A Gathering of Spirits: Japan's Ghost Story Tradition: From Folklore and Kabuki to Anime and Manga (30 page)

[
26
]http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ryunosuke_Akutagawa_suicide_note, accessed November 4, 2006.

[
27
] Note that the ghost-based manga and anime
Yuyu Hakusho
by Yoshihiro Togashi features Yusuke Urameshi, a delinquent student at Sarayashiki Junior High School. This is only the first allusion in that manga to classic Japanese ghost motifs and tales.

[
28
]http://www.artelino.com/articles/ghost_story_okiku.asp, accessed December 18, 2006. Yet another variant of the story has a friend of Aoyama exorcise the ghost of Okiku by hiding near the well; when the ghost counts to nine, he jumps up and shouts “ten!”

[
29
] Traditional ghosts sighted back in the Edo period that still appear in modern ghost walks include the Karakasa (a paper umbrella which hops about on its handle), the Rokurokubi (a person with a long rubbery neck), the Chochin (a ghost whose head is a paper lantern) and the Nopperabou (a person with a blank face—no features at all; we met this spirit on page one).

[
30
] Find out more about these spirits in the “Cats and Dogs” chapter.

[
31
] “Ido no naka” in Takahashi Rumiko, 1984,
Mezon Ikkoku
, vol. 6, Tokyo: Shogakukan, pp. 165-184.

[
32
] Yotsuya started as a farming village on the outskirts of Edo (now called Tokyo). As the city of Edo grew in the early 1600s, more people moved to Yotsuya, especially after 1658, when a disastrous fire swept through Edo and Yotsuya was one of the few neighborhoods that was spared. Now a part of the Shinjuku section of Tokyo, the name Yotsuya literally means “four valleys.”

[
33
] Macias, Patrick. “Mysterious and Spooky: Inside Japanese Horror Films.”
Shojo Beat
, Volume 2 #3, pp. 275-276.

[
34
] The name is short for
saragaku-no
theater.

[
35
] Pronounced shih-tay, unlike the Irish epithet which is spelled the same way and rhymes with “kite.”

[
36
]http://www.kyotojournal.org/10,000things/043.html, accessed January 7, 2010

[
37
] Nakata has also directed a live action movie based on the
Death Note
manga, titled
L: Change the World
.

[
38
] http://www.onmarkproductions.com/html/jizo1.shtml, accessed August 12, 2007.

[
39
] More about
Haunted Junction
in the chapter on school ghosts.

[
40
] http://www.ainurin.net/japan/nihonken/photos/photo_27.html, accessed July 26, 2007.

[
41
] As well as the 26 week TV series created in 1997.

[
42
] There is a negative side to this happy ending, reminiscent of the story of Jiro. Tom was supposed to move on once he saw his owner one last time. Tom, however, stays at the hospital, and begins to change…

[
43
] In the comic romance anime known in Japan as
Gals
and in the west as
Super G.A.L.s
, based on a manga by Mihona Fujii, the
kogals
(trendy young Japanese urbanite girls) who are the stars of the series are shown in the opening credits (and often in the series) not just in Shibuya Park, but at the statue of Chuken Hachiko. That statue also plays a brief role in Rumiko Takahashi’s
Mezon Ikkoku
. Mitaka, the handsome tennis coach, wants to woo the widow Kyoko, but he’s deathly afraid of dogs, including hers. Trying to conquer his fear begins with trying to touch the Hachiko statue.

[
44
] The usual translation of the Chinese zodiac animal is “rabbit,” and often the words “rabbit” and “hare” are used interchangeably in the west. However, they’re two different species, and, while rabbits are domesticated, hares are wild and famously unpredictable, as in the saying “as mad as a March hare.” In my opinion the notoriously independent cat fits the Hare more than the Rabbit.

[
45
] http://www.sarudama.com/japanese_movies/mansionghostcat.shtml, accessed February 17, 2010.

[
46
] The full title of the movie is
Yabu no Naka no Kuroneko (The Black Cat in the Grove)
. The reference to a grove reminds us of “In a Grove,” one of the short stories by Akutagawa that was the basis of
Rashomon
.

[
47
] There is no connection between this twelve-episode series and the 1997 movie written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki,
Mononoke-hime
(
Princess Mononoke
). The name Mononoke-hime (Princess of evil spirits) was a derogatory nickname that the people of Tatara-ba gave to San, the feral child in the movie who constantly disrupted their attempts to mine iron ore and turn it into firearms, polluting the sky, earth, water, and nature spirits in the process.

