A Gathering of Spirits: Japan's Ghost Story Tradition: From Folklore and Kabuki to Anime and Manga (26 page)

 CHAPTER 26: GIRLY GHOSTS

We’ve already met with a number of ghosts who were created in the realm of
shojo
—manga and anime created with adolescent girls in mind. Even within this limited demographic, the stories, and the ghosts within them, have been all over the map, from the sentimentality of
Ai
Yori
Aoshi
to the gruesomeness of
Ghost
Hunt
. The titles just keep rolling out of the manga magazine publishers, and most are destined never to be seen in the west except over the Internet in scanslation (amateur, do-it-yourself renderings into English, German, or whatever the fan’s language might be). These are lucky enough to have found an official outlet in the west:

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Heaven’s
Will

Satoru Takamiya is writer and artist of this short series that begins outside a “haunted house”. The heroine, Mikuzu, a high school student, is being teased by her friends who try to convince her that there’s no such thing as ghosts. But, as Mikuzu reflects: “Ghosts don’t exist for people who can’t see them; but, to people who can, ghouls and ghosts and fairies exist all over the place!” As if to prove her point, we see her dragging the ghost of a medieval soldier who won’t let go of her ankle.

Meanwhile, Mikuzu has her own troubles: a guy who can’t seem to take his eyes off of her; Mikuzu and her friends refer to him as a “stalker.” As far as Mikuzu’s concerned, there’s no difference between a ghost and a creepy guy.

 86. The Possessed Piano

Things get more intense for Mikuzu when she meets Seto (a boy her age) and Seto (his deceased sister who died seven years before and whose identity he wishes to adopt). Mikuzu is asked to help Seto in an informal ghost-busting company (strictly for the money, which Seto needs for his sex-change operation to “revive” his sister). Woven through the story is their one serious case of exorcism: they are approached by the Student Council President of a prestigious boy’s high school, who has purchased a piano that he cannot play. “Rather,” he says, “while I am playing it, I become possessed by something and lose consciousness.” He lets Mikuzu and Seto live in his house for a week while he takes a quick vacation, during which time he expects them to exorcise whatever’s wrong with the piano.

Things start out complicated, with Mikuzu and Seto being given matching negligees (the President not realizing Seto is a boy) and their assistant Kagari playing the piano for hours to no effect (because he’s a werewolf). Mikuzu and Kagari go to interview the grandson of the piano builder (in part so that Mikuzu find a quick solution, limiting the fee and keeping Seto from sacrificing himself to the sex-change). The piano builder, however, died just before finishing the instrument.

One day when Seto is out of town, Mikuzu actually meets Seto’s kid’s sister’s spirit, trapped in a fan. She says to call her brother by his name, but we don’t learn what it is. When Seto returns, he finds that the demon possessing the piano seems to be getting stronger and needs to be exorcised. The exorcism itself seems to be an easy procedure involving the fan containing the sister’s spirit, but the demon isn’t subdued so easily and swallows Seto. Mikuzu follows him into what looks like a completely different house; she finds Seto; identifying the one note sounded by the piano, touching it with the fan and stating “Be released from your despair,” the piano is healed and the two are returned. The only problem is that the Student Cuoncil President doesn’t pay cash for the exorcism, but plays to Seto’s weakness for pastries.

Like many shoujo manga, this one is rather vague, complicated and seems to be unfinished. The issue of Seto’s sister and his death-wish are left unresolved, as are relations between Seto, Mikuzu and Kagari. This unresolved state of affairs is considered poetic and aesthetic, focusing on emotion expressed through the action.

Bound
Beauty
(Shibariya
komachi)

The Japanese view of the universe depicts destiny as, among other things, a scarlet thread tied around one’s little finger, linking one (especially romantically) to someone else. This is part of the
yubikiri
“pinky swear” gesture still common in Japan. The manga by Mick Takeuchi centers on a high school girl named Chiyako who can actually see these threads; not only that, she does a little “insider trading” with this information, making money by telling romance fortunes.

Haruka

Toko Mizuno’s manga
Haruka—Beyond
the
Stream
of
Time
(a translation of
Harukanaru
toki
no
Naka
de
Hachiyoo
Shoo
) has appeared in Japan’s
LaLa
and America’s
Shojo
Beat
magazines. The manga’s been criticized as a recycling of Yu Watase’s similarly plotted
Fushigi
Yugi
. However, this manga was inspired not by another romance manga but by a romantic video game. The series runs to fifteen tankobon volumes in Japan; only the first two volumes are available so far in America, and animated versions in both countries.

 87. A Killer Koto

The lead character, Akane Motomiya, starts out as a modern high school student who’s goodhearted, a bit naïve, and who gets an increased scope to use her abilities when she is carried back a thousand years to the Heian period of Japan’s history. This means that she gets involved with the war between the Taira and Heike clans. She also gets involved with the Eight Guardians—a bevy of young good-looking guys.

