For those of you keeping count, today’s story is number 99 in Shokoku hyakumonogatari! That is a big deal. Not just because, wow, it’s been a lot of work and a long journey, but also because the penultimate episode has to carry the weight of everything that came before it, and set up for the final story coming next.

I think today’s story manages to do that.

Today’s story deals with another ikiryō, which for a long period was one of the scariest types of ghosts Japanese believed in. Just imagine if someone you wronged — or not even that you wrong but someone who was just jealous of you — had the power to curse you to death, with or without being aware of it! Even in the Edo period, when a lot of people no longer believed in ghosts or yokai, belief in curses remained fairly strong. An ikiyrō was a lot more believable than many types of monsters.

This story features a lot of really cool imagery. It’s downright cinematic, I will say. It has the fire altar, the young shrine maiden painted with calligraphy, a magic talisman and gohei. Then there’s the chanting priest, the exorcism, the 120 candles… and the climax scene right out of a movie when (spoiler alert) the ghost flaps her sleeves, extinguishing the candles and the life of the wife. WOW! And then the brutally violent ending. Phew!

Unfortunately the story is not written very well. This is one where I think Lafcadio Hearn’s flowery touch would do a lot more for the story than the simple way it’s written. I’ve translated it in my usual style — staying as true to the original text as possible — but boy did I fight the temptation to elaborate and expand certain areas where it just felt… not written well.

Here’s one example: 120 candles. Why not 99 candles? It’s the 99th story… And that would also evoke the ao andon, the ghost who appears at the end of the ghost story telling party (and my favorite yokai). Also, the author names Tokiwa before the priest’s epic line: “REVEAL YOUR TRUE FORM!” spoiling the big reveal.

Honestly this is one of my favorite stories in the book. It just needs to be written better.

Oh, and one last thing before getting to today’s story: As of today, we received the OK from Japan Post to resume shipping parcels to the US from our webstore. US readers can now place orders once again on the yokai.com web shop.

Okay, on to #99!

The Woman’s Ikiryō; or, The Divine Power of a Yoritsuke

In Sagami Province there was a man named Nobuhisa who came from a high-ranking family. His wife was the daughter of a man named Toki Genshun. She was a woman of renowned beauty, and Nobuhisa’s love for her had no bounds. She had a maidservant named Tokiwa. Tokiwa was no less beautiful than Nobuhisa’s wife, and Nobuhisa visited her bed frequently. After that, Tokiwa served her mistress with utter devotion.

One day the wife fell ill, and her condition gradually grew worse and worse. Nobuhisa grew suspicious and thought, “Perhaps this is due to some person’s jealousy.”

He hired a renowned priest to perform an exorcism for her. The priest brought his scriptures and pondered her condition.

“This illness is caused by a person’s ikiryō possessing her. If I use a yoritsuke on her, it should reveal the person whose spirit is possessing her,” said the priest.

Nobuhisa replied, “I beg you to do what is best.”

The priest had a girl of twelve or thirteen stripped naked, then he painted the Lotus Sutra on her body and placed gohei in both of her hands. He gathered one hundred and twenty priests and had them recite the Lotus Sutra, and he set up an altar at the bedside of the sick woman. He lit one hundred and twenty candles and burned various fine incenses, and chanted the sutra without pause. As expected, the twelve or thirteen year old girl used as the yoritsuke began to babble. The priest chanted the sutra with even more intensity, and Tokiwa appeared above the altar.

The priest said, “Reveal your true form!”

At this, Tokiwa’s clothing transformed into an elegant uchikake kimono, and, with one flap of her sleeve, all one hundred and twenty candles blew out. At the same moment the fires were extinguished, the wife passed away.

Nobuhisa was incensed. He had Tokiwa brought forth and, as an offering to his wife’s soul, executed her by quartering.

I think tonight’s ghost story is a sweet one. I like it especially because this ghost is exactly the kind of ghost I would hope to become: one that comes back only to play board games.

