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.

Today and tomorrow my schedule is super busy, so I’m sharing stories from Echizen-Wakasa Kidan for A-Yokai-A-Day again this weekend, as I don’t have any spare time to paint. Today I was busy filming video for a Kidan exhibition in Fukui City this November. In addition to an art gallery and story exhibit of many of my yokai paintings and the yokai in Echizen-Wakasa Kidan, there is also going to be a section produced by students from Fukui University of Technology, and I spent today working with students on their part of the exhibition. It reminded me of my days back in art school, and I’m really glad that these kids are getting the chance to produce a section of a major art exhibition. It’s a great opportunity for them.

Tonight’s story is one of the longer ones from the book, and it has a much more narrative telling than a lot of what we’ve seen so far this month. There are several amusing parts — first, the haughty young samurai coming in and thinking they are saving the villagers, only to make things worse; then, the hero of the story somehow holding his breath for an inhuman amount of time. It smacks of tall tale all around, and I love it!

This one was particularly hard to paint, because the extremely vague description of the nushi of the lake. The word nushi means “master” and is used both for people, as in “master of the house,” or “let me speak to your master,” but it is also used for spiritual beings that are the lords of bodies of water, large rocks, mountains, and so on. It’s basically like a tutelary spirit, but it can take all kinds of forms — from dragons, to eels and catfish, to spiders, snakes, and so on. The nushi in this story sounds like something enormous… and Senzaemon manages to just chop a bit off of it. Like a buried kaiju or something. But from the description it is impossible to tell what it could be. What’s your best guess?

The Lord of the Lake
from Kaishū yakō no tama

In Echizen Province, about 5 kilometers from the castle town of Fukui, are the villages of Kakuzen and Futaomote. Between these two villages was a large pond. It was about 220 meters around and somewhat bleak, and in the center of the pond was an area about 90 centimeters wide of clear, blue water. Every year on March 3rd, both villages would prepare an offering of one koku of sekihan and cast them into the center of the pond. This was an old tradition, and they never neglected to perform it. If they failed to do it for even one year, the two villages’ rice fields, which normally yielded 3000 koku, would not produce even a single grain of rice.

One time, five or six young samurai from Fukui Domain went on an excursion and came to this area. One of the samurai said, “They say that a nushi has lived in this pond for a long time. Offering it sekihan every year becomes an expense for these two villages. Would it be so hard to go down into this pond, see if there’s anything suspicious down there, and kill it? I don’t care who does it, but there’s no reason someone who’s a good swimmer shouldn’t go down into the pond and check it out.”

Among the group was a samurai called Urakami Senzaemon, who upon hearing this said, “I’ve been thinking the same thing for some time. I will go and see what is going on.” After that, they all got onto a boat and went out to the center of the pond.

“First let’s measure the depth,” they said. They attached a stone to a rope and dropped it into the pond, lowering it deeper and deeper, but it never reached the bottom. After a while, when the stone had settled, they pulled it out and measured the depth at around 261 to 345 meters. “Perhaps the rope got twisted in the water,” they said, and tried again; but the depth was the same as the first time, not one bit different. Senzaemon said, “Well, I’ll go into the water and check it out.” Stripping off his clothes, he took his sword in hand, tied the rope to his loincloth, and said, “If there’s anything there, I’ll tug this rope. When that happens, you guys pull me up.” Then he dove into the water.

Some time later, the water in the pond turned scarlet and blood began to gush up. The people on the boat were surprised and said, “Senzaemon must have failed. Let’s go after him.” Three of them jumped into the water. About one hour later, Senzaemon and the three men who went in after him emerged from the water unharmed.

Senzaemon turned to the men on the boat and said, “At the bottom of this pond there is a spot about 1.8 meters wide covered in white pebbles. The water is indescribably pure and refreshing. There was something like a 60-centimeter long piece of scrap wood there and nothing else at all. Thinking there was nothing else strange down there, I tried to pick up the wood, but it was too heavy to lift. I tried cutting the piece of wood, and it bled profusely. And here is the scrap-wood-like thing.” The object he produced was hard like a turtle’s shell on top, and the bottom dangled like a jellyfish.

Everyone was puzzled, but thinking that there would be no more trouble, they called people from the two villages together and told them what had happened, and announced that it would no longer be necessary to put sekihan in the water anymore.

The following year, when the two villages didn’t put sekihan into the water, the crop failed just as it had in the beginning, and not a single grain of rice was harvested. So thereafter, every year they have offered one koku each of sekihan without fail, to this day.

Tonight’s story deals with a shiryō. We’ve seen several stories so far about ikiryō, where the emotions of a living person form into a malevolent spirit. A shiryō is the same sort of thing, only they are formed from the emotions of a dead person, rather than a living one.

I find the ending of this story amusing. The husband, embarrassed or ashamed at having been called out by his wife, straight up denies the facts until forced to admit them when she presents her proof. And her reaction is essentially, “Come on man, do the right thing.” You can almost feel her exasperation. She’s the one who get’s haunted, she’s the one who has to pry the truth out of her husband, and she’s the one who has to get him to take care of his old business. I think all probably know somebody like that, so it’s easy to relate to her.

The Ghost of Kuno’s Mistress

Two or three generations ago, around the An’ei era (1772-1781), an acquaintance of mine named Kuno took a wife.

