A Gathering of Spirits: Japan's Ghost Story Tradition: From Folklore and Kabuki to Anime and Manga (4 page)

Kagome tries to befriend the little girl, but the child, whose name is Mayu, doesn’t want anything to do with her. When they reach Satoru’s room, his fatigued single mother is sitting by his side. After a short visit, the equipment in the room starts to malfunction again. Kagome notices that the same little girl is kicking the machines and pulling the cords, but no one else in the room can see her. But there’s also a more dangerous omen: the Tatari-mokke, a ball-shaped cat head with giant eyes, a big mouth and a long fox tail is floating outside the window.

We find out that the little girl Mayu is the ghost of Satoru’s sister. She was a petulant child and had a fight with her mother just before the fire six months earlier. It was winter and they were fighting because the little girl would leave her mittens and scarf on the space heater to dry them off and keep them warm (which she had been warned was a fire hazard). Sure enough, later that day the apartment caught on fire because of the mittens on the space heater. Mom came in and saved the little brother, but didn’t see that Mayu was hiding in the closet (and subsequently burned to death). Because the girl told her mother during their argument that she would “run away”, which usually meant staying at a friend’s house, Mom thought that the girl was out of the apartment.

The little girl thinks that “Mom loved brother, but didn’t love me, so she left me in the closet to die.” She also thinks that by killing her little brother, she’ll be able to get back at her mom. This puts her in the long-standing tradition of a ghost powered by resentment (tatari) and a desire for vengeance, not a state that should be allowed to continue. The Tatari-mokke is a spirit that has come to collect her and take her to the afterlife once she finally turns her back on her attempts to kill her brother. Time, however, is running out for Mayu; as long as the Tatari-mokke’s eyes are closed, Mayu stays a ghost on Earth trying to kill her brother; after enough time, or if she succeeds, the eyes will open and the Tatari-mokke will convey her soul to Hell. Fortunately, Mayu is made to understand by Kagome that her vengeful actions are a bad idea, causing trouble for her family in the real world and for herself in the spirit world.

Even though Kagome has never shown any official prowess as a medium, we understand why she can see and communicate with the ghost. Her family is the hereditary keepers of a Shinto temple where her grandfather is a priest. The temple is home to a gigantic tree, which in many stories is enough to make it a place of great spiritual power. The ancient well which she uses to communicate with the past is on the temple grounds. She also, thanks to having been born the reincarnation of an ancient miko (Shinto temple maiden) named Kikyo (which leads to her meeting Inuyasha), has the ability to sense the fragments of the main magical gimmick of the story, an enchanted gem called the Shikon (Four Souls) Jewel. In this case, although Kagome puts her own life and soul on the line by entering the burned-out apartment to confront Mayu, she tells the child that her mother still loves her and always has, and wants to see Mayu’s spirit one last time. This is one example out of many in manga and anime that the most awesome superpowers of western heroes are often eclipsed by the compassion and kindness in the heart of a teenaged Japanese girl.

The final scene, in which Mayu bids farewell to Kagome before ascending to heaven and Becoming One with the Cosmos, takes place one week after Mayu’s spirit is reconciled with her mother. On the day her brother Satoru is released from hospital, Mayu’s spirit appears to Kagome; this involves an important costume change. We see her in a lovely summer yukata, the kind worn to a Bon festival. This is the most blatant cue to the audience, along with the closed eyes and smiling face of the Tatari-mokke, that Mayu has found peace.

xxx

We’re getting a bit ahead of ourselves, however. There are still a lot of ghosts to cover in ancient Japan, and they’re worth mentioning because, as we’ve already seen, many of them manage to stay around even into the 21
^st
century. But the Tatari-mokke raises the issue that, to get safely from this world to the next world, one needs a guide.

 CHAPTER 4: “I’LL BE YOUR GUIDE”

Botan—
Yuyu
Hakusho

Yoshihiro Togashi’s manga
Yuyu
Hakusho
(a name that can mean “Poltergeist White Paper”) starts with the death of the hero: a juvenile delinquent named Yusuke Urameshi.
[10]
A disrespectful brawler who seldom shows up for school, Yusuke made the mistake of trying to stop a toddler from playing in traffic; the car that almost hit the child killed Yusuke instead.

Once his spirit realizes what’s happened, he meets the unusually chipper Botan. Riding the oar of a boat as if it were a witch’s broom, she tells Yusuke that she’ll be his guide to the underworld. Not permanently; it seems that this punk’s lone act of consideration has disrupted the afterlife to the point that they weren’t ready for him. He therefore had the option of taking a test to come back to life. But, by going directly to Hell with Botan (whose name means the peony flower), they bypass the River Sanzu.