Sugoroku is a famous Japanese board and dice game that originated in ancient China and came to Japan in the 8th century. It has evolved several variations; the one being discussed in this story is called “ban-sugoroku,” which is a game similar to backgammon. The best known variation is called “e-sugoroku” and is popular with young children today, although this is a different game than ban-sugoroku and more resembles games like Snakes and Ladders, where you throw dice and progress along a board track. This version became popular in the Edo period due to the printing press, and countless variations were created based on any theme you could imagine — novels, travel spots, even yokai!

Here’s an example of a yokai sugoroku game from the Edo period. How many yokai can you identify?

Meanwhile, ban-sugoroku also appears in lots of artwork and looks like this:

So how about it — would you play board games with a ghost?

How Ōmori Hikogorō’s Wife Died and then Came Back to Play Sugoroku

In Kameyama, Tanba Province, there lived a retainer named Ōmori Hikogorō, with a fief of 300 koku. His wife was famed for her beauty, however she died in childbirth. Hikogorō grieved deeply, but there was nothing else he could do.

His wife had an attendant who had served them since the age of seven. This girl grieved so bitterly that she attempted to kill herself fourteen or fifteen times within seven days. They somehow managed to calm her down, and eventually three years passed.

Hikogorō’s family members pressured him into once again taking a wife. His second wife was highly versed in propriety for a woman, and kept the first wife in her thoughts by performing daily prayers for her at the family altar, so that everybody said that surely the first wife rejoiced beneath the soil.

While the first wife was alive she loved sugoroku, and she was always playing with her attendant. Even after she died, perhaps due to her attachment to the game, she appeared every night for those three years to play sugoroku with her attendant.

One night the attendant said, “It has been three years that you’ve come here nightly to play with me. Ever since I was seven you’ve cared for me, and now I have grown into an adult. No matter how long I remain a servant, I could never repay your kindness. However, now I have a new mistress, and if it was ever discovered that you were visiting me every night, it might seem as though you came to bear a grudge against her. From now on, please do not come anymore.”

The dead wife replied, “Truly as you say, nobody would guess that I was actually attached to this sugoroku game. From this day forward, I will not come here.”

Saying this, she left. However, afterward, when the attendant told this story to Hikogorō and his wife, they said, “So that’s what it was?” And they had a sugoroku board made and placed before the first wife’s grave as an offering, and prayed for her with deep affection.

Comedy and horror go together like pizza and beer, and tonight’s story mixes the two together very well (comedy and horror, that is).

The story references a creature called an ugume, which is just a corruption of the yokai known as ubume. This is a complex yokai with a long history. While ubume is usually thought of as a ghostly woman (thanks to Toriyama Sekien’s illustration), it has a complex history and was originally depicted as a bird that screams like a human baby. In the end, however, the monster in this story turned out not to be an ugume, but something more mundane like aosagibi.

Now, there is some kind of bird living in the mountain just outside my studio that calls several times per day. It repeats three or four times in a row and it sounds like a screaming child. The call travels really far, so I can never see just what type of bird this is. I have no idea what it could be, but it’s got such a unique cry that I really want to figure it out. Listening to this bird so often yet never seeing it, it’s not hard for me to imagine the fear that people centuries ago might have felt at hearing unfamiliar, eerie cries coming from the forests.

The Ugume of Tsuru-no-hayashi

Around the first year of Kan’ei (1624), there was a mausoleum called Tsuru-no-hayashi in the eastern part of Kyōto. Every night a monster called an ugume would come here and wail like a crying infant. Nobody dared pass by after dark, and the back gate was locked up tight so that nobody could enter.
One person heard about this and said, “I will go see this for myself.”

