A Gathering of Spirits: Japan's Ghost Story Tradition: From Folklore and Kabuki to Anime and Manga (11 page)

 CHAPTER 14: PRINCESS OF THE DARK TOWER A/K/A TENSHU MONOGATARI (STORY OF THE CASTLE TOWER)

Izumi Kyoka (1873-1939) didn’t really exist. It’s the pen name for a prolific and talented writer of the Meiji era, Izumi Kyotaro. His output included novels, short stories, and plays for the Kabuki theater, including
Tenshu
monogatari
(1917). He was introduced to Kabuki through his mother’s family: his mother’s father had been a musician and his uncle was a renowned Noh actor, Kintaro Matsumoto. At age 18 Izumi became an apprentice to Koyo Ozaki, one of the great writers of the day. By 1895 he had published his first major success, the novel
Yakoujunsa
(
The
Night
Watchman
), and remained a prominent writer until his death. His health almost always compromised by one illness or another, Izumi’s work is known for its use of the supernatural (more than half of his writings deal with ghosts or spirits) and dealing very little with jazz, machinery, or other aspects of “modern” life and literature. In a time when Japanese literature focused on young girls being romanced (in reality or fantasy) by older men, Izumi’s works often turned on an older woman aiding a younger man;
Tenshu
monogatari
is, in a sense, one such work.

Only a handful of Izumi’s works have been translated into English, and it can be argued that
Tenshu
monogatari
isn’t one of those works. Even though it was animated following a screenplay by Yuji Sakamoto and directed by Hidehiko Kadota (previously an animator on two of the
Dragonball
Z
movies) as a four-part story along with two other ghost stories (the classic
Yotsuya
Kaidan
(see chapter 11) and the original
Bake
neko
(coming up in chapter 15)) by Toei in 2006 for broadcast on Japanese television under the collective name
Ayakashi
, the story was modified a bit from Izumi’s original.

 30. Because of a falcon

In this version, the ghostly princess Tomihime and her retinue of ghostly women live at the top of a tower in Shirasagi-jo castle. Just as humans are warned in these stories not to meddle in the affairs of spirits, the ghostly women (who range in age from old crones to little girls) know that they must not deal with the world of humans—except that their diet largely consists of human flesh. They eat people, as Tomihime explains, “to escape the pain and suffering” of their immortal state, which places them in the Hungry Ghost tradition. Part of the curse of being a Hungry Ghost is that one eats but is never satisfied; often, what one eats is human flesh and blood—or something even more disgusting.

This story, however, is based on a love affair between Tomihime and Zushonosuke, a falconer for the decadent Lord Harima. One day, while looking for a strayed falcon, Zushonosuke spies Tomihime bathing in a pond—and the dominoes begin to fall, not only for the love affair between the human and the ghost, but also for Zushonosuke’s rebellion against his master in the name of love. Tomihime also must rebel, for the sake of her love for a mortal; the “life” of a ghost is formal, stilted, and repetitive, like life at court, and some have seen this story of defiance of tradition as a social comment by Izumi. Of course, it also works as a chilling tale of supernatural love.

It’s ultimately an ill-fated love, as we knew from the beginning. Zushonosuke and Tomihime try to set up housekeeping among the humans, but, returning to the castle for Lord Harima’s falcon, Tomihime has to attack one of her ladies, who “dies” of her wounds. Zushonosuke is sent back to the village alone, where he takes up with an old girlfriend, Oshizu. In a moment of jealousy, Oshizu tells Lord Harima that his missing falcon is still at Shirasagi-jo, held captive by an evil spirit. Lord Harima sends a thousand men to storm the castle, but Tomihime and the others, including Zushonosuke, destroy them all, even as the castle is destroyed in the process. At the end, we see the falcon that started the entire story circling above the ruined castle; now, however, it has been joined by two others, meant to be the spirits of Tomihime and Zushonosuke…

One fascinating aspect of this anime is the constant appearance, just on the edges of the frame, of stone figures of monks and (occasionally) demons, often barely visible in the tall grass. The monks represent Jizo, a Buddhist saint (bodhisattva) believed to protect children both in this life and the afterlife; in recent years, Jizo statues are erected by those who have abortions in Japan as a way of apologizing to the fetus and praying that it will be born under better circumstances. There are also statues of the Chinese goddess of compassion, Kannon (the Japanese name of Kwan Yin). Many of these statues are draped with a bit of red cloth; these were garments of dead children, brought to protect the statue in hopes that the Jizo will protect the spirit of the dead child.
[38]
The sheer number of these statues in the area around Shirasagi-jo indicates that the humans had lost a great many children, possibly to the swampland, possibly to the ghosts of the castle.

