A Gathering of Spirits: Japan's Ghost Story Tradition: From Folklore and Kabuki to Anime and Manga (22 page)

 CHAPTER 23: GHOSTS AND SEX

Love and death are supposed to be mutually exclusive. “The grave’s a fine and private place,” according to poet Andrew Marvell, “but none, I think, do there embrace.”

Japan, however, has traditionally taken the most powerful passions into account. Ghosts who are driven by a single-minded pursuit sometimes find a way to get involved in amorous matters, one way or another, even after death. Traditional legends of people who commit all sorts of debauchery while possessed by a spirit are many and intriguing. Their modern anime and manga counterparts are the same.

One traditional tale was recounted by Lafcadio Hearn in his collection
In
Ghostly
Japan
. As will be seen, this isn’t a ghost story for children:

 70. “I have the twin cherry blossoms!”

The year, they say, was 1829 by the western calendar; it was spring, and the cherry trees were in bloom. The wife of a certain daimyo had been ill for three years, gradually getting worse and worse, until everyone knew that she was near the end of her days. She thought of many things: her husband, the children she had borne him. And she thought of her husband’s favorite concubine, Yukiko, age nineteen. She asked her husband to summon Yukiko, who quickly came and knelt down beside the couch where the daimyo’s wife was lying.

“Yukiko, I am going to die. I hope you will be faithful to our lord in all things, for I want you to take my place when I am gone.” Yukiko started to protest these words, but the wife cut her off. “This is not a time for ceremonial words; let us only speak truth to one another. Yukiko, there is one thing I want you to do for me. In the garden there is a yae-zakura
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, which was brought here last year from Mount Yoshino. I have never seen it in full bloom, and I must see it before I die. Carry me into the garden so that I may see it; take me upon your back.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

However, there were times that the hands would stir, moving of their own accord. And nightly, at the Hour of the Ox, the dead hands would squeeze painfully, torturing Yukiko. They would only stop at the Hour of the Tiger.
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Shortly thereafter, Yukiko became a Buddhist nun, shaving her head, and making daily offerings so that the jealous spirit of the hands could find rest. However, the tormenting hands were still attached to her the last time anybody spoke to her, which was seventeen years after the death of the daimyo’s wife. After that, nothing more was ever heard of her.

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

xxx

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

 71. O-tei Returns

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

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

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

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

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

“And you do not doubt at all?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Ghost
talker’s
daydream

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

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

But other questions arise as we watch her solve the supernatural dilemma of a schoolgirl named Ai who then becomes Misaki’s informal apprentice (since she, too, can see ghosts) while a male classmate of Ai’s constantly stalks Misaki to photograph her. Questions come up, like: what happened to Misaki’s parents that caused her to be raised by her old-fashioned grandparents? Did that have anything to do with her ability to converse with the dead? And what is Kinue, the rope she carries that seems to have a consciousness, and obeys Misaki’s commands like Wonder Woman’s lasso? The manga would be helpful here.

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

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

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

 72. They probably don’t even know

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

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