Tonight’s story is a classic ghost story. The ghost has all of the standard elements: the white kimono, the disheveled, long hair, blackened teeth; and she visits every night and stares into the window! Ooh, I just got chills!

I especially love the nonchalant response by Tōshirō at the end. “Oh yeah, that’s my wife.” And Kyūan noping right out of there and back to Kyoto is icing on the cake.

Fantastic! Enjoy this one.

The Ghost of Shimazu Tōshirō’s Wife

A man named Shimazu Tōshirō from Owari Prefecture was a disciple of Shundō and a great reciter of noh, and frequently performed in front of audiences. One of his friends was a man from Tsu in Ise named Kyūan, who frequently constructed gardens. He was Tōshirō’s best friend, and one day he visited him in Owari to talk about the good old days.

It was the middle of June, and they hung up a mosquito net and told stories late into the night, and before long Tōshirō fell asleep. Kyūan wasn’t yet able to fall asleep when he saw a woman around 40 years old, with disheveled hair as long as her body, blackened teeth, and a white kimono gazing longingly through the lattice window. Kyūan thought for sure that this woman must be Tōshirō’s longtime mistress, so he pretended not to notice her, and by dawn she was nowhere to be found.

The following night the same thing happened. Kyūan, filled with uneasiness, waited impatiently for dawn to break. In the morning he told Tōshirō everything that had happened. “Clearly you have an arrangement with this woman to come and see you at night. From tonight on, I will sleep in a separate room,” he said.

Tōshirō replied, “This is an embarrassing story, but I will tell you. When I was in Kyōto I had a fling with a woman, and I ended up I bringing her back home with me, and we were together for three years. However, one day she became sick and died. Yet she still visits me from time to time, as if her attachment to me remains.”

Kyūan was astonished. He was originally going to stay for two or three more days, but he suddenly packed up and said goodbye, and returned to Ise.

Kyūan passed away in the Kan’ei period (1624-44).

Tonight’s story deals with a common theme in Shokoku hyakumonogatari: obsession. The Japanese word used in these stories is 執心, and it refers to the kind of improper infatuation or devotion that comes from an attachment to worldly things–whether a person, or an object, or otherwise. It’s one of the worst sins in Buddhism; in fact, it is said to be the root cause of all suffering. It’s what powers the wheel of reincarnation and causes life forms to be reborn over and over again in an endless cycle of suffering. So it’s no wonder that it comes up in folklore a lot, and is blamed to be the cause of yokai or other supernatural phenomena.

In this book, obsessive attachment frequently takes the form of snakes or dragons, but it also frequently appears as a ghost of the deceased, or in the form of a mysterious illness. This story depicts it as a snake, and in an almost comical way. The visual of this snake leaping out of the bushes and wrapping itself around the man’s neck over and over made me laugh out loud the first time I read this story.

How a Woman’s Obsession Became a Snake in Tōsa Province

In Tōsa Province there was a man who made his living through hunting. He was 40 years old, and his wife was 45 or 46, but she was famously jealous and she always followed him whenever he hunted. One day when he went hunting, his wife followed him as usual, but she was annoying him so much that he grabbed her, pulled her close to him, and stabbed her to death. At that moment, a large snake came out from the roots of a big tree nearby and coiled itself around the man’s neck.

The man drew his sword and rapidly stabbed the snake, but it kept coming back and coiling itself around him. The man had no choice but to make a pilgrimage to Kōyasan. About halfway up the Fudōzaka slope, the snake let go of his neck and dropped into the grass. The man was so happy that he stayed on Kōyasan for one hundred days, and then, thinking that that was the end of it, he descended the mountain. Halfway down the Fudōzaka slope, the same snake creeped out of the grass and once again wrapped around the man’s neck.

The man was at his wit’s end, and decided to make a pilgrimage to Kantō. He set out immediately, boarded a boat at Ōtsu, and headed out to sea. However, the boat became stuck and would not budge forwards or backwards.

The boatman said, “If anyone among the passengers has any idea what is going on, whatever it may be, speak the truth! Many people are suffering for the sake of one man.”

The man had no choice. He removed the cloth from around his neck and showed the snake to everyone, saying, “Surely this is the problem.” He explained his story to the passengers and confessed his sin.

The passengers were shocked. They scolded the man and demanded, “Get off of the boat immediately!”

“That is all I can do now,” said the man, and he threw himself off of the boat and drowned. After that, the snake uncoiled from his neck and swam towards Ōtsu. The boat arrived safe and sound at Yabase, according to the boatman.