There is one other detail in the anime that dates the events: candy. In particular, a sweet candy called by the Japanese “konpeitou.” This is actually a loan word, from the Portuguese “confeito” (confection, candy). It’s one of several Portuguese loan words (like the word for bread, “pan”) that came to Japan along with Portuguese sailors in the latter half of the 1500s. Unlike the Portuguese sailors, the words stayed in Japan.

 CHAPTER 15: CATS AND DOGS

We’ve looked at
Yotsuya
Kaidan
and
Tenshu
Monogatari
, two of the three anime ghost stories that make up the TV series
Ayakashi
. The third is in many ways completely different from the other two. Before we touch on the third story, which deals with a demonic cat spirit, it’s worth remembering that a number of Japanese ghost stories revolve around common pets.

Not all ghosts are human, but that doesn’t make them monsters, either. If all living things have spirits, then those spirits at the moment of death also move from our “real” world to the spirit world. Sometimes, though, it’s no easier for the pets than for their owners.

Take the case of Kazumi Ryudo, son of a Buddhist exorcist and a member of the Holy Student Council at Saito High School. In a school where the ghostly activities are never-ending, it’s all Kazumi can do to get through one day in the comic anime series
Haunted
Junction
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without being possessed by random spirits—even those of dogs and cats. We often see the boy-monk scratching behind his ear with his foot, or with his back arched and screeching like a frightened feline; usually a punch to the head sets the invading spirit free.

More about cats later; dogs are another matter.

Dog-gone

Dogs have a special role in Japanese folklore. People used to believe that dogs could see ghosts and spirits that were invisible to humans. Thus the best protection against the wiles of a kitsune (fox spirit) or tanuki (a dog that resembles a raccoon; it and the fox are believed to be magical animals) was a faithful dog’s watchful eye. The step from having the second sight to entering the spirit world was a short one, however. In Japanese legend, Inugami (Dog-God) is an invisible creature that can be summoned by a witch to fulfill various destructive purposes. But the witch has to be careful—the Inugami can possess her and take over her body and soul.
[40]

The three pet stories coming up next focus on the positive rather than the demonic: on the devotion dogs show their masters—except that one of them has a surprise ending.

 31. Because even a dog should rest in peace

In
YuYu
Hakusho
, street-fighting punk Yusuke Urameshi is killed trying to save a child from a traffic accident. To earn his way back to the land of the living, he has to undergo a number of trials, the first of which involves a boy named Shota and his old dog, Jiro. Shota is so upset about Jiro dying that he doesn’t want to go to school; he’d rather wait for the end with his dog. This, however, isn’t the way it’s supposed to be; Yusuke’s guide to the underworld, Botan, points out that, even after death, Jiro’s spirit circled the house looking for Shota. Yusuke’s task: to break Shota of his clinging to Jiro, which is actually doing the dog’s spirit more harm than good by holding him to this world.

Yusuke appears to Shota in a dream, disguised as the Lord of Hell (complete with penciled-in mustache), leading Jiro on a barbed wire leash and telling Shota that his concern for his pet made Jiro lose his chance for peace in the afterlife. Yusuke goads Shota into a fight (which was just about the only thing Yusuke understood when he was alive), which Yusuke throws in order to get Shota to let Jiro’s spirit go, rather than cause it to remain attached to the earth by fretting and fussing over it. “I’ll miss you, but I’ll do my best,” he tells Jiro’s spirit as it ascends into the sky.

Ghost stories are a reminder that, even on the canine level, destiny applies to all things, and death is part of that destiny. If a soul is frozen to a spot, even out of good but misguided emotions like love and faithfulness, destiny cannot go forward.