According to Japanese tales of the afterlife, the River Sanzu runs between this world and the next. There are three ways to cross (since “san” in Japanese means three). People with many dire sins on their souls have to swim across the deepest part of the river, which also contains nests of snakes; those with fewer sins have to cope with rapids. The sinless can cross on a solid stone bridge. This three-crossing arrangement sensibly takes into account that people are seldom purely good or purely evil.

xxx

Takuto and Meroko—
Full
Moon-wo
Sagashite

Arina Tanemura’s 2001 shojo manga
Full
Moon-wo
Sagashite
(
Looking
for
the
Full
Moon
) features a twelve-year-old girl, Mitsuki Koyama, who has developed a tumor in her throat. This makes it painful to sing, and singing is the one dream of her young life. (The dream is complicated by the fact that Mitsuki lives with her maternal grandmother, who never stops reminding her that she despises music in general as well as what it did to her daughter, Mitsuki’s mother.)

When Mitsuki finds out that she only has a year to live, she doesn’t hear the news from her doctor, but from the Angels of Death, Pediatrics Division. These spirit guides, a guy named Takuto and a girl named Meroko who in life had committed suicide, look like teenagers, move through walls, and are invisible to everyone else except as, respectively, a stuffed cat and a stuffed rabbit.

xxx

A story in the CLAMP manga
xxxHolic
doesn’t seem to start out as a ghost story; true ghost stories actually occur rather rarely in this manga/anime series. But this
kaidan
is more than just a modern example of traditional beliefs. Brought from the distant past successfully to the 21
^st
century, it achieves many of its chills in the way it sneaks up on the audience. As an added bonus, Watanuki, hapless assistant to the self-described witch Yuko, stops being his usual whining dramatic self when it really matters.

 07. The Red Hydrangea

One rainy day, the main quartet of the story—Yuko the witch, Watanuki, the cute but mysterious Himawari, and the stolid Domeki—receive a mysterious request from a non-human client. The adolescent-looking girl with the umbrella is actually an
ame-warashi
, a rain spirit. When such a character appeared in Rumiko Takahashi’s
Urusei
Yatsura
, she was a playful child in kimono, using a giant leaf as an umbrella. Here, she has blue-tinted hair in the manga (red in the anime), a parasol, a western dress in the style known as “Lolita Goth”, and a haughty disdain for humans. The spirit explains that she needs Watanuki and Domeki to perform an unspecified service; Himawari contributes two hair ribbons to the mission, and the boys follow the
ame-warashi
to a park.

The spirit leads the boys to a hydrangea bush in the park, and they immediately realize that something is unnatural. The bush is as large as a tree, and, more important, the hydrangea is showing blood-red flowers; hydrangea flowers are blue, pink, white, but never blood-red. Watanuki, holding one of the ribbons, examines the bush, but doesn’t see a tendril of the hydrangea reaching out toward him, wrapping itself around his ankle, and pulling him into the plant.

What he finds there is a twilit wasteland with no markers, a foul stench, and a crying little girl who looks to be about six years old. The little girl doesn’t want to go back home; tearfully she explains that she’s gotten dirty and gross and nobody will accept her. Watanuki at first walks with the girl toward the source of the foul odor, which still can’t be seen. A disembodied chorus of voices warns them both not to go there. At this point, a ribbon descends from above: Himawari’s other ribbon, which was given to Domeki. Watanuki holds up his ribbon with one hand, and holds the little girl’s hand with the other. They are pulled up and up—

Watanuki awakens at the edge of the hydrangea bush. He thought his encounter with the little girl had only taken minutes; from Domeki’s point of view, ten hours had passed. Watanuki then looks at the little girl’s hand, and finds that he is holding the shriveled, skeletal hand of a child’s corpse.

xxx

Yuko explains that the child disappeared almost a year ago; her corpse had lain under the hydrangea during that time. This echoes the traditional Japanese belief stated later in this book: that corpses were a source of pollution. This also accounted for the unnatural growth and blood-red flowers of the hydrangea. Watanuki and the girl had been walking toward the border between the world and the after-life; specifically, to the land of those who suffered and were murdered. This accounted for the stench. If Watanuki had accompanied the girl there, he would have died; the voices that tried to stop them were the hydrangea. However, the girl’s body had not yet been discovered, and (another recurring Japanese theme) her bones had to be found so that her soul could be put right. With the discovery of her body, the proper rites could be performed and her soul could then pass over.

There’s one other bit of good news in this episode: Watanuki, who normally would freak out when he realized the identity of the girl and saw he was holding hands with a skeleton, kept his composure and kept his promise to the little girl. His last words to her were, “I’m very proud of you.” It seems he’s finally maturing as well.

