A Gathering of Spirits: Japan's Ghost Story Tradition: From Folklore and Kabuki to Anime and Manga (8 page)

 21. The Da Vinci Code

“Da Vinci” is the name given to a ghost, formerly an art teacher who had killed himself, haunting the art studio at the Miyanoshita family’s old elementary school. He had been imprisoned in a painting of the old school building by a talented student artist: Satsuki’s mother. Fortunately, she left a diary detailing all of the ghosts and spirits she’d subdued and how; unfortunately, the book is a little too full. Satsuki didn’t have a chance to read that, if anyone painted the same scene that Da Vinci had, the ghost might be free to strike again. When he strikes, he paints a picture of someone (usually a pretty girl) who’s never heard from again.

The next day, the entire school knows about Da Vinci: overnight, bloody red paint has dripped out of the studio window in the painting of the old school building. Something similar happens to the real old school; the principal goes in to investigate what he thinks is rain water, and the kids watch the principal—until they realize that a student named Momoko is missing. Da Vinci has apparently selected her to be his next model.

The notebook says that Da Vinci can be put to sleep by burning incense and chanting a spell; unfortunately, they have no incense and the spell is smudged. The kids get a little help from other ghosts in the school: the walking Ninomiya statue, the human-faced dog, and Toilet Hanako all bring bundles of incense. Da Vinci, meanwhile, is painting Momoko, telling her that, in a painting, her beauty will never decay. When the kids burst in, he takes Momoko into the older painting. Satsuki and her friend Hajime are the only ones who follow. But they find another student who apparently wandered into the painting; he gives Satsuki a gift, although they never met. They hear a noise, and find a radio broadcasting Japan’s World Series—the 1973 World Series. They realize that the two paintings of the old schoolhouse have linked present and past. They get the ultimate proof: they meet Kayako, Satsuki’s future mother, although just a fifth grader here. They head for the studio to rescue Momoko and re-enchant Da Vinci; he tries to escape by diving into the painting; however, back in the present, the painting had been tossed into the incinerator by the janitor. Da Vinci returns to the past in flames, where Satsuki and her mother are able to subdue him.

 22. Mirror and Bell

Suicide can sometimes function as a way of focusing one’s desires, with an effect that can outlast death. The effect may not be predictable, as noted in this story from Lafcadio Hearn’s
Kwaidan
, describing an incident which legend says happened about a thousand years ago.

At that time, in Mugenyama, the priests of the local temple wanted a new bronze bell. They did what Japanese priests had done for years and years: they asked the women of the congregation to donate any bronze ornaments or utensils, which could then be melted down for the new bell. One farmer’s wife donated a mirror made of bronze which contained on its back the Shou-Chiku-Bai, designs of pine, bamboo, and plumflower intended to bring good luck. The farmer’s wife later realized that it wasn’t her mirror alone, but had belonged to her mother and grandmother. She didn’t have the money to buy back the mirror from the temple, and she could never find an opportunity to steal the mirror back. Eventually it went to the metal foundry to be melted down for the temple bell.

But a strange thing happened. No matter how hot the furnace, there was one mirror that would never melt. Word spread about this mirror, which reflected its owner’s attachment to it more than her wish to donate it to the temple bell. The farmer’s wife was so ashamed by this public display of her selfishness that she drowned herself. First, however, she left a letter that contained, among other things, these words: “It will be easier when I am dead to melt down the mirror and cast the bell. However, whoever rings the bell so much that it breaks will receive great wealth from my ghost.”

Nobody could say how a ghost could come by such a large amount of money, or even if the statement were true. Still, once the farmer’s wife was dead, the mirror could easily be melted and cast as part of the temple bell. Since that part of the suicide note seemed to be true, people felt that the rest of the letter would be true as well. And so they set about ringing the bell with the intent of breaking it. The bell was well-cast and very strong, but this didn’t stop people from ringing the bell day after day, no matter what the priests asked of them. The whole exercise became so absurd that the priests finally decided to get rid of the bell themselves. One night, they cut the bell down and rolled it downhill into a swamp where it sank, never to ring again.

