Japan has an incredibly rich supernatural history. Kaidan (怪談) is the Edo term for “ghost story”; nowadays ホラー (horror) or 怖い話 (kowai hanashi; “scary story”) is the common term. We already dove a little into Japan’s supernatural landscape in my article on the night parade of one hundred demons and went in-depth on the urban horror icon Momo and her brief Internet reign of terror. Now we’re going to feature some better-known and intriguing ghost stories. While ghost stories are told during October in the West, in Japan they’re circulated in summer as a prelude to the Obon (お盆) festival held in August.
Japan has a plethora of ghosts, spirits, demons, and so on, many falling under different categories. Some of the more notable ghost stories focus on female yurei (幽霊). Urban legends today also focus on the grisly deaths of women and their paths to revenge. Here’s five traditional and modern ghost stories featuring some of Japan’s most deadly female horrors.
Yotsuya Kaidan (四谷怪談)
The 1825 kabuki play Yotsuya Kaidan is arguably the most popular yurei story in Japan. The author, Tsuruya Nanboku IV, drew inspiration from two incidents. In the first incident, disgruntled servants murdered their masters; both were executed on the same day. The second incident involved a samurai who discovered an affair between his concubine and a servant. He murdered them in a fit of rage and nailed their corpses to a plank of wood before throwing them into the Kanda River.
Despite the addition of several subplots and characters over the years, the basic plot and characters remain relatively unchanged. The wronged woman is the sickly Oiwa, a new mother and faithful wife to the ronin (masterless samurai) Iemon. Iemon, however, is unhappy with his lot in life, and after killing Oiwa’s father, begins to lust after his neighbor’s granddaughter Oume. He convinces Oiwa to drink medicine to help her health, but the medicine is actually poison, and Oiwa is horribly disfigured as a result. When faced with irrefutable proof of her husband’s treachery, Oiwa spirals into rage and resentment. Her negative emotions mixed with the poison eventually lead to her death.
Iemon discovers his servant Kohei is privy to his crimes. He accuses Kohei of theft as an excuse to murder him before fastening Kohei and Oiwa’s bodies to a wooden door and dumping them in a river. Oiwa’s haunting begins in earnest on Iemon’s wedding day when he lifts the veil covering his new bride and sees Oiwa instead. Maddened with fear, he slays his new bride. Iemon flees, pursued everywhere by ghosts, unable to escape Oiwa’s marred face.
At his wit’s end, Iemon seeks refuge on Snake Mountain (蛇山; Hebiyama) but is unable to find peace. In the end, Iemon’s brother-in-law Yomoshichi finds and kills Iemon.
The Night Weeping Rock (夜泣き石)
Sometimes it’s not a person who’s responsible for a haunting, but an object. This was the case for a large boulder near the legendary mountain pass Sayo no Nakayama (小夜の中山), one of three treacherous mountain passes along the ancient highway Tōkaidō between Nissaka and Kanaya.
The story goes that a pregnant Buddhist woman was traveling alone to Nissaka to reunite with her husband. On the way, however, misfortune befell her in the form of a merciless thief. He murdered her without qualm, and her blood spilled onto a large rock. Her spirit haunted this rock and began to cry out. A Buddhist priest — or Kannon, the Goddess of Mercy, depending on which version you hear — heard the wailing and managed to rescue the baby, raising it on kosodate ame (子育て飴), or “child-rearing candy.” Once fully-grown, the child successfully avenged his mother’s death.
Similar weeping rocks have popped up all over the country. One in Takachiho, Kyushu, while not haunted, purportedly can calm down any screaming infant who comes into contact with it.
Genji Monogatari and Lady Rokujo
Murasaki Shikibu’s Genji Monogatari covers numerous aspects of court life, including supernatural drama. Once again a yurei takes center stage in the form of the Lady Rokujo (六条御息所; ろくじょうのみやすんどころ), one of Genji’s many spurned paramours. Unlike a typical yurei, however, Lady Rokujo isn’t dead when she starts to carry out her crimes — she’s very much alive. It’s her malicious spirit leaving her body as an ikiryou (生霊) that causes mayhem and misfortune.
Genji and Lady Rokujo’s love was doomed from the beginning. Once engaged to the crown prince until his death, Lady Rokujo carried herself with dignity and pride and fell hard for the younger ambitious Genji. Unfortunately, her status and age made it difficult for Genji to reciprocate her feelings. Court etiquette prevented her from expressing her true feelings, and Genji eventually left her for another woman. Seething in jealousy and rage, Lady Rokujo unknowingly starts to morph into a vicious demon.