 32. Mission accomplished

The title of Yukiru Sugisaki’s manga series
Lagoon
Engine
is an elaborate pun based on the names of its two main characters: the sons of the Ragun family, Yen and Jin, ages 12 and 11. The manga ran in the Japanese magazine
Asuka
and its sequel,
Lagoon
Engine
Einsatz
, was briefly printed in translation in
NewType
USA
.
Asuka
is nominally a
shonen
manga
magazine, aimed at an audience of adolescent boys, and therefore should focus on action adventure and macho themes. There are a lot of
shojo
manga
touches to this title, however, which suggests at least a crossover to the girls’ market.
Lagoon
Engine
especially shows the influence of CLAMP, the women manga artists collective, and suggests that
Lagoon
Engine
is one of a growing number of crossover manga, capable of appealing to both boys and girls.

The Ragun brothers are still in elementary school, but have been studying their father’s business of becoming gakushi (the kanji literally means music masters, but the kanji “gaku” can also be pronounced “raku” and carries the meaning of comfort or relief). As exorcists, their job is to bring comfort to ghosts and other evil (or merely tormented) spirits. In order to comfort the spirits, the brothers have to subdue them, and to subdue them, they have to state the demons’ true names. This is a motif that appears elsewhere in manga and anime; the 1988
Vampire
Princess
Miyu
OAV series
[41]
shows the eternally teenaged vampire of the title subduing one evil spirit after another by stating its name. (I presume that stating its name strips away its illusory disguises and reveals the spirit for what it is. At the very least, it’s a tipoff that the ghost-chaser can see the otherwise invisible or disguised quarry.)

The brothers are aided by other spirits called koga, vaguely resembling little stuffed unicorns. And if you think that’s cute, you should see the first ghost that appears in this series: the ghost of a little puppy. It had gone on its own to see its owner, a classmate of Yen’s who has had to spend two years in the hospital. The puppy, named Tom, bit through its leash and went to the hospital to see its owner, but had gotten hit by a car before it could get there. Since then, its spirit haunted a temple near the hospital looking for its mistress, tugging at the stockings of little girls it believed to be its owner. It took the two brothers to put the clues together and realize that the puppy wanted to see its owner one last time before its soul moved on to the afterlife.
[42]

This story and the next present an image of the faithful dog that has been a Japanese icon for decades. The details may vary, but these stories would surely remind Japanese readers/viewers of perhaps that country’s best-known dog, Hachiko (see sidebar).

 33. Whose ghost is it?

As they travel in search of tournaments, the episode of
Pokémon
with the English title “Just Waiting on a Friend” has Ash, Misty, Brock, and their various pokémon stop at a house, standing alone in the middle of the forest, seeking shelter for the night. Inside they discover the owner of the house: Lakoko, a girl with a pet Ninetails. This pokémon (none of them have names except for their species) is a fox type, but this animal has a particularly Japanese trait, as its name suggests: nine tails. This is common in a
kyuubi-no-kitsune
(literally, nine-tailed fox), a powerful fox demon (a nine-tailed fox spirit possessed Naruto at birth, in the manga by Masashi Kishimoto, and in the
Digimon
anime series one of the fighting forms of the fox-like Renamon is a nine-tailed fox named Kyuubimon), and suggests the animal may be more than she seems.

Brock (as usual) is instantly smitten by Lakoko’s beauty, and for once she likes him in return. Brock blurts out that he wants to marry her and Lakoko surprisingly agrees. Brock rushes to hug her; instead, he goes through her. Ash and Misty get scared and suspicious; just then, a fog appears and Ninetails mysteriously blasts them out of the house. Ash and Misty sneak back in and find what seems to be a decades-old picture of Brock in the house. Also there’s a diary apparently written by Lakoko, except that it’s over 200 years old. Misty and Ash try to stop Lakoko from keeping Brock with her, suspecting that she is a predatory ghost.