So, one rainy night when there was a sense of dread in the air, he went to Tsuru-no-hayashi and waited for the ugume. Sure enough, at the fifth hour (around 8pm), a blue flame about the size of a parasol floated up from the direction of the Shirakawa River. As it drew near, just as people described, there was the sound of a crying infant. The man drew his sword and leaped at it, cutting it in two. The pieces fell with a thud, and he stabbed them again, shouting in a loud voice, “I killed the monster! Come here! Come here!”

The people nearby lit torches and gathered to see. It turned out to be a large night heron. Everyone burst into laughter and went home, saying that it was a silly thing to be frightened of.

Greetings yokai lovers!

Tonight’s story depicts a legendary ritual known as “the shrine visit at the hour of the ox.” This ritual is famous today for being a curse ritual. It is performed by jealous or jilted lovers who want revenge — either against the former lover who betrayed them, or against the person who stole their lover from them. The hashi hime of Uji, Kyoto is a famous example of someone who used this ritual to powerful effect.

To perform this ritual, one dresses up like a ghost: wearing a white burial kimono, and carrying a light source on their head (usually in the form of candles stuck onto an upside-down trivet, or holding a torch in their mouth), and wearing tall geta sandals. The ritual is performed at the hour of the ox, which equates to between 1 to 3 am in western time.

While this ritual is known today as being a curse ritual, long ago it wasn’t restricted to curses. The shrine visit at the hour of the ox was originally performed for very strong, sincere wishes, like the one we see in the story below. For an extra powerful dose of magic, you can perform it during the year of the ox, during the month of the ox, on the day of the ox, and at the hour of the ox — but you’d have to have time on your side to get such a perfect line up.

The Woman Who Every Night Visited Usa Hachiman in Buzen Province

In Buzen Province, about 2 kilometers north of Usa Hachiman-gu Shrine, there is a mausoleum. There is a rumor that a henge comes here every night. One night, a group of young men gathered there and asked, “Who wants to go and see it?”

But not one of them said they were willing to go. Among them was a brave samurai who said, “I will go,” and, boasting about his courage, went off to the mausoleum all by himself. He sat in the shadow of some trees and waited for the henge to arrive.

It was dark and rainy, and it could not have been any more creepy. Just then, he saw a faint light floating towards him from about 1 kilometer away. “Aha!” he thought, and loosened the bindings on his sword and waited for it to approach. The light grew closer until it was seven to nine meters away. Looking closer, there appeared a woman of around 20 years in a burial kimono, her disheveled hair reaching all the way to the ground, wearing an iron trivet with candles on it on her head and tall wooden sandals on her feet.

The samurai thought he would cut her down and discard the body, but then he remembered that he was here to investigate, so he waited off to the side and observed. The woman entered the crematorium, burned something for a while in the embers, then came out and went back to the road to leave.

The samurai wondered what she was up to and went to stop her. He grabbed her tightly from behind, and the woman said, “Oh how sad… now my wish will not come true.”

The samurai was startled, and said, “So, you are human! Tell me what you are doing!”

The woman replied, “I am ashamed to say this, but my husband, due to some karmic causality, has been suffering from a horrible illness, and all treatments have had no effect. In my grief, I fasted in prayer at Usa Hachiman-gu for seven days. At dawn on the seventh day, Lord Hachiman appeared to me in a dream and instructed me: ‘For one thousand days, at the hour of the ox, go to the graveyard and eat mochi baked in the embers of the cremated dead. Your husband will then fully recover from his terrible illness.’ Since then, I have done as instructed and come to this mausoleum every night for the past three years. In four or five days my wish would have been fulfilled, but grievously it has all been in vain. Please help me. I am no monster.”

Hearing this, the samurai said, “Well, there’s no mistake; you are a human. I will help you. But first, to prove to everyone that I was here…” And he grabbed a fistful of the woman’s hair and cut it off.

Then he went back to the inn and told everyone, “I captured the henge and subdued it, then in exchange for its life, I cut its hair and came back here.” And he threw the fistful of hair at them, and they were all amazed.