Tonight’s story comes from volume five of Mimibukuro, and it is another story about a smallpox-related death. In this case, the victim’s age is not mentioned, although it says he is a young samurai rather than a child. For my painting I decided to paint him as a young man who has come of age, but it could also have been a boy younger than that.

The place where the ghost appears, Shōheibashi, is still around, near the Kanda River in Tokyo. During the time of this ghost story, this area would have been much more overgrown and wild than the bustling metropolitan area it is today, and it would be much more fitting for the spooky atmosphere of a ghost tale.

For this blog, I translated the word for “wandering spirit” in the title into English, because it is one that I haven’t used frequently on this site or on yokai.com, so readers may not be familiar with it. That word is 遊魂 (yūkon), and literally just means wandering spirit.

An Eyewitness Account of a Wandering Spirit

This is a story about a young samurai in the service of the Nakayama family. He was exceptionally bright, and his master was especially fond of him and looked after him with care. However, toward the end of the seventh year of the Kansei era (1795), he contracted smallpox, which was rampant at the time, and died. His master was overcome with grief, and held a lavish funeral for him.

Now, a man who was close friends with Nakayama was passing through Shōheibashi when he suddenly came upon the young samurai. He knew nothing of the boy’s death, so he asked, “Is your master doing well?” The young samurai gave the appropriate greetings, and they parted ways.

However, when the man went to the Nakayama residence and inquired about the young samurai, he was told that the boy had died some time earlier.

The man was astonished and said, “Had I been alone, I might suppose that I had mistaken someone else for him.” But when he asked the servant who had been accompanying him, the servant replied that he remembered the young samurai very well and that there was no mistaking him.

They were both astonished.