Ash and company finally discover the truth: there is no Lakoko. Ninetails is actually 200 years old. The owner of the house (who bore the uncanny resemblance to Brock) went traveling on business years ago, leaving behind his staff of servants (including Lakoko) and his pokémon Ninetails. He was never heard from again. One by one the servants died or left the house, until the last two in the house were Lakoko and the Ninetails. Because of her age and experience, this Ninetails developed psychic abilities to the point that she was still alive after two centuries. Ninetails created an image of Lakoko to keep her company, but when she saw Brock she hoped that if this lookalike of her old master stayed, everything would be as it was before. With the breaking of her old pokéball during a scuffle with Ash, Ninetails is free to be wild and not restricted to the mansion anymore.

So there was no ghost at all; just a highly-evolved psychic pokémon. But the episode’s worth including here because it sounds so many of the themes of the classic
kaidan
. The beautiful, powerful, and clearly not-human maiden asks a mortal to stay with her forever, and he very nearly accepts. Of course Ash and Misty would presume that the human was a ghost causing everything to happen; who would imagine that a pet could bring all this about? This particular pseudo-ghost story, though, like the two that precede it, would also resonate with any Japanese child who’s heard the story of faithful Hachiko.

Sidebar:
The
Faithful
Hachiko

Shibuya is a neighborhood known today as a popular gathering point for Tokyo’s young people. But long before loose socks and platform sandals, before Yoyogi Park and the Shibuya 109 shopping mall, Shibuya had another claim to fame: a dog named Hachiko.

The year was 1925. Professor Eizaburo Ueno walked to Shibuya Station every morning, accompanied by his loyal akita, Hachi, nicknamed Hachiko. Hachiko didn’t ride the train with his master to the Imperial University (now known as Tokyo University), but when Professor Ueno returned every day at 3 p.m., the dog was always at the station waiting for him.

However, on May 21 of that year, Ueno died of a stroke while at the university. Hachiko went to Shibuya as always to meet his master, but 3:00 came and went, and the professor didn’t arrive. So Hachiko waited. And waited.

The akita must have known something was wrong, but nonetheless he returned to the station every day at 3:00 to meet the train. Soon people began to notice the loyal dog’s trips made in vain to meet his master. Ueno’s former gardener, the Shibuya stationmaster, and others began feeding Hachiko and giving him shelter.

Word of Hachiko’s unaltered routine spread across the nation, and he was held up as a shining example of loyalty. People traveled to Shibuya simply to see Hachiko, feed him, and gently touch his head for luck.

The months turned to years, and still Hachiko returned to Shibuya Station daily at 3 p.m., even as arthritis and age took their toll. Finally, on March 7, 1935 — nearly ten years after last seeing Professor Ueno — the 12-year-old akita was found dead on the same spot outside the station where he had spent so many hours waiting for his master.

Hachiko’s death made the front pages of major Japanese newspapers. A day of mourning was declared. Contributions poured in from all over the country to memorialize the dog that had won the hearts of the nation. Sculptor Takeshi Ando was hired, with the money that had been contributed, to create a bronze statue of Hachiko. It was placed on the exact spot where Hachiko had waited for so long.

Within a few years, however, Japan was at war, and any available metal was melted down to make weapons and ammunition. Not even Hachiko’s statue was spared. However, after the war, in 1948, Ando’s son Teru sculpted a new Hachiko—the statue that stands outside Shibuya Station to this day.

This is not the only monument to Chuken (“loyal dog”) Hachiko to be found in Tokyo, however. Aoyama Cemetery contains a memorial to Hachiko on the site of Professor Ueno’s grave. Some of Hachiko’s bones are reportedly buried there, but in fact, Hachiko can still be seen—stuffed, in the National Science Museum, northwest of Ueno Station. March 7, the anniversary of his death, is the Chuken Hachiko Matsuri (Loyal Hachiko Festival).

Hachiko was given life on the big screen with the
Hachiko
Monogatari
(The
Story
of
Hachiko)
in 1987. The screenplay by Kaneto Shindou was adapted for a 2009 English-language telling of Hachiko’s story.
Hachi:
A
Dog’s
Story
was directed by Lasse Hallström, whose films include
The
Cider
House
Rules
and
What’s
Eating
Gilbert
Grape?
; the cast of western actors includes Richard Gere, Joan Allen, and Jason Alexander, and the movie was filmed not against the backdrop of 1920s Tokyo but in a historic station in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. Almost the only use of the original story is that Hachiko is an akita. The movie was released with very little fanfare and mixed reviews.