But this wasn’t the end of the story. Some people tried to ring a version of the bell, in hopes of collecting some of the fortune that had been promised in the suicide note. One time, a warrior named Kajiwara Kagesue of the Heike clan and his lady companion Umegae were on a pilgrimage; their money had run out, and they beat upon a bronzed wash basin until it broke, calling out for the bell’s fortune. A guest at the inn where they were staying was so impressed that he made the two a gift of three hundred gold pieces!

On the other hand, legend tells of a drunken farmer who heard of this couple’s good fortune and tried to get some for himself. He built a clay replica of the bell and hit it repeatedly, calling for money. As he did so, a white-robed woman with wild flying hair rose up out of the ground, handed the farmer a covered jar, and told him that she was answering his prayer “as it deserved to be answered.” Once the farmer held the jar, the woman disappeared. He rushed home to show his wife, and they both opened the jar.

It was full to the brim, but with what? Hearn decided that “I really cannot tell you with what it was filled.” Still, the farmer was drunk and dissolute, and probably deserved whatever was inside.

 23. The Temporary Suicide

One episode of Natsuki Takaya’s
Genei
Musou
(Phantom
Dream)
manga focuses on Souichi, a boy who, to hear him tell it, has had his parents on his back “since the moment I was born.” His father (an attorney) and mother (housewife) kept the pressure on him to succeed and do well for the sake of the family. Failure to live up to these standards got him branded an embarrassment, as did his fascination with butterflies. The insects seemed to have an affinity for him, flocking around Souichi and, by his account, singing to him. When he failed the entrance exam to a prestigious high school and had to settle for a lesser school, the pressure from his parents became so great that he took a box-cutter to his neck and committed suicide.

Then he came back to life.

Souichi was actually being kept alive by the negative energy of demonic spirits (
jashin
). He stood a strong chance of becoming purely an evil spirit (
jaki
) unless Tamaki, the student hero of the series and a medium in training, could perform an exorcism; however, this would kill Souichi. Tamaki even contemplated exorcising Souichi without his knowing it, but dismissed that idea as showing Souichi no respect at all. Meanwhile, Souichi’s mother comes on her own to Tamaki’s temple and, fearful of her son’s demonic power, begs for her son to be exorcised.

In the end, with his parents still unable to forgive Souichi for not being the son they wanted, unwilling to love him the way the butterflies did, Souichi confronts Tamaki, who has to exorcise his demons even if it means that Souichi dies again. Tamaki almost died himself, except that his girlfriend Asahi brought him the rosary that he had forgotten; Tamaki needed the rosary to protect himself during the exorcism. As Asahi put it, “I chose your life over Souichi’s, so we’ll just have to be unforgivable together.” Not every dilemma has a perfect, win-win solution.

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In Japanese pop culture, the word “suicide” is often followed by the word “pact;” what in the west is usually a lonely, solitary act is often shown in Japan as a partnership, if not a group activity. The word for such a pact in Japanese is shinjuu, but shinjuu has a very specific meaning that sets it apart from a simple suicide pact. It originally referred to the deaths of two lovers who were unable to marry, for one reason or another. The act thus served as a form of social protest, and became central to a number of works of romantic literature, including Japanese kabuki drama, bunraku puppet plays, and, as seen in the west, the novel
Sayonara
by James Michener. In the latter, an American serviceman and his Japanese lover face hostility and discrimination during the Korean War, and see shinjuu as their only way out. The anime film
Windaria
(also released in an edited version under the title
Once
Upon
a
Time
) features shinjuu as the way out for two lovers who find themselves the rulers of two warring kingdoms.

Another example is found in the anime series
Gunslinger
Girl
, based on a manga by Yu Aida. This series, that owes more than a bit of its plot to Mamoru Oshii’s ground-breaking
Ghost
in
the
Shell
, offers an Italian government agency that has taken young girls—all of them traumatized in one way or another—and rebuilt their bodies with cybernetic implants while reprogramming their minds to become dedicated assassins. However, as the audience had no doubt feared, adolescent girls can be a jumble of emotions. Usually their handlers, called fratelli (brothers), keep things in check. In one case, however, an assassin and her handler are found shot and killed with a single bullet each; this is especially a problem, and a potential security breach, since only a shot to the eye can kill the girls, and the agency was desperate to keep this fact from leaking.