The point of this explanation, and part of the point of this book, is that the Japanese audience for whom
xxxHolic
was created would already know all of this. A western audience would still be able to enjoy the chills of this story, and all of the others, but might not understand all of the symbols and details.

xxx

Rinne

For more than three decades, Rumiko Takahashi has reigned as one of the giants of manga. Beginning with
Urusei
Yatsura
, with Japan invaded by boorish, obnoxious, and (in the case of Lum, sexy) space aliens, Takahashi has been one of the most consistently successful manga artists. Her career moved from strength to strength, including the Gothic chills of the
Mermaid
stories, the stellar romantic comedy
Mezon
Ikkoku
and the gender-warping farce
Ranma
½.
Nobody would have blamed her if she retired after the completion of her magnum opus
InuYasha
, with more than three decades of influential and popular manga to her credit. However, she just rolled into another title,
Kyoukai
no
Rinne
, which, conveniently for this book, is solidly (and humorously) in Japan’s ghost tradition.

The ghost of the title, Rinne Rokudo, is a guide shepherding spirits from the real world to the spirit world. He looks like a high school student—to whoever can see him. At first, this is limited to one student, whose involvement with the ghost and his tasks just gets deeper and funnier. We’ll examine this manga later on.

x
xx

 08. “The afterlife sure seems to have a lot of rules.”

Omukae
desu
, a five-volume manga by Meca Tanaka, takes a gently humorous approach to the problem of spirits who refuse to cross over when their time comes. Madoka Tsutsumi, a high school student studying for the college entrance exams, witnesses an argument one day between two people: another young guy named Nabeshima
[11]
and old Mr. Baba, whose house is a few doors away. However, Nabeshima is dressed in a giant pink bunny suit, while the last time Madoka saw Mr. Baba was at the old man’s wake. Yes, once again, a student can see dead people.

Nabeshima complains that, while “usually dead people can find their own way to the other side,” he’s got far too much work delivering spirits to the afterlife (actually shlepping them on the back of a motor scooter) to spend time on the stubborn ones who simply refuse to go. He offers a bargain to Tsutsumi: even though Nabeshima already has two assistants (a living co-ed named Aguma and a ghostly young girl named Yuzuko), Motoka can help out as a temp worker (a dilemma faced by many Japanese college students: finding a part-time job to make ends meet) by coaxing reluctant spirits to leave the world of the living, and he’ll get paid in the afterlife. The payment is described as “a free trip to Heaven;” once he agrees, Nabeshima starts calling Tsutsumi “En-chan,” since the kanji for his name Motoka can also be pronounced “En,” and “En” is Japanese for “karma.”

Back to old Mister Baba. His insistence on staying behind is simple: his only child, a daughter, is pregnant and almost due, he wants to see the child, but the spirits of the dead aren’t supposed to be near a child when it’s born, perhaps to avoid interfering with its own soul. In any case, he can’t get to the maternity ward without a body, so Tsutsumi lets Mr. Baba use his body to view the child, as well as giving him a vote in naming the child.

 09. The Ring

Megu Koike died as a little old lady, but has stayed rooted to one spot on earth and refuses to budge; getting her to leave is Tsutsumi’s job. Tsutsumi, Yuzuko and the curiously silent Aguma were told to “get your butts in gear” and help Koike look for a lost ring on a riverbank. They had until sunset to find this one token that mattered to Koike.

Aguma basically sat there and stared into space, not helping to look at all. Tsutsumi asks the old lady’s ghost why she had the precious ring in her pocket rather than on her finger. She admitted that the ring was a gift from someone she loved in her youth, before she got married to someone else. Back in the day, she was a servant in a wealthy family’s house, and she fell in love with the young son of the family. Besides being of separate classes, which would have ruled out a romance between them, the young man was in poor health, and died shortly after Koike left their employ. First, however, he gave her a ring as a token of a love that could never bear fruit.

This triggers an outburst from Aguma. She has learned that Nabeshima isn’t on this job because he’s put in for a transfer to a higher-ranking job in the afterlife, and she’s furious. “What am I, a bug? I don’t even rate a goodbye?! All I can do now is hate him with a passion! The next time I see him, I’m gonna punch him in the nose!” When Nabeshima shows up, however, having decided not to get the transfer, Aguma hugs him rather than slugs him. “This is all I can do,” the reader hears her say; “I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. All I need is now.” This reflects Koike’s own slightly mixed emotions as she prepares to rejoin her husband in the afterlife. When asked why she’s going to be with her husband when she loved the young master, Koike scoffs, “My husband kept me happy for fifty years; thanks to him, I had only one regret.” In fact, she lost the ring while playing on the riverbank with her grandchildren. Just because she didn’t get the romance she wanted didn’t deprive her of a lifetime of happiness. Life, it seems, is more complicated than we like to think.