have you brought me from my lord?”

“Oh, nothing in particular. Be so good as to look at this letter.” And as he spoke, he drew near to her, and suddenly drawing his dagger cut at her; but the demon, springing back, seized a halberd, and tried to strike Soda. Soda fought desperately; and the demon, seeing that she was no match for him, threw away the halberd, and from a beautiful woman became suddenly transformed into a cat, which, springing up the sides of the room, jumped onto the roof. Isahaya Buzen and his men who were watching outside shot at the cat but missed, and the beast escaped.

The cat fled to the mountains, causing havoc among the people, until at last the Prince ordered a hunt, and the beast was killed. The Prince recovered from his sickness; and Ito Soda was richly rewarded.

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A ghostly cat movie premiered in 1958 that, in some ways, shows a clear western influence, and in others shows the completely unique cinematic sense of its director, Nobuo Nakagawa. He lived from 1905 to 1984 and directed almost a hundred films in those eight decades. Many of these were horror films, with names that should by now be familiar, including a version of
Yotsuya
Kaidan
and of
Kasanegafuchi
. Nakagawa’s
Borei
Kaibyo
Yashiki
(Mansion
of
the
Black
Cat)
reflects, for good or ill, the dominant source of horror movies at that time: England’s Hammer Studios, with their costumed dramas, over-the-top acting by the likes of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, and tendency to push the edge of the envelope on what was then acceptable displays of sexuality.
Borei
Kaibyo
Yashiki
has elements of both old and new.

 35. A Cure Worse Than the Disease

Though Dr. Tetsuichiro Kuzumi runs a successful private practice in the city (presumably Osaka), he has decided to move to the more rural southern island of Kyushu in the hopes that his wife Yoriko’s tuberculosis might clear in the fresh air. With the help of Yoriko’s brother, they move into an old and somewhat dilapidated mansion (
yashiki
) large enough to accommodate both their residence and the new medical practice.

But from day one Yoriko gets very bad vibes from the old mansion and repeatedly sees a very old woman intent on strangling her. Despite her attempts to tell her husband of her experiences, he is all too eager to dismiss them as mere hallucinations brought about by her illness and the stress of moving. It’s not until the nurse also begins seeing the old woman and Yoriko is found lying unconscious that Tetsuichiro begins to open his mind to other possibilities.

Finally, after Yoriko’s brother admits that the mansion has a spooky reputation, he and Tetsuichiro visit the local monk who calmly divulges the entire demonic history of the house.
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This movie is basically a “frame” story. Dr. Kuzumi of Osaka is so concerned about the health of his wife Yoriko that they relocate to the island of Kyushu in the hope that she’ll get better. The reason why she doesn’t get better is the core of the movie.

Nakagawa employs a radically creative stylistic flow as the narrative moves from present to past to present again. The film makes clear that the central portion of the film is to be understood as a “jidaigeki” or historical piece, presumably from the Edo era. The prologue and epilogue take place in the present day and amount to narrative bookends to the lengthier and more substantial middle. Rather than cast the present in color and the past in older hues, Nakagawa saves his use of color solely for the jidaigeki where the crimson red of blood and the ghastly pale of monstrosities come through all the more powerfully, while the prologue and epilogue are filmed purely in black and white, as if to imply the present somehow lives under the shadow of the past; at the very least, modern life is far less interesting than the 17
^th
century when the house got its reputation. The result is quite striking and, as hinted at above, caught contemporary audiences thoroughly off guard due to its counter-intuitive approach.

The tale here falls squarely within the genre of tragic ghost story, and centers on classic Shinto animism wherein the departed souls of humans and animals indeed may merge in the afterlife, resulting in a formidable breed of monster. (A more recent example of this can be found in
Ju-On
where little Toshio has absorbed the spirit of his departed black cat.) Here Nakagawa depicts a ghostly triad comprised of one part cat, one part cursed human soul, and one part
onryou
or spirit intent purely on revenge.