Japan has a very rich culture filled with age-old customs and traditions spanning all aspects of life. The Japanese people are known to pioneer many technological discoveries but are also world famous for their artistic endeavors such as the manga.
The characters spawned from the Japanese comics, literature, film and art have become popular even in Western countries such as “Naruto” and “Detective Conan,” among many others. The stories, especially about monsters and ghosts, became instant hits. Who can forget Sadako from “The Ring” movie series?
There are so many famous Japanese ghost stories that you will have difficulty deciding where to start. Japanese ghost stories, unlike with other paranormal tales that often happen at night and winter time, are usually set during the summer. The Japanese have different terms used for the different forms of ghosts and creatures in their stories. These include:
- Obake/bakemono – literally means transforming thing and refers to preternatural beings that are weird or grotesque looking
- Yokai – literally means bewitching apparition which includes ghouls, goblins and monsters that appear at dawn or dusk
- Yurei – this term means dim, hazy or faint spirit, the Japanese version of ghosts or the spirits of the dead that usually seek vengeance and appear between 2 and 3 AM
- Oni – means demons or ogres which are violent beings with horns and fangs that perform tortures within Buddhist hells
Two of the most famous Japanese ghost stories are
- Bancho Sarayashiki which is about the ghost of Okiku and the nine plates. This Japanese ghost story tells of the tale of Okiku who was hired as a maid in the home of a samurai named Tessa Aoyama. One day while Okiku was cleaning a collection ten precious ceramic plates of Aoyama’s family, she accidentally broke one of them. Aoyama became enraged, killed her and threw her into an old well. After a while, the ghost of Okiku appears every night from the well, slowly counts from one to nine, and then cries uncontrollably over and over for several nights. She finally stopped when Aoyama became insane thus, vengeance was served.
- Yotsuya Kaidan is a Japanese ghost story that begins with Iyemon, a masterless samurai experiencing difficult times with his beautiful but sickly wife Oiwa who was also pregnant with their child. After a while, he became resentful of his situation as well as of his wife that he gave in to temptation. A wealthy neighbor, whose granddaughter fell in love with Iyemon, wanted him to be his son-in-law and thus encouraged him to poison Oiwa. When Oiwa drank the supposedly medicinal drink she became horribly disfigured and died a brutal death. To justify his actions of killing Oiwa, Iyemon made up stories that she was having an affair with a servant named Kobotoke Kohei. He then kills Kohei, too, nailed the bodies into opposite sides of a door and threw them into the river. Afterwards Iyemon immediately married his neighbor’s granddaughter but during the wedding when he lifted his bride’s veil to kiss her, he saw instead the disfigured face of Oiwa. He was terrified and cut of her head but it was too late to realize that he actually killed his new wife. He ran off to confess to the grandfather only to see the ghost of Kohei along the way. He slashed his head but afterwards saw the body of the grandfather. Iyemon escaped but kept on seeing the faces of Oiwa and Kohei until finally Oiwa’s brother came to find him and took vengeance for Oiwa’s death.
If you are interested in more historical facts and memorabilia, drop by realmcollections.com, including a large variety of Oriental Swords, including Ninja, Wakizashi, Katana, Tanto, Samurai 3000 Collection, Throwing Stars and variety of other decorative and medieval Japanese Swords.