Tonight’s tale is a long one, but it is a lovely, classic yūrei story that will surely bring a tear to your eye.

There are a few terms that might be a bit harder to fathom in the text, so here are brief descriptions of them:

filial duties — this is specifically referring to the Confucian ideals that the young should revere and honor their elders, and children should serve their parents. It’s an extremely prevalent thought in East Asia, and although it is almost translated as “filial piety/duties” that term doesn’t exactly do justice to how important the concept is. In this story, it refers to how the adopted couple treats their adoptive father as if he was truly their biological father.

ichiko — these are female mediums/oracles who specialize in spirit possession, very similar to miko. The ritual of performed here is a ceremony that presents an offering up to the suffering dead (in this case, water), inviting the spirit into the young girl’s body so that it can speak through her.

segaki — this is a Buddhist ritual offering food or drink to the suffering, hungry ghosts that remain in this world. Although ghosts are often seen as “pests” that need to be banished through aggressive spells and exorcisms, this is a much more compassionate act meant to ease their suffering—hopefully allowing them to pass on into the next life, or at the very least convince them to return to hell instead of remaining on the earth and haunting people here.

A Tale of Ghosts, Pure Hearts, and Filial Duty

In Yotsuya Chōsenji Yokochō, Edo, there was a dyer called Masuya. His wife and children had passed away, and he struggled to make ends meet. In addition, he was left with a single son who was unable to speak. This left him greatly troubled, so he hired day laborers to look after the boy. They were a couple who lived in poverty yet seemed especially earnest, so he discussed adopting them into his family and taking the husband as an heir. He immediately transferred ownership of the dye shop, along with his household goods and furnishings, to them, and thereafter he lived as a retired man.

The adopted couple devoted themselves wholeheartedly to their filial duties. They cared for the young boy who could not speak, and supported Masuya as if he were their biological father. The neighbors praised their kindness, and the retired Masuya was exceptionally pleased.

But old age took its toll, and the retired Masuya passed away. The wife, too, fell ill for some reason, and passed away not long after. The husband’s grief was beyond words.

Now, since the man still had a young child who could not speak, he took a second wife at the insistence of his neighbors and acquaintances—and the new wife obeyed her husband’s wishes and also took care of and raised the speech-impaired child with great kindness.

One night, while her husband was away, the wife was sleeping alone when she was startled awake by a noise. In the shadow of the folding screen by her bed, there stood a woman who did not appear to be from the world of the living.

“Kya!” she cried out in terror, and she pulled the covers over her head and lay still. Upon careful reflection, she thought, “This must be the ghost of the first wife, whose feelings linger behind here. I cannot remain here for even one more day!”

Nevertheless, the following night, she lay in her bed and thought, “Surely she will not come tonight. It was just my imagination.” As she fell asleep, once again the woman appeared there as she had the night before.

“Kya!” she screamed and pulled the bedding over her head.

That night her husband was there as well, sleeping next to her. “What happened?” he asked, pulling her up.

She could no longer hide the truth from her husband, so she explained the situation and asked him for a divorce.

He tried to calm her in various ways, saying, “My late wife’s behavior and character were nothing like that. It must have been a figment of your imagination.”

“It wasn’t just one night, but two nights, and I saw her with my own eyes! There is no way it was my imagination,” she replied.

Attempting to soothe her somehow, he said, “In this kind of situation, it would be best to use a spirit medium and ask what is going on.”

They summoned an ichiko who performed a ritual of water offering to the dead. The late wife possessed the ichiko and spoke through her: “The dreamlike apparitions you saw over those two nights was not the work of a fox or a tanuki–it was truly I that appeared. However, I did not come out of jealousy or attachment. I came to offer a detailed explanation to your current wife and to request a favor from her; but she is so terrified that I have not been able to express my thoughts.”

She then explained the circumstances of the household, and the possession ended.

That night, when they went to bed, she appeared again. This time, the wife listened to her story without fear.