As one of the girls explains later to the clueless grownups, this was neither terrorism nor a criminal act, but shinjuu. The assassin, Elsa, had developed feelings of love for her fratello Lauro, feelings which could not be returned. Frustrated by this situation, Elsa asked to meet with her fratello, then shot him and herself.

There are actually several kinds of shinjuu, including oyako (parent and child) shinjuu, in which the parent of a disabled child kills the child and then commits suicide, and ikka shinjuu, in which an entire family will be killed (this often happens because of poverty, and is part of an episode of Osamu Tezuka’s manga
Don
Dracula
; the only thing that stops the family is their chance encounter with a pair of jewel thieves). Oddly enough, the word shinjuu has nothing to do with death; its Chinese characters literally mean “center of the heart,” and refer to the sincerity of the person who commits suicide. The word originally meant any sincere expression of extreme emotion, such as a woman cutting off her hair or tearing out her fingernails and sending them to her beloved.
[23]

The Boy Love manga known in Japan as
Ghost!
, translated into English as
Eerie
Queerie
, features a shinjuu pact that goes awry. Two high school students, a boy named Hibiki Kanau and someone he refers to only as his sempai (upperclassmen), had decided to kill themselves fifteen years earlier because they could not be together. However, at the critical moment, the sempai decided, “There’s just too much for me to live for; I can’t just throw it all away.” He walked away from the pact, leaving Kanau to kill himself by himself.

In this case, the audience realizes that the problem is not suicide itself, but the fact that someone who pledged to kill himself backed out at the last minute. The subsequent ghostly appearance would be caused not by the original event that drove the person to suicide, but the sense of betrayal by another. This is a common theme when dealing with Japanese ghosts; we’ll encounter it with classic ghosts like Oiwa and Okiku, as well as in modern works like
Hikaru
no
Go
and the movie
Ringu
. Generally, the act of suicide itself, as a conscious act of the will, is held morally blameless.

 CHAPTER 9: CLASSIC JAPANESE GHOST LITERATURE

“The Shining Prince”

The world’s oldest novel (at least, the oldest surviving novel) was written between the years 1000 and 1008; an elaborate thousand-page romance written at a time when being a writer wasn’t a profession but a pastime for the educated leisure class; in this case, by a member of the Japanese Imperial Court. The novel is
The
Tale
of
Genji
(Genji
Monogatari)
, and its author is known to us as the Lady Murasaki Shikibu.

Shikibu (her real name is not known; possibly her given name was Takako) was born in C.E. 973 into the Fujiwara clan, one of the two major power families of Japan in the Heian era (see sidebar below). Her mother died when she was young; her father Tametoki was a provincial governor (or
shikibu-sho
) and a prominent scholar. Although the norm would have been for Shikibu to have lived with, and been taught by, her mother and her mother’s clan, Tametoki gave both his son and daughter the same education. Shikibu was an eager and adept student, even studying some of the Chinese literary classics of the period, although this was not considered proper education for a female.

She married a distant member of her clan and gave birth to a daughter in 999; when her husband died two years later, Shikibu was brought to the Heian Court in Kyoto, where she was dubbed Lady Murasaki. They had heard of her writing talents, and bringing her to court allowed her to draw on court life in creating her best-known work.

Lady Murasaki did not spend all of her life at court; around 1023 she had retired to a Buddhist nunnery, where she apparently died a few years later. She couldn’t have anticipated that her
roman
a
clef
about Heian court life would outlive the Chinese literary classics her father taught her as a child.

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The
Genji
Monogatari
draws on some of the events—real or fictitious—that Lady Murasaki witnessed at court, attributing them to Genji, a young noble known in the book as the Shining Prince. Although the second son of one of the Emperor’s lower-ranked concubines, and therefore unlikely to ever take the throne, his sheer physical beauty—the source of his nickname—causes him to be forgiven transgressions that would be held against lesser mortals. The book is a catalogue of the various lovers in his life, including his stepmother(!) and, later, the stepmother’s niece(!!); however, he never abandons any of these women, and provides for them later in life.