She meets one of the guys under special circumstances. Akuram, of the Oni (Demon) clan, summoned Akane back to Heian-era Kyoto, and has caused other problems to keep her and her Guardians busy. In one plot enacted over two manga episodes, Toji temple finds itself in possession of a Japanese table-harp or koto. Even though koto come in a variety of sizes, this one has eight strings, is deemed to be too heavy in the lower register, and its music actually kills the monk who sets out to play it. It doesn’t end there, however; the monk’s ghost, filled with anger at being killed, continues to play the koto, intent on killing others.

Akane cannot help this time, having been stricken with a sleeping curse by the sound of the koto. Before this, however, she meets a monk playing an elegy for the dead monk on a flute; this monk flutist is Eisen. The Guardians (not all eight of them have appeared at this point) need to play the koto themselves, to establish which string is the problem. The focus this time is on Eisen, the younger brother of the Heian Emperor, who abandoned his claims on the throne to become a monk. As an accomplished musician, he’s the Guardian who solves the problem of the eight-stringed koto by preparing to play it, even though it may cost him his life to do so.

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Phantom
Dream
(Genei
Musou)

One of the early works of Natsuki Takaya, better known for the wildly successful manga
Fruits
Basket
, this 1994-1997 story, serialized in
Hana
to
Yume
Planet
Zōkan
has some of the comedy but all of the drama of her later work. It tells of Tamaki Otoya, high school student and Shinto priest in training. The latest in a line of such priests, Tamaki doesn’t merely help disturbed souls to find peace after death; he knows that these spirits could do some serious damage if driven by frustration and vengeance. For backup and general guidance, Tamaki can look to his mother and his girlfriend Asahi. His mother is the last remaining member of the family (his father and grandfather having passed on), leaving Tamaki as the head of the shrine.

 88. The Twins Who Weren’t Alike

A third person comes into the picture in the first chapter: a tall and statuesque girl named Mitsuru. Growing up, she had been a friend to both Tamaki and Asahi, but now she is aloof and standoffish. The reason becomes obvious pretty quickly: somewhere along the way, her body has become home to a
jaki
, a spirit that feeds on negative emotions like jealousy or anger. It’s tied to Minoru, Mitsuru’s twin sister who recently died after spending most of her life sickly, in bed, and alone. At first, Tamaki and Asahi assume that Minoru was the source of the negative spiritual energy, resentful of her isolation and her sickly condition. However, the resentment is from Mitsuru herself, feeling the guilt of getting the life that should have been shared with her sister. Asahi volunteers to take Mitsuru’s bitterness and jealousy into herself, because “I’m just bubbling over with love inside.” Minoru appears to actually move the dark feelings from Mitsuru to Asahi, who volunteered to ease her friend’s heart because “Minoru-chan won’t be able to rest in Heaven if you don’t find peace here.”

The bottom line: this series is based less on any internal rules of supernatural cause and effect than it is on the traditional notion that girls are supposed to be
yasashii
(kind, generous, compassionate). Sometimes, guys manifest these behaviors (see Seto in
Heaven’s
Will
, above, or Ichiro in the suicide chapter).

 CHAPTER 27: TRAIN GHOSTS

More accurately, this isn’t the ghost of a train, but a ghost that has come into being because of a train.

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 89. Got legs?

In this story from the 90s manga
Jigoku
Sensei
Nube
, the spirit of a girl cut in half by a commuter train has become a teketeke, which gets its name from the sound it makes getting around with half its body missing.

One of Nueno-sensei’s fifth grade students, Makoto Kurita, has been listening to some high school kid telling tales about the teketeke. It started out as a young girl who tried beating a train across the track, and lost; she was cut in half at the waist. Now, her ghost wanders the streets looking for her legs, and it’s said that anyone who even hears the legend of the teketeke is doomed to die in three days. Makoto is pretty frightened by this story, but the high school student offers to help… for ¥100 (about a dollar). The older student gets the money, tells Makoto “You’re on your own,” and takes off.

Makoto then enlists the help of his teacher and some of the other students; they keep watch and, sure enough, late one night the monstrous teketeke appears; torso cut off at the waist, dragging her entrails on the ground, wanting to cut off Makoto’s legs to replace her own. Nueno steps in, protecting Makoto with his demon claw while asking, “Listen, Makoto; why can’t this person rest in peace? Why is she saying these things?” Makoto looks, and sees tears on the horrible face of the teketeke. He realizes that this monster was once just a kid who wanted to live like a kid; she got caught up in the bitterness of her fate. Makoto prays for her to find peace, and she vanishes.

The prayer hasn’t healed the teketeke; it merely spared Makoto. In the apartment of the high school student, we see him counting the money he took from Makoto, among others, laughing at the younger students for believing in ghost stories. He stops laughing when the teketeke appears… and the final scene shows the ghost moving through the alleys of the city, dragging the older boy’s bloody pair of legs behind her.