The yūrei said: “The biological father of the mute child placed his trust in us as a couple. Though we had no prior connection to him, he bequeathed his household and his belongings to us, and asked us to raise his child. While I was still in the world of the living, we worked as a couple to fulfill our filial duties to the best of our ability, and we cared for the young child. However, my life ran out and I passed into the realm of the dead. This new wife seems like a good-hearted person, but she does not know what happened at the beginning. My only wish is to explain all of these details to her, and ask that she raise the young boy and cherish this family. I wholeheartedly entrust my husband and child to you.”

With that, the spirit vanished. This time, the wife felt no fear, and upon hearing the reasons, tears flowed from her eyes.

The husband also felt the ghost’s deep sincerity, but he suspected that she might have some lingering attachments, and so he performed segaki rituals. Then one night, his late wife appeared to him in a dream and told him, “Thanks to your marital devotion, I have attained spiritual enlightenment.”

This tale sounds like a priest’s sermon, but I am told it is something that definitely happened, and very recently too.

Tonight’s tale comes from volume ten of Mimibukuro. It deals with a shiryō, which is a word that could just as easily be translated as “ghost,” but I prefer to use the Japanese for yokai/ghosts when there’s no overly compelling reason to translate the word. Shiryō literally means “dead spirit,” and it is one of the many terms used to describe ghosts in Japanese. It is contrasted mainly with ikiryō, or “living spirit”—a ghost that manifests out of a person’s strong emotions while that person is still living.

A Strange Tale of a Shiryō

This is a story from Shitaya or Asakusa. I’d heard the name before, but I have forgotten it. It is said there was a family whose members had been dying young for generations and the line was passed down through adopted heirs—and only a single daughter of the family’s bloodline remained. Everybody cherished this daughter, but she unexpectedly fell ill. The doctors did everything in their power, and prayers and offerings were made, but these had no effect.

One night, well after dark, a young monk whom nobody had ever seen before came to the house and announced: “I served the master of this house three generations ago. I committed a minor offense and was shamefully killed for it. Even after that, I was unjustly denied a proper funeral. My grudge remains unresolved, and I have cursed this family ever since—so that now this girl is all that is left of the bloodline. Soon I shall take her life as well.”

The family members said they heard this as if it were a dream. They replied, “That may be the case, but so many months and years have already passed since then. Even if this girl should die now, we do not understand how that would resolve your deep grudge.”

“Then hold a memorial service for me. My grave is crude, but it is located at Gyokurinji in San’ya,” he said, and then vanished.

The next day, they sent someone to Gyokurinji to search for the place the young monk had described. It is said that when they performed a generous memorial service, miraculously, the daughter’s sickness was immediately cured.

Perhaps this was all a plan devised by the man they saw in the dream.

The title of tonight’s story, “Demon Fire,” is a direct translation of its title in Mimibukuro: “Onibi.” Normally I prefer not to translate the names of yokai and other phenomena, because they retain their unique meanings better when left in Japanese. However, I decided not to do so here because the story never actually mentions onibi. In fact, it specifically describes the phenomenon out as tengubi (or the like). There are a lot of mysterious fireball yokai, and they go by all kinds of names; however it sounds like we can blame this specific case on a tengu.

Tales about strange fireballs are quite common, and mysterious fires are a staple sign that ghosts or yōkai are nearby. Sometimes they are cold fires that give off no heat and don’t harm anyone; other times they are hot, or they drain the life force from anyone nearby. It’s clear from this tale that people did consider them to be harbingers of danger, one way or another.

The story takes place in Hakonejuku, in what is now Kanagawa Prefecture. The -juku suffix indicates that this was a station town, in this case on the Tōkaidō route that linked Edo with Kyōto. This was a major roadway in the Edo period, and the 53 stations of the Tōkaidō, immortalized in many woodblock print series, were popular as both rest stops for travelers and tourist destinations. Hakone, in particular, was well known as a hot spring resort town, and this tale takes place at one of these resorts, where a bunch of guards are enjoying their summer vacation off from work.

The man called “old man Ishikawa” in the story (who seems to be the origin of this tale as well) appears several times in Mimibukuro, and is one of Negishi’s acquaintances.

Demon Fire

While on ōban guard duty, I [Ishikawa] stayed at Hakonejuku. Since it was summer, I and my fellow guards gathered at a traveller’s inn, drank sake, and were enjoying the cool air, when we saw a single, round flame rise from the mountain across from us and into the sky. Wondering what it could be, we watched in curiosity as it split into two and flew about, then merged back together and split again into many parts. It was rather amusing.

Then the flames began to come our way. Everyone grew alarmed and began to shout, “What could it be?”

The innkeeper overheard us and quickly came to our room. Terribly frightened, he said, “Hurry, you must get inside, or there will be danger!”

He quickly began barring the doors. All of the men, too, were seized by an inexplicable fear and went inside.

It must have been one of those things they call tengubi or the like.

This tale was told by old man Ishikawa.

This weekend I will be at all-day-long events, so I won’t be able to paint anything on Saturday or Sunday. I will still queue up some A-Yokai-A-Day posts for those days; they will be stories not from Mimibukuro, but from my newest book Echizen-Wakasa Kidan, which will be available to order from the yokai.com web shop later this year, after copies have shipped out to all Kickstarter backers.

Tonight’s tale comes from a member of the Hino clan (the same Hino clan that the hitodama story from a few days back originated from) however this tale takes place during the reign of Hino Sukeyoshi, who lived from 1618 to 1698—more than 100 years before volume 8 of Mimibukuro (written somewhere around 1808).

The Strange Tale of Komai Zōsu’s Wandering Spirit

The man known as Hino Iyo no Kami Sukeyoshi, who served for a time as a kōke, had a retainer named Komai Zōsu, who lived on Hino’s estate.

He had been serving faithfully in Edo, and a time came when he needed to establish a family temple there. He attended to the temple affairs diligently, but since his family already had a temple in his home province of Jōshū, he explained to his lord and his peers, “If I should die, I would like to be buried at the temple where my ancestors have been laid to rest. But as I am serving here in Edo, I have no choice but to designate a temple here as well.”

His friends and peers said, “That should be no problem to arrange.” And some time passed without incident.

Recently, Komai had begun feeling as though he caught a cold, and he was bedridden. Even during his illness, he repeatedly told his relatives and fellow retainers that he wished to be buried at the temple in his home province. And before long, he died.

His relatives and fellow retainers expressed his last wishes to his lord, who said, “Since he has already designated a temple in Edo as his family temple, there may be complications back in his home province unless the temple provides a letter authorizing his transfer. What should we do?”

So, a monk was dispatched from the Edo temple to Komai’s home province with a letter of authorization.

When the monk went to the Edo temple, they told him that they had already prepared the transfer letter that Zōsu himself had requested. So he brought it with him. However, the day that Zōsu was said to have visited the Edo temple was the day after his death.

Such things often happen due to one’s strong intentions, according to Lord Hino—so I have recorded his tale here.

Tonight’s tale is a variation of a common one. I shared a similar tale from Shokoku hyakumonogatari during A-Yokai-A-Day a few years ago. Tonight’s has a much better title though!

The big baddie in this story is once again a night heron, called goisaki in Japanese. I’m not sure why they are so frequently linked to yokai and ghost tales. Aosagibi is another heron-themed yokai. Possibly because they are sometimes active at night, and they are rarely seen? Although they come out in the day too… Or is it the bright red eyes? I think they are rather charming. Especially the little flappy feathers on the back of their heads!

In any case, it gave me an excuse to paint a bird, which I am always happy for the opportunity to do!

How a Ghost was Cooked and Eaten

This happened in the fall of the second year of the Bunka era (1805). A man from Yotsuya was walking along a road in the middle of the night on some errand, when he saw a figure dressed entirely in white walking ahead of him. Looking closer, the figure appeared invisible from the waist down.

Thinking, “Might this be a yūrei?” he followed afterward. When the figure turned around, he saw a single large glowing eye, so he suddenly drew his sword and slashed at it.

It screamed, “Kyaa!” and collapsed. The man seized it, pinned it to the ground, and stabbed it to death—only to discover it was a large night heron.

He carried it home as-is, and a group of his young friends gathered together to season and eat it.

This became the talk of the town—that they had cooked and eaten a ghost.