::Zashiki Warashi::

Thought I’d give you a break from the truly spooky and give you a slightly more kawaii ghost….

Zashiki-warashi (座敷童子)

The name breaks down to zashiki, a tatami floored room, and warashi, an archaic
regional term for a child. This child-like spirit is said to inhabit the inner rooms of old houses and other
buildings. It often appears as a little girl but it can be a boy as well. Sometimes it  plays with the children of the house, but it never lets the adults see it.

To attract and maintain a zashiki-warashi in the home, it is said the spirit must be  noticed, appreciated and cared for properly, much in the manner one would raise  a child, though too much attention may drive it off. As the zashiki-warashi is  child-like in nature, it is prone to playing harmless pranks and occasionally causing mischief. They might for instance sit on a guest’s futon, turn people’s
pillows over or cause sounds similar to kagura music to be heard from rooms no one uses. Sometimes they leave little footsteps in ashes. There are different variations as to who can see the zashiki-warashi; usually this is limited to inhabitants of the house, sometimes to children

Although it is fond of mischief, the zashiki-warashi is a beneficial little spook, and houses it lives in have extremely good fortune. This fortune quickly turns to disastrously bad luck, however, if the ghost child ever leaves.

Thanks for the stories in the recent posts… keep ‘em coming!

::Kuchisake Onna::

Kuchisake Onna ((口裂け女, Split-mouthed woman)

The basics of the kuchisake onna have been told in the tea house: She was a vain woman married to a samurai (in some accounts, a ninja) who distrusted her. Believing she was cheating on him, he slices her mouth open at the sides–splitting her face open from ear to ear. She wanders, hiding her mouth behind a fan, the sleeve of a kimono, a stole, or the surgical-style masks now worn in cold and allergy seasons in Japan. She asks someone “watashi, kirei?” (Do you think I’m beautiful?). The answer is usually a resounding “yes” due to her otherworldly beauty, but then she exposes her face and repeats the question; her otherworldly beauty giving way to otherworldly horror. If the person says or does anything besides saying “yes”, she pursues him with a kama (sickle) or knife and replies “I want to do for you what has been done to me.” She can’t be outrun, and eventually slices her victim’s mouth open ear to ear. Women killed in this fashion return as kuchisake onna themselves. In some accounts she is said to run lightning fast, in others she “floats” (due to a famous ukiyo-e artist in the Edo period always painting ghosts with no feet, it was generally regarded by many Japanese that all ghosts had no feet–nothing to “truly link” them to the material world). She has appeared in picture scrolls of yokai and demons as early as the Edo period She was eventually “forgotten” as the Japanese entered the modern age and built a war machine, and then recovered to form an economic giant, but kuchisake onna returned with a vengeance in late 1979. In late 1979 and even into the early 80s, there were many sightings of kuchisake onna. The urban legend probably grew from an actual attack against a child.

During the seventies, the urban legend went that if the victim answers “You’re average”, they are saved. When the urban legend was revived around 2000, the answer that would save you was changed to “so-so,” with the change that this answer causes the kuchisake-onna to think about what to do, and her victim can escape while she is in thought. Another way to escape while the Kuchisake-Onna is distracted is to throw candy or other sweets at her. One other way is to ask her if you are pretty. She will get confused and leave.

The kuchisake onna from the 70s and 80s attack only children, and they attack regardless of whether the answer to her second question is “yes.”

….. still waiting;-)

::Nure Onna::

Nure-onna (濡女, lit. “wet woman”)

Nure Onna is an amphibious creature with the head of a woman and the
body of a snake. While the description of her appearance varies slightly from
story to story, she has been described as being 300 m in length and has
snake-like eyes, long claws, fangs and long, beautiful hair.
She is typically spotted on a shore, washing her hair.

A nure-onna’s intention are unknown. In some stories, she is a
monstrous being who is powerful enough to crush trees with her tail and
feeds on humans. She carries with her a small, child-like bundle, which
she uses to attract potential victims. If a well-intentioned person
offers to hold the baby for her, the nure-onna will let them. If they attempt
to discard the bundle, however, it is revealed that it is not a child at all.
Instead, the bundle becomes incredibly heavy and prevents the victim
from fleeing. She then uses her long, snake-like tongue to suck all the
blood from her victim’s body. In other stories, a nure-onna is simply
seeking solitude as she washes her hair and reacts violently to
those who bother her.
originally from Wikipedia

::Taxi!::

Well as promised here is Japanese ghost story number two, one of the works currently featured in the show “Love, Thieves and Fear make Ghosts” at the Japan Foundation Gallery in Sydney.

It was also featured here recently.

The Girl in the Blue Dress (青いドレスの少女)

A well-known story among Kyoto taxi drivers is the one about the ghost who appears as a young lady and hails a taxi for a ride.

According to one sightseer’s experience in the ancient capital;

“I took a trip to Kyoto looking for ghosts. A taxi driver said he picked up a young woman along the banks of the Kamo River and started taking her to a place called Midoro Pond. When they entered the dark Tadasu Forest, the driver looked back at the woman, but he saw nothing there except for a damp spot on the seat where she had been sitting.”

If the Kyoto cabbies are to believed, this perpetually on-the-go phantom still haunts them to this day.

excerpt from :  www.japantoday.com

Still waiting patiently to hear your ghost tales;-)

::Love, Thieves and Fear make Ghosts::

This is the first installment of what will be eight (8) Japanese ghost stories. They have been re-interpreted and recreated in the form of limited edition prints on Kozo paper from the Awagami Factory in Japan and are now showing at the Japan Foundation Gallery in Sydney until July 3rd.

The reason I share them here with you now is I would also like to hear some of your stories. When researching for this exhibition I was astounded at the variety and huge number of ghost stories and folktales in Japanese culture and these were just from those that were popular enough to become common folklore and to eventually be published in English. Apart from ‘Bunyip’s‘ and ‘Dropbears‘ there were few stories that could raise the hairs on the back of my neck when I was growing up here in Australia and I imagine if I had grown up in Japan I could have been influenced to do anything, eat green vegies, take a bath, etc,  should I be told a certain spook be coming to get me if I didn’t.

So please share your stories here… in the comments pages….why? Well, because indeed ’sharing is caring’, however more importantly it is also how culture and folklore grows.

Without further ado here is the first ghosty…. the Rokurokubi!

Rokurokubi (ろくろ首)

A female obake with an extremely flexible neck. By day they are indistinguishable from normal women, but after nightfall Rokurokubi stretch their necks out to any length in search of prey. According to one theory, they are seeking out men in order to suck the life energy out of them.

Rokuro-kubi are yokai that used to be ordinary human beings, but somehow they have come to suffer from a ghostly affliction that allows their heads to float away from their bodies, their necks stretching in between like a fleshy garden hose, sometimes indefinitely. According to some tales, rokurokubi were once normal human beings but were transformed by karma for breaking various precepts of Buddhism. Usually they are women. The rokuro-kubi’s condition is sometimes brought about by a curse, and sometimes as a supernatural manifestation of the person’s desires. The neck-stretching almost always happens at night, often while the rokuro-kubi sleeps, and the freed head may wander through the house perpetrating such obake-esque mischief as sucking the life energy out of people and animals, and licking up the oil of andon lamps. Often they will prowl the forest for grubs, centipedes and worms.

Some of them simply wind up using lintels high above doors and windows as their pillows, and scaring the living daylights out of anyone who happens to peek in on them.

Rokuro-kubi women are often unlucky in love, frightening their new husbands away when the men discover their wives’ unnerving nocturnal abilities.