2009 appeared to be a big year for the teketeke, with two Japanese feature films due out featuring this particular ghost.

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We’ve already met the crew from Yoshiyuki Nishi’s manga
Muyo
to
Rouji
no
Mahouritsu
Soudan
Jimusho
(Muyo
&
Rouji’s
Bureau
of
Supernatural
Investigation)
. In this, their first case, they tackle a variant of a teketeke, and find that (no surprise) the best weapon to use against it is, again, compassion.

 90. The Girl on Platform 5

When a troubled, taller than average young girl named Rie comes to their office, Muyo deduces that she has ghostly parasites attached to her legs. Sure enough, he makes visible a pair of fox-spirits wrapped like furry snakes around Rie’s lower legs. This is a violation of spirit law, and Rouji carries out the punishment: banishment.

Rie’s case, which has her disturbed enough to lose sleep over, is based on a rumor. If one goes to platform 5 of the Hashiki Station on the JR line, the ghost of a girl appears. This is bad enough, but the ghost is also reputed to grab people by the ankles and pull them off the platform, into the path of an oncoming train. Rie in fact can put a name to the ghost: she’s convinced that it was once her classmate, Taeko Okazaki. They befriended each other when they made the transition from junior high to high school; they became very close friends. Yet Rie says, “I killed her.”

Her explanation is a bit complicated. On the one day Taeko caught a cold and stayed home from school, Rie was invited to join the girls’ volleyball team. Before this, most of the school apparently avoided speaking to Taeko and Rie, suspecting that they were “too close” and “sick” (meaning, they were suspected of being lesbians). Taeko was fond of holding Rie’s hand, however, and Rie didn’t mind at first. By being on the volleyball team, Rie tells Muyo and Rouji, “suddenly my world changed.” She got more involved in sports and other students, and consequently had less time for Taeko, who had no other friends. Rie didn’t want to let down the team, but Taeko argues one day on the train platform, rather pathetically, that Rie is her only friend. During the argument Taeko fell backward off the platform, into the path of an oncoming train.

Although Taeko has been repeatedly to Rie’s grave, she refuses to step onto Platform 5. Yet this is exactly what Muyo wants her to do, preferably at two in the morning. While the two ghostbusters are intercepted by police (and have to subdue them), Taeko confronts the spirit on Platform 5—which appears to be a large centipede-like creature. Muyo diagnoses the spirit as a jibakurei made up of the hatred and sorrow of all of the train death victims of that station. He opens a portal to Hell to swallow up the jibakurei; however, Rie is still determined to try to save her friend, whose death she still feels she could have averted. Rie is even willing to be pulled into Hell with her friend, but Taeko at the last tells her, “You can’t, Rie, but I’m happy; thank you.” And after having this chance to hold Rie’s hand one last time, Taeko’s ghost is pulled into the underworld. Specifically, Muyo announces that the lord of the underworld has indeed sent Taeko to the River Sanzu rather than directly to Hell. (This more satisfactory resolution is the way stories in this series usually end up.)

As an epilogue, Rie tries to meet with the psychic detectives again to thank them, but they avoid her; it seems that they have a rule never to meet with a former client, for fear of getting the person involved with other spirits. Rie leaves a note anyway, thanking them on behalf of herself and “Taeko, who should be in Heaven by now.”

Even though this series ran in
Shonen
Jump
, a magazine aimed at adolescent boys, and as a result stresses action, this story sets the tenor of the entire series by mixing magic spells with compassion. Rie had been properly penitent and tried repeatedly to apologize to Taeko’s spirit for breaking her promise of lifelong friendship. However, Taeko’s spirit was overwhelmed and subsumed into the centipede-like jibakurei. Once the other spirits had been peeled away, Taeko was able to speak with Rie directly. This episode also shows the reader what disasters could have been avoided if Rei had thought more about Taeko, and tried to balance the two aspects of her new life—the team and her friend—instead of going from one to the other.

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The
Gakkou
no
Kaidan
anime series has its own connection to a railroad ghost, although it starts out and ends up in a taxicab.

It’s two in the morning on a rainy night, at a railroad crossing on a lonely country road. A taxi driver is thinking of going home and calling it a night. Suddenly, a type we’re familiar with by now appears directly in front of the cab: a pale-skinned woman whose long black hair is hanging in front of her face. The taxi driver jams on the brakes and goes out to check on the woman he’s sure he hit. But there’s nobody in front of the cab. When he gets back behind the wheel, the woman is sitting in the back seat. The title of the episode: “The ghost photograph that takes lives: The Railroad crossing of evil.”

Once it’s established (see chapter 20 on spirit photography) that this particular crossing is haunted, the fifth grade student named Leo notices that an offering has been made there: a vase of flowers, rice balls and a juice box have been set up on the spot by, as it turns out, the victim’s mother.