One time, Kuno went out for an evening tea party leaving his wife alone in the bedroom. The moon shone brightly, illuminating the paper sliding doors. Just then, a strange shadow was cast on them.

The wife called out, “Who’s there?”

There was no answer, so she got up and opened the sliding doors to find a woman about to step down from the veranda. She chased after her.

“Who are you?” she demanded, and she grabbed the woman’s hair bun.

“I am Yuka,” replied the woman. Then she vanished, leaving her hair behind. The wife put the hair away, and when her husband came home in the small hours of the morning she asked him, “Before I married you, you had a mistress, didn’t you?”

Since they had only been married for a short time, he denied it: “There was absolutely no such person!”

“Don’t speak that way. Wasn’t there a servant named Yuka…?” she asked.

The husband was shocked. “Why are you asking about such things?”

The wife told him all about what had previously occurred, and she brought out the lock of hair to show him.

“Please perform a proper funeral for the departed,” she pleaded.

The husband accepted this as reasonable and held a memorial service for her.

October is halfway over, and that also means my Kickstarter is halfway over too! So if you haven’t been over to check it out yet, make sure to do so! This is the first ever book of folklore entirely from Fukui Prefecture, and this is the first time these stories have ever been published! Check it out: Echizen-Wakasa Kidan: Strange Tales from Fukui.

Now, on to tonight’s story. This one is a little eerie and I find it a little sad too. The way it is told is in the typical cold and dry style that Negishi uses often through Mimibukuro. It’s not embellished or fancied up to make it sound more gothic or romantic, as Lafcadio Hearn and other storytellers probably would have done. For that, it is certainly less effective as a spooky tale than it could be. This is a report — it’s not something meant to give you the shudders. But on the other hand, the dryness of it makes it much more believable, and since we’re given the names of real people who died, I find myself connecting with them and their families more than I might if it was just “Mr. So-and-so” who died and became a ghost.

I’ve met several people who claim they were visited by their loved ones shortly after they were supposed to have died. It’s an emotional experience, and this kind of encounter is one that is reported often. It’s fair to say those people truly believe it happened — after all, to turn the death of a loved one into an entertaining story on purpose would be an odd decision. Still, we know that human memory is fallible and malleable, and they could believe something that was simply incorrect. In a similar way, I expect that Yokota, who reported these events to Negishi, believed he was reporting truthfully. The style in which it is written makes me focus on the feelings of the people who reported the events, rather than on the events themselves. That’s why I find it slightly sad.

Anyway, what do you think?

Spirits That Return to Their Hometowns

This was recounted by a senior bodyguard named Yokota.

During watch duty at Nijō Castle or Osaka, the main gate to the garrison housing was heavily guarded, and the guards would not let anyone through without permission.

During the Meiwa and An’ei eras (1764-1781), a constable named Sakai Koshichi, who had been assigned to guard duty, arrived at the main gate not at the proper hour, but well after dusk.

“I wish to pass,” he said.

The guard, being a fellow member of the garrison, let him through without suspicion.

That night, Koshichi’s wife had a dream – or so she thought – in which she met Koshichi as he returned home, but he seemed somewhat pale and emaciated.

The next day a letter came from the capital announcing that Koshichi died of illness while on duty.

Similarly, in the fifth year of Bunka (1808), a constable named Matsuyama Yasaburō died on illness on duty at Nijō Castle, but after Yokota returned to Edo, people told him that when Yasaburō died of illness, the Edo main gate guard reported that Yasaburō had returned, and just at that moment a hitodama entered his house and was seen floating up around the roof ridge.

Having twice heard such accounts, Yokota remarked that it seemed spirits could indeed return to their homes.

Tonight’s story is an amusing one, and it also offers a glimpse into what life was like for the elite samurai in Edo — a life of politics and diplomacy. During the Edo period, the shogun kept control over his vassals with a clever system of hostage taking. Every lord was required to keep an estate in Edo, and their wife and children resided there as hostages. The cost of upkeep for a lavish estate, plus staff, in Edo as well as their estate back in their home province was a drain on resources. This system ensured that nobody could rebel effectively against the shogun. And it also allowed for situations like the one in tonight’s story, in which several lords gather to gossip about the situation in their estates.

This story is especially interesting, not just for the punchline, but for the drawing of the kappa that appears in Mimibukuro. Here it is:

In fact, that’s not the only version. Since books were copied by hand, the pictures were often copied by hand, and quality could vary by the artist. Here are two other versions of the kappa from other copies of Mimibukuro:

The quality gradually degrades, just like with the gradual evolution of mermaids on my mermaid poster based on Edo period mermaid drawings.

The Kappa

In August of the first year of Tenmei (1781), in Sendai-gashi at the estate of Lord Date, someone witnessed a kappa being beaten to death and preserved in salt. The witness’s story was made into a picture, which was then brought to me by Lord Matsumoto of Izu when he visited. Upon investigation, the following was revealed:

A young child at that estate drowned for no apparent reason. Due to the suspicious nature, a section of the canal was blocked off and drained dry. Then, something emerged from the mud, with an agility as swift as the wind. They finally managed to shoot it down with a rifle.

Lord Magaribuchi of Kai was also there, and he said:

“Long ago, someone showed me what they claimed was a picture of a kappa, and it was identical in every detail to this picture brought by Lord Izu.”