Lady Rokujo and Lady Aoi
The true haunting began when two carriages collided during the Hollyhock Festival. One carriage belonged to Lady Rokujo, and the other to Genji’s wife, the Lady Aoi. Lady Rokujo discovers that Lady Aoi is pregnant. Her carefully smothered feelings of jealousy break free. Envious of Lady Aoi’s status and pregnancy, the Lady Rokujo underwent a separation of soul and body, with the former plaguing Lady Aoi nightly. Genji’s wife gave birth to his son but died as a result of Lady Rokujo’s spiritual harassment.
Upon waking, the Lady realized she smelled of the protection charms used in vain to save Lady Aoi. Realizing she is the one to blame, Lady Rokujo takes her young daughter Akikonomu and removes herself from court life for a few years. Absence didn’t make Genji’s heart grow any fonder of Lady Rokujo; when she falls ill, Genji visits her only to be absolutely smitten with Akikonomu. Lady Rokujo dies soon after.
Lady Rokujo’s soul wasn’t appeased with her bodily demise. Now a shiryo (死霊), a dead person’s spirit, she continued to harass Genji’s new wife Murasaki and his female servants. Akikonomu took pity upon her mother and freed her spirit through memorial rituals.
Hanako-san (花子さん)
Modernity didn’t put a damper on the Japanese belief in ghosts, but rather lead to the birth of new ghost stories and urban legends (都市伝説; toshi densetsu). Hanako-san (花子さん), sometimes known as トイレの花子さん (“Hanako in the Toilet”), has been haunting school bathrooms since 1950. Her reign of horror peaked in the 80s and 90s with various anime and manga adaptations. She’s usually depicted in a white blouse and red skirt. Her origins are murky but supposedly lie in a young girl’s death at a school. She haunts a specific bathroom stall on a specific floor of the school.
As with any urban legend, details of the story vary by region. In Tokyo, if you knock on a stall in the 3rd-floor women’s bathroom, you might hear a little girl’s voice call out, “What?” to which you reply “Sorry, Hanako-san” to appease her. In Saitama Prefecture, you have to knock 15 times on the 4th stall and say “Hanako-san, let’s play” to summon Hanako-san, who might reply “Okay!” In Yokohama, Hanako-san and her male counterpart, Yosuke-san, will kill you if you don’t manage to escape in 3 seconds. You’ll know they’re after you if you see a hand claw its way out of a bloody toilet bowl.
Kuchisake-onna (口裂け女)
No doubt one of my favorite urban legends, the vengeful spirit (怨霊; onryou) Kushisake-onna (口裂け女), or “Slit-Mouthed Woman”, has actively terrorized people since the late 70s. This beautiful woman with her signature “chelsea smile” lurks in dark alleys and streets. One story has her husband mutilating his wife out of jealousy, and her resentment turned her into an onryou.
Kushisake-onna actually caused quite a panic in the 70s, so much so that she made the headlines of the Shunkan Asahi (週刊朝日). In 1978, someone spotted an old woman with a cleft palette using the restroom outside her residence. From there, rumors ran that she also didn’t have eyes. The ensuing panic prompted PTA members to walk children in groups to and from school. It didn’t help that in 1979 a woman decided to play a prank and wander about Himeji with a knife.
She usually wears a surgical mask or hides her face with a fan and carries a sharp object, like a pair of scissors, a scalpel, knife, machete, and so on. If you’re unlucky enough to encounter Kuchisake-onna, she’ll first ask you if she’s pretty. Respond with a no, and you’re dead. Respond with a yes, and she’ll reveal her mutilated face and ask again if she’s pretty. Say no and you’re dead; say yes, and she’ll give you a matching chelsea smile.
There are ways to thwart the Kuchisake-onna from killing or disfiguring you. If you reply “maybe” to her question, her confusion will give you enough time to make your escape. She also has a fondness of hard candy; if you manage to distract her with some candy, your chances of escaping unharmed increase.
This is only a small glimpse into Japan’s supernatural landscape. The world of yokai exists in tandem with the human world; to be ignorant of its presence is not wise. I definitely recommend diving further into the spiritual realm. Better to be prepared in case you ever come across a Kuchisake-onna!
Sources
Addiss, Stephen. Japanese Ghosts and Demons: Art of the Supernatural: G. Braziller, 1985.
Yoda, Hiroko, et al. Yurei Attack!: the Japanese Ghost Survival Guide. Tuttle Publishing, 2012.