Tonight’s story deals with a yūrei, or a ghost. We’ve seen a few horrific monsters so far, but, while there is no shortage of terrifying ghost stories, tonight’s story is more on the eerie side than the scary side. Sandayū is quite lucky, in fact, because just two days ago we had another story about a man sleeping with a ghost, and that one turned out poorly for the main character…

How Sandayū From Chikuzen Province Slept With a Yūrei

There was a merchant from Chikuzen Province named Sandayū. Every year he brought goods to Ōsaka to sell, and he would stop at Amagasaki and stay at an inn called Akitsuya.

One of the servants at Akitsuya was a girl named Sasa, and the innkeeper always sent her to Sandayū’s room to be his companion for the night. This continued for several years, but then for some reason Sandayū did not visit Amagasaki for a long time.

Several years later, he went to Ōsaka and once again stayed at Akitsuya. The innkeeper served him a variety of foods and sake, and then jokingly said, “If only Sasa were here…” Sandayū figured that Sasa must have gone out on an errand, and since it was getting late, he hung his mosquito net and went to bed alone.

In the middle of the night, he thought he saw a person climb into the mosquito net; it was Sasa. Sandayū was delighted and said, “It’s been such a long time! Where were you during the day?”

Sasa replied, “I don’t work here anymore. You must never tell anybody that I came here tonight.”

Sandayū wondered if she quit because she did not like it there anymore, or if she maybe got married. He asked her all sorts of things, but she would not give him any details. So, they spent the night in heartfelt conversation, reminiscing about the past and imagining the future, and before long it was almost dawn.

“It is time for me to go,” said Sasa, and she got up to leave. Sandayū, sad to see her go, gave her a white, single-layer kimono as a keepsake. Sasa thanked him, cloaked herself in the kimono, and then went out the front door.

Sandayū, filled with concern, followed afterwards, and saw her heading west out of Amagasaki. He thought she was headed towards Nishinomiya, but instead she went towards Naniwa, and then by the banks of a river she vanished into thin air.

That morning, Sandayū asked the innkeeper, “Where is Sasa living now?”

“That’s the thing…” replied the innkeeper. “Sasa died of a light illness this past spring. On her deathbed, you were all that she talked about.”

Sandayū was shocked. “Well now, I have a strange story…” he said. And he told the innkeeper what happened the previous night.

The innkeeper was also shocked and said, “Take me to where you saw Sasa disappear!”

So Sandayū took the innkeeper along the same route, and they found the graveyard where Sasa was buried, and the white kimono hanging from her grave. The two men felt a sense of wonder, and they made offerings for her spirit.

Afterwards, Sandayū inherited his father’s position and became a servant of Lord Kuroda Uemon. Nowadays, everybody knows about this.

The yokai in tonight’s story is only referred to as a henge. Like bakemono from a few days ago, henge is a fairly generic term for a monster and doesn’t really reference anything specific. The word comes from the word for “transform,” and it is frequently used to refer to monstrous apparitions created by tanuki or kitsune, but is not strictly limited to those either. The licking reminds me of shitanaga uba, but this yokai is a young girl, not an old hag.

Whatever it is, I really like this yokai. It totally creeps me out.The plain and simple way the creature is described as licking the baby away to nothing, like a tootsie roll pop, gives me the shivers. It doesn’t over-describe, where many English-language authors would take the the time to describe in exceeding detail. The way the horror is just limited to one brief sentence leaves so much to the imagination. This one and the bone-sucking monster are perhaps my two monsters in this book.

Also, the ending to this tale is just horrible. It’s so sudden, and so meaningless. Why did this happen? And how do you recover from an experience like this?

Terrifying.

How Tanba Sarugaku Was Caught by a Henge

Tanba Sarugaku, along with twenty or so people including his wife, children, and disciples, were on their way to Kyōto. One night the sun set while they were in the mountains, and they had no choice but to spend the night there. His wife was in the month of childbirth, and that night she gave birth to their child, so they were busy taking care of many things until dawn broke.

As the night gave way to dim light, a woman of around twenty years old passed by. Seeing her, Sarugaku called her over to him: “I don’t know who you are, but your timing is perfect. I hate to ask, but could you please help hold this child for a while?”

She replied, “That would be no problem.”

She took the child in her arms, and everyone was able to get some sleep. The woman began slowly licking the child’s head. When Sarugaku woke up, he gazed closely over at the woman, and noticed that she had completely licked the child up.

