Tonight’s story is told in first person, by Negishi, and centers around a member of his family. Maybe there’s some truth to the idea that those who speak of ghost stories invite ghosts to them… Or maybe he just always had ghosts on his mind so he tended to see them where others might not.
Often people will ask me if I believe in ghosts and yokai, since I write about them so much. I imagine Negishi must have had a similar experience. Probably many people he spoke to asked him if he actually saw any ghosts, or if he believed in their existence. We’ve already seen his skeptical side, in yesterday’s story. Today’s might be a glimpse of his more credulous side… or maybe he is just making entertaining story. Regardless, he doesn’t commit to saying anything for certain in this story, and I enjoy the open-ended finale of tonight’s story.
Of course believe in supernatural creatures was widespread during the Edo period, even though some of the more fantastic yokai like rokurokubi and nurarihyon were understood to be imaginary. One type of spirit that lingered strongly in people’s beliefs was the yakubyōgami — probably because its effects were far more visible than something like a kappa or a noperabō. People frequently died from disease, and in great numbers too, so it was obvious something was killing them — they just didn’t know what germs were yet. Beliefs in such spirits persisted well into the 19th century, as evidenced by all of the prophetic yokai legends and prints that appeared in that time.
So maybe Negishi can be forgiven for expressing a hint of supernatural belief in this story.
A Strange Encounter in Banchō
This happened when a member of my family, Ushioku, was in his prime. An urgent summons came from his watch duty companion. It was a stormy autumn night, and he was passing through the neighborhood of Banchō-Baba with one subordinate in tow. The rain was so heavy that there was nobody else on the road, and they had to shield their single paper lantern under a raincoat in order to keep it from being blown out. Just then, a figure resembling a woman was crouched by the roadside.
She wore something resembling a raincoat, but she carried no umbrella or hat. They couldn’t see clearly if it was a woman, and as they puzzled over it, they passed by the figure.
The attending samurai asked, “What could that be? Should we take a closer look?”
Ushioku replied, “It’s none of our business.”
Just then, two people looking like foot soldiers carrying lanterns came from a side street and went down the road Ushioku and his attendant had just traveled. They followed after the foot soldiers, but when they reached the place where the woman had been, nobody was there.
“This road is isolated on all sides; there is no way she could have gone anywhere…” they said to themselves as they returned to their original path.
They reached their destination, and as Ushioku approached the front gate, an intense chill came over him. The following day he came down with a terrible fever, and he was bedridden for twenty days. The samurai who accompanied him also suffered from chill and fever for about twenty days.
Was that woman perhaps a fever spirit revealing its form in the rain?