[
48
] Tyler, p. 38. Ban no Yoshio was a real courtier, who was exiled from court to Iyo province in the year 866, where he died two years later. Iyo province is the old name for Ehime Prefecture, along the coast of Shikoku, the smallest of Japan’s four main islands.

[
49
] The Somedono Empress lived from 829 to 900.

[
50
] Yamato Province is located on the Nara peninsula south of Tokyo; in the sixth century A. D. it had been the seat of Japanese government, and the name Yamato used to be synonymous with Japan itself.

[
51
] Royal, pp. 178-180.

[
52
] This is one of the reasons for the Shichi-Go-San (Seven-Five-Three) festival in November commemorating those birthdays for Japanese children. The tradition goes back to a time when infant mortality was a severe problem, and the holiday notes not only the child’s survival but its entry into humanity. http://www.japaneselifestyle.com.au/culture/shichi-go-san.html.

[
53
] The landlady’s name is Kikuno, but asks to be called Okiku, the name of one of Japan’s most famous ghosts. At one point, the students find Okiku using a whetstone to sharpen a very large knife—the same image which terrified Minoru when he heard the story of “The Three Ofuda” (see chapter 20).

[
54
] Oddly enough, although the manga refers to this story as taking place in Michinoku Prefecture, there is no such prefecture; Michinoku is an old name for Fukushima Prefecture.

[
55
] The name of the hapless hero of
xxxHolic
, Watanuki, literally means “the first day of the fourth month.” It’s also something of an in-joke for CLAMP. April 1 is the birthday of Sakura Kinomoto, the heroine of
Card Captor Sakura
, the birthday of both Sakura and her beloved Syaoran in
Tsubasa Chronicles
, and the supposed birthday of Sakurazuka Seishirou in an earlier CLAMP series,
Tokyo Babylon
. More important, CLAMP was officially formed on April 1, 1989.

[
56
] In Japanese society, receiving a gift gives one an obligation to reciprocate with a similar gift. The first commemoration of modern Valentine’s Day in Japan was as a sales gimmick created by a Japanese chocolatier in 1958, in which women were encouraged to give chocolate to their beloved. In 1965 a Japanese marshmallow company created White Day (formerly Marshmallow Day) one month later to balance the equation. These days, the White Day gift of choice is flowers rather than candy. See (http://web-jpn.org/kidsweb/calendar/february/valentine.html, and http://web-jpn.org/kidsweb/calendar/march/whiteday.html, accessed March 2, 2007.)

[
57
] The chubby rabbit-looking Mokona has appeared in a number of CLAMP projects, but was originally in the series
Magic Knights Rayearth
.

[
58
] “Heroes and Villains”, July 22, 2009, by Mike Montesa, in http://www.therumicworld.com/blog.php, accessed July 26, 2009.

[
59
] Literally the “lower city,” the term used to refer to a city’s slums or lower-class area.

[
60
] When this manga episode was animated for television, the writers provided three completely different stories for them to tell, perhaps thinking that knowing in advance what the characters will say would dull the chills.

[
61
] This compression of words is common in Japanese pop culture. A couple of other examples: the central character in the manga
Gokusen
, which ran from 2000 to 2007 and has inspired both animated and live television versions, is a Yakuza heiress turned boys’ high school teacher named Yamaguchi Kumiko; her students compress her name to Yankumi (an allusion to the slang term “yanki”, meaning delinquent; and, more rudely, “yank me”). And in Ai Yazawa’s highly popular manga
Nana
, which also premiered in 2000, there is a rock band called the Buraku Sutonzu (Black Stones), also known by the compressed name Burasuto (Blast).

[
62
]
Rashomon
has become so well-known in the west that Hollywood has made its “multiple versions of the same events” plot a staple in television writing; often for comic effect, but also in an episode of the TV series based on Alan Parker’s hit movie
Fame
(in the episode, a medium contacts a student who’s comatose rather than dead to investigate a case of school vandalism).

[
63
] A similar scene takes place in Isao Takahata’s 1991 anime feature for Studio Ghibli,
Omoide Poroporo
(
Remembering Drop by Drop
), usually referred to in the west as
Only Yesterday
. As part of a vacation with some rural cousins, a big-city Office Lady and her hosts stop harvesting benibana flowers when the clouds part to reveal the sun, and offer up a prayer to Amaterasu.