Continuing with the animal theme of the past few days, tonight’s story is the tale of a horse’s onryō. As is frequently the case with stories about incidents involving animals, the evil originates once again with the humans in the story, rather than the animals. Funny how that works…

The Dead Horse’s Vengeful Spirit

Jakuren-ji Temple in Koishikawa is the family temple of my acquaintance Yamasaki who frequently visits me. The head priest of Jakuren-ji came to me and told me the following strange tale.

In Himeji Domain there was a man named Murata Yazaemon. He had a beautiful daughter aged around 16 or 17, and she had many suitors.

Anyway, his daughter fell ill for some time. The anguish her parents felt was indescribable. She would ramble incoherently like a madman, and it seemed like she harbored some sort of grudge. They performed prayers and exorcisms, but they had no effect. Yazaemon grew deeply troubled.

“Surely this is the work of a fox or a tanuki!” he raged, and pressed his daughter for answers.

“I am certainly not a fox or a tanuki,” babbled the daughter. “This girls’ grandmother was the daughter of Ōkōchi Tatewaki and she cruelly slew me. With my grudge I have placed a curse on this family. I will kill this girl and end your bloodline.”

“Whose grudge is this?” asked Yazaemon.

She rambled again: “I was a horse kept by this family, but I became old and could no longer be ridden or even graze. When the girl’s grandmother was told of this, she said that old horses were useless, and I should be discarded in a field. Following her orders, I was abandoned in a place called Tengu Valley in Umayabashi, and there I starved to death. They cherished me when I was useful, but were so heartless when I was no longer of use. That is my grudge, and that is why you shall pay!”

After that they understood the issue, and they performed memorial services for the deceased, and the daughter recovered from her illness.

Tonight’s story is another pet one, and like last night’s it’s a tragic one. Sorry to all the pet lovers out there… The story ends with the cat killing itself, although it does not specify how. In my painting I decided it would be by knife. I imagined a situation in which the cat was so ashamed or overcome with what it did that it performed sort of a samurai-like seppuku. But it may have drowned itself, or strangled itself, or who knows what else… The jealousy and resentment the old cat felt, along with the guilt at killing its master, are not expressed in words in the story at all. It’s something we have to fill in ourselves. However I like it better without those being spelled out for us. It’s part of the spartan style that so many yokai stories have, which I am always gushing about, but I personally find it so much more effective than when characters thoughts are explicitly spelled out for the reader.

The Injury Caused by an Old Cat

This happened recently.

In a townhouse in Muromachi 1-chōme, there lived an elderly man who loved cats and kept one as a pet. As it grew older, his cat grew exceedingly large and could no longer catch mice.

His wife had recently taken in a kitten, and she found the old cat a bit bothersome. She favored the kitten, and she would smack the old cat on the head whenever it came near.

One day, when the wife was napping upstairs, the old cat bit her on the throat. The wife screamed, but nobody heard her until finally, someone from a neighboring house discovered her and came running. As the household members and other people rushed over, the cat fled.

The wife died shortly after, and it is said the cat retreated to the back room of the house and killed itself.

Tonight’s story is a bittersweet one that I’m sure will leave many animal lovers in tears. I’ve seen plenty of rat yokai stories over the years, but none quite as heartbreaking as this one.

I hope you enjoy it!

The Rat’s Gratitude; or, The Miraculous Cure for Rat-Bite Fever

The mother of a man named Saigō Ichizaemon had a pet rat which she loved dearly. Yet, for some reason, the rat bit her on the finger. It was extremely painful and her finger swelled up, so Ichizaemon stopped by.

“What a detestable thing! This stupid beast doesn’t understand how much affection it is given, and it does something as outrageous as this!” he said. Then he struck the rat, and it fled.

That night, the rat appeared to the mother in a dream and said, “If you apply dried white azalea to your finger, the infection will vanish instantly and you will heal.” Then it placed a white azalea flower next to her pillow, and the mother woke from her dream.

Startled from her dream, she looked beside her pillow and discovered her rat dead, clutching the white azalea flower in its mouth. She applied the flower to the wound on her finger, and the swelling instantly subsided and healed.

Today I am sharing another preview of a creature from Echizen-Wakasa Kidan. Tonight’s story comes from Wakasa, the southern part of Fukui Prefecture. Wakasa is home to several famous mermaid myths, and this is one of my favorite ones. I like it for several reasons — the first being that the mermaid is so pathetic and the way she dies is so miserable that I feel bad for her. The second is that there actually was a massive earthquake that happened during the timeline of this story. The 1707 Hōei earthquake was, until March 2011, the most powerful earthquake in Japan’s history. It’s entirely possible that an entire village did in fact sink into the sea during this this event. Could this be the earthquake referenced in the story? It sure seems possible. Hopefully that disastrous quake was not all the responsibility of this one stupid fisherman!

The Emissary of Mizen Myōjin
from Shokoku rijin dan

Mount Mizen (today Mount Aoba) in Wakasa Province was said to be a place where evil spirits dwell, and people would not climb higher up the mountain than the eighth station. According to legend, the emissary of Mizen Myōjin is a mermaid.

This took place during the Hōei era (1704-11). A fisherman from the village of Otomi went out to sea when he saw what looked like a person lying down on top of a rock. Its head was like a human, with a flapping red thing like a chicken’s comb wrapped around its neck, and everything beneath that was fish. The fisherman lightly tapped it with his oar, and it instantly died. The fisherman threw the carcass into the sea and returned to his village, after which a typhoon blew in, and a rumbling noise from the sea was heard non-stop for seven days. Then, about thirty days later, a great earthquake struck, the earth split wide open from the base of Mount Mizen to the seashore, and the entire village of Otomi fell into the chasm. People said that this was the curse of Mizen Myōjin.