In addition to filmed, televised, and staged adaptations, 1987 saw a fairly faithful anime adaptation of the
Genji
Monogatari
. Directed by Gisaburo Sugii, who is best known in the west for his film
Night
on
the
Galactic
Railroad
, Sugii worked for the Toei animation studio in his youth. He was an animator on
Hakujaden
, Japan’s first animated feature (1958). Osamu Tezuka asked him to jump over to Mushi Pro, Tezuka’s own new studio; Sugii worked on the
Astro
Boy
TV series and the first anime feature to come to America,
Saiyu-ki
(one of a long line of anime inspired by the Chinese legend of the Monkey King, rechristened in this case for American audiences as
Alakazam
the
Great!
). Sugii’s other works include
Lupin
the
Third:
Legend
of
Twilight
Gemini,
Street
Fighter
II
and
Touch
, based on the very popular baseball manga of Mitsuru Adachi.

 24. Genji and Lady Rokujo

Although the
Genji
Monogatari
is hardly a ghost story as we understand it, Genji has an early and pivotal encounter with a spirit. Actually, his encounter is part of one of his first romances. Approaching the Lady Yugao, daughter of a captain of the guard, through an intermediary at first, the seventeen-year-old Genji finally goes to her in person. As he woos her, Lady Murasaki gives us a hint of what’s to come by describing Lady Yugao as “frightened, as if he were an apparition from an old story.” Still, she gives in to him, but, shortly after their affair begins, she suddenly dies.

The cause of death? The jealous spirit of another of Genji’s mistresses, Lady Rokujo. She’s so jealous, in fact, that her spirit leaves her body to bring about this death. She doesn’t stop at one death, either. Another victim, the Lady Aoi, had her encounter with Lady Rokujo’s spirit commemorated in a classic Noh play,
Aoi
no
Ue
(Lady
Aoi)
. In this case, Lady Rokujo’s carriage had to pull off the road to make way for the Lady Aoi, Genji’s latest amour and the mother-to-be of his child. When Lady Rokujo’s demonic spirit threatens Lady Aoi, a Buddhist monk is summoned. He battles the demon, using prayers against the staff of the demon, and ultimately drives her out. The play fiddles with the original by having Lady Aoi survive her encounter with the demon. Otherwise, it’s a straightforward cautionary Buddhist story, with Lady Rokujo lamenting the fleeting nature of happiness on earth (and, with a roving-eyed boyfriend like Genji, she’s easy to agree with), and using Buddhist prayers to save Lady Aoi’s life.

Life at the Heian court, where Lady Murasaki wrote the
Genji
Monogatari
, was also the atmosphere in which Imperial Go Master Fujiwara no Sai was unfairly dismissed from his position. Driven by despair to commit suicide, that act only began his story. But for now, we’re still in the library, noting some of Japan’s best-known ghost writers.

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The beginning of the Edo period (1603) saw the last of the wars which established Japan as its present-day nation. During the next two centuries of isolation from the rest of the world, other customs and arts began to appear, including the documentation of ghost stories. In the 1780s the scholar and artist Toriyama Sekien began an exhaustive study of ghosts and ghouls in which he attempted to offer the reader a full list of all known types. The project was slightly absurd, of course, since ghosts cannot be counted up in that way, and by their very nature,
obake
resist normal categorization. The first volume appeared in 1781 under the title of
The
Hundred
Demons’
Night
Parade
. Toriyama produced
The
Illustrated
Bag
of
One
Hundred
Random
Ghosts
(
Gazu
Hyakki
Tsurezure-bukuro
) three years later, and completed two further volumes in the years that followed, ultimately compiling what remains the most definitive list of spectral types. Each volume of the set was fully illustrated with monochrome pictures, with one entire page devoted to the likeness and description of each particular spook. Toriyama’s books were wildly popular in their day, and went through numerous impressions. Most modern collections of Japanese rare books have at least a few copies.
[24]

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Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839-1892) lived in the Meiji era, that transitional time when the west forced itself back into Japan, and Japan’s monarchy decided that, while it had isolated the nation from the outside world for two and a half centuries, too many new technological, medical, and political advances had been made by the rest of the world. A lot of folk traditions might have been tossed aside as part of the rush to westernize; people like Yoshitoshi, however, preserved the past by keeping it alive into the present.