Sarugaku was shocked, and he woke up his disciples. All twenty of them got up immediately, but no sooner had they done so when something grabbed each of them out of nowhere and dragged them up into the sky. Sarugaku was left there alone. Then a raspy voice came from the sky: “Take that last man too!”

The woman replied, “I thought I should take him too, but I can’t because he is carrying a fine sword.”

Then the voice from the sky said, “If you can’t take him, then help me! Help me!”

The woman vanished into thin air, and Sarugaku was left dumbfounded. He waited around for dawn to break, but by the time it did, it was already 4 pm.

October has arrived and Spooky Season is upon us! Welcome to another year’s season of A-Yokai-A-Day! Every day this month I will translate, illustrate, and post one spooky Japanese folktale on this site. Feel free to join me in sharing yokai online using the #ayokaiaday hashtag!

This year continues where last year left off: the Edo period story collection called Shokoku hyakumonogatari, or “100 Tales from Various Provinces.” This book was published by an anonymous author in 1677, and is in the public domain. Scans of the book are available online, but the old script and archaic language is difficult to read, so I am also making use of digital OCR tools to transcribe the text, as well as a modern Japanese translation of the book by Shimura Kunihiro.

As far as I am aware, Shokoku hyakumonogatari has never been translated into English, although some of the stories have appeared in other publications. So this may be the first time at least some of these stories have been read outside of Japan!

Tonight’s story takes place at a very famous site in Kyoto, which visitors to Japan may be familiar with: Sanjūsangendō. The story pattern is a famous one, and there are many variations of this one all over Japan, so you may have heard another version of this somewhere else. There are a few words I chose not to translate in tonight’s story, because they don’t have good English equivalents (or I just prefer them in Japanese):

bakemono – a generic term for a monster; tonight’s story never specifically names what creature is responsible for the haunting

rōnin – an unemployed, landless member of the warrior caste; generally not a very respectable thing to be

chigo – an adolescent page boy or acolyte, often dressed and made up to look like a beautiful girl, and often kept in a pederastic relationship with an older man

How the Power of Sake Overcame a Bakemono

People do not go to the Great Buddha of Sanjūsangendō after 4 pm because of the presence of a bakemono. When the emperor heard of this, he put up a public notice declaring that if anyone defeated the monster, they would be granted anything they wished.

A certain drunkard rōnin went before the emperor and declared, “I shall subdue this monster.” Then he filled a bottle gourd with sake, went to Sanjūsangendō and waited in a corner of the hall. Sure enough, in the dead of night, a nearly three meter tall priest, with eyes shining like the sun and moon, reached out and tried to grab the rōnin with its rake-like hands.

The rōnin immediately lowered his head to the floor and said, “Are you the bakemono-sama that I have heard so much about? Please allow me to introduce myself.”

Hearing this, the bakemono let out a dreadful laugh: “Well, well, aren’t you a funny thing. I was going to eat you in one bite, but I’ll hold off for a moment. So, why did you come here?”

The rōnin replied, “I came here for some reason; but Master Bakemono, I have heard that you are able to transform into many things. Would you show me by transforming into a beautiful noblewoman?”

“You are a clever one. I will transform as you wish, and then I will eat you in one bite,” said the bakemono, and then he transformed into a giant noblewoman.

The rōnin replied, “Well now, this is interesting! Could you also transform into a chigo?” And the monster transformed into the form of a beautiful chigo.

“Well that is just wonderful!” said the rōnin. “Next could you transform into an oni?”

The monster became a three meter tall oni and waved his horns around in the air.

The rōnin said, “Master Bakemono, you are a skilled artist! You can transform into anything you wish. But, how about turning into something small like a dried plum?

The bakemono said, “If I turn into a dried plum, will you let me eat you already?”

“You don’t even need to ask!” replied the rōnin.

“Then I will show you,” said the monster. And he transformed into a tiny dried plum and rolled around on the floor.

“What a marvelous transformation! Climb up onto my hand!” said the rōnin, putting out his hand. The plum rolled onto the palm of the rōnin’s hand, and he popped it straight into his mouth, chewed it up, and washed it down with seven or eight drinks from his bottle gourd. Then he scurried away in a drunken stupor.

“I subdued the bakemono!” the rōnin declared to the emperor. The emperor was overjoyed, and he awarded the rōnin a generous fief to rule over. This is truly the power of sake.