There was an error on the blog. You should be able to read the whole article now.

I’ve been reading for the last 2 hours because I dreamt I was hiring a boatman to travel up a river to the top where I had to negotiate something with these beings. The river was full of writhing gray things, which I didn’t really pay attention to but upon waking I thought they looked like dolphins or manatee, being gray & slimy looking. On my left was a huge cemetary (?) which was NOT to be entered, & there was a perhaps 15-20 story tall ogre gamboling about in it, with blue skin & orange hair. On my right was a forest of dead trees. There was also some other very lethal animal which I can’t exactly recall that we had to avoid – it might have been on the side with the trees. I was accompanied by the ferryman & a crow. The boatride was very rocky & we reached the top but I don’t recall what the exact negotiation was. I think I had to give them something.

Anyway, I Googled “Japan haunted river” & the only thing that came up was Sanzu River. At first I thought maybe the gray things in the water were souls trying to cross, but maybe those were the snakes. The ogre could have been a generic oni or that old man/woman that takes your clothing based on woodcuts I’ve seen today, but I was just curious to see if I could find any mythological beings that would correspond to the folks up at the top.

I’m Japanese but I’ve never been to Japan. My family is descended from Minamoto Tametomo but I don’t know much else about it. I was surprised to read that Sanzu River is said to be located in Aomori, because I actually just bought some hokke, shishamo, & other items from a Hokkaido festival booth while grocery shopping this past Friday. I haven’t had hokke in over a decade so I was delighted to see it. I had never heard of Sanzu no Kawa until today. I have no idea if the groceries have anything to do with my dream but what a coincidence, right? I haven’t had such a detailed, vivid, linear dream in a very long time. And naturally I sound like a crazy person talking about this but do you have any thoughts? I’m really just tripping out right now on everything I’ve read.

I have never heard of 13 evil yokai kings. However, I do talk about the kings of hell in the next post on Jigoku.