Yoshitoshi’s father was a samurai turned merchant. At age 11 he was enrolled in the art school of the master Kuniyoshi, where he was given the name we know now. After the death of Kuniyoshi in 1861, Yoshitoshi’s art ranged from prominent kabuki actors of the day to historical subjects using the woodblock prints known as ukiyo-e. His fortunes declined for several years, then revived in the 1870s, when his drawings of the 1877 Satsuma Rebellion and portraits of prominent generals made him one of Japan’s most popular artists. He married and started his own school, although he was inclined to be moody. He gradually shifted to drawing for the new medium of newspapers, thus making him the last great master of the woodblock medium.

Among his series of works are “One Hundred Ghosts Stories of China and Japan,” done at the beginning of his career in 1865, “One Hundred Aspects of the Moon,” “Thirty Two Aspects of Women’s Costumes and Manners,” and the series created during the final years of his life, “Thirty Six Ghosts.” These ghosts (which technically included demons as well as the spirits of the departed) include the spirit of Tomomori of the Taira clan, appearing in the waves of Daimotsu Bay, the site of the great battle between the Taira and the Heike clans. Another depicts Tametomo driving away a ghost; actually an old crone riding on another ghost’s shoulders, representing an outbreak of smallpox. Yet another drawing recalls the legend of Okiku and the broken plate. We see her ghost standing before the well where her body lay, the well itself visible through her transparent kimono. The look of sorrow on her face is unmistakable, as is Yoshitoshi’s mastery of his art.

A far less kindly scene occurs in Yoshitoshi’s illustration of the legend of Kiyohime and the monk, which inspired another kabuki drama. Kiyohime was an innkeeper’s daughter. Each year, a chaste young monk named Anchin would stop at the inn as part of an annual pilgrimage, and give a present to Kiyohime. The girl became infatuated with Anchin; however, when she declared her love, the horrified (and chaste) monk bolted from the inn and fled to the monastery, with Kiyohime in hot pursuit. So deep was her obsession that, when she reached a flooded river, she turned into a snake and swam across; Yoshitoshi’s print shows the transformation. When Anchin saw this, he hid himself under the bell of the temple; Kiyohime, however, still in serpent form, wrapped herself around the bell, and the bell grew hot enough to kill both the monk and the obsessed woman.

One of the finest of the series is based on the legend of Kuzunoha the fox-woman. One of many similarly themed Japanese legends, the story is of a legendary astrologer of the Heian court, Abe no Yasuna, who rescues a fox from a hunt. Later he meets and marries a beautiful woman, who bears him a son, then leaves three years later. On the third night after she leaves, the nobleman has a dream in which his wife reveals that she was the fox whose life he saved. She thanked him by becoming a human, marrying him, and bearing a son, but she could not stay with him; a fox, after all, does not live as long as a human. This story has been the basis for kabuki and bunraku puppet plays.

Yoshitoshi’s picture of this scene is of the moment of Kuzunoha leaving. Her young son hangs onto her kimono, as she passes out of the house. We cannot see her face, since it is already outside, but she casts a shadow on the paper screen wall: the shadow of a fox. It is at once chilling and poignant, and a prime example of the ambivalent mix of emotions so common in Japanese storytelling and in ghost stories in particular. In performances of the play, the departing spirit sings lines of great tenderness and sorrow:

“Last night I slept with my husband on one side of me and my beloved son on the other; I did not know it would be my last night. This must mean that my fox powers have grown weak because of my love for humans. I must go now.”

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The best-known chronicler of ghost stories in Meiji Japan wasn’t born in Japan: Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904). Born of an Irish father and a Greek mother, he lived in Greece, Ireland, America, and the West Indies, working as a journalist and writer, before moving to Japan in 1889. Hearn became a teacher, married the daughter of a samurai, and was adopted into her family under the name Yakumo Koizumi. Although he died at age 54, his influence has continued, primarily through his collections of Japanese ghost stories. Published under the names
In
Ghostly
Japan
and
Kwaidan
, the latter collection of legends inspired Masaki Kobayashi’s landmark 1965 film of the same name. In addition, Canadian born director Ping Chong created a puppet show in 1999 titled
Kwaidan
, and another Lafcadio Hearn puppet show in 2002,
OBON:
Tales
of
Rain
and
Moonlight.
And the 2005 Irish play
The
Dream
of
a
Summer
Day
mingled Hearn’s life with some of the ghost stories he retold.