百物語怪談会 Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai

Translated from Nihon no Yurei

In a certain house an old woman lived alone. One night, as she was sitting down to her dinner, she spied a young woman’s downhearted face peering out at her from the darkness of a corner.   Looking closer, she could see that the face was that of a young  girl of the next-door geisha house who had recently passed away.

This young girl had been the protégé of the madam of that house, calling her “older sister” in the style of the geisha.  However, their relationship was not good and it had been the talk of the town that the madam had badly mistreated this girl when she had been alive.  The madam devised such mischief as waiting until the young girl was just about to bring her chopsticks to her lips, before letting loose a torrent of chastisment to which the she must endure, thus leaving her with barely a morsel eaten.  The madam also covered the girl’s body with bruises to such an extent that the color of her beatings never faded. Finally, it was said, she killed the girl. 

Before the abused girl had died, this old woman of the next-door house had pitied her. Sometimes, the old woman would stealthily enter the geisha house in order to slip the young woman candies and bites to eat.  Because of this, when that girl’s lost spirit appeared at the old woman’s house, that old woman was quite vexed.  Always stout-hearted in nature, the old woman scolded the yurei who had mistakenly appeared in her home.

 “Hey you!  You have absolutely no reason to hold a grudge against me!  If you are going to haunt someone, go next door to your older sister!  You are here by mistake!”

The old woman had no doubt that the yurei, who had mistakenly appeared in the wrong house, would soon leave and so she lightly pummeled the spirit with her fists.

 Now if the yurei had replied something along the lines of how she had meant to go straight to her older sister’s house but felt she couldn’t do the job properly because she was too hungry and so she had dropped by the house of the kind old woman who had fed her when she was alive, the story would have more of a comedic feel to it.  But instead the yurei sadly replied with her downcast face:

“I am too scared to go to my older sister’s house.”

This answer is what marks this story as unusual for the yurei genre. In the normal way of things, a person who has transformed into a yurei is usually an object of terror to the person who harassed them in life.  But even though she has died, the young girl still fears her older sister, and this twist ending  is what lends the story its interest.

What the old woman said in reply, and how the story continued after that moment, has never been told, and in fact if the story had continued with all the loose ends properly tied up it would have given the story the stink of a literary creation. 

Instead, the story remains how it was told by the old woman, who lived in that area until around the start of the war.  She would often tell the tale of the young girl yurei, forever adding at the end “Say it is stupid if you want, but it just goes to show you can’t be thoughtlessly kind to people. “ 

I heard this story from my father, who had spent his whole life in Ginza until he died after the war.

Translated from Edo no Kimyo no Hyakumonogatari

There was a villain named Tomedo whose heart was wicked.   He attempted to seduce a young widow named Oyoshi, who held an amulet in the shape of a shogi chess piece that he desired.  When she refused him, he became enraged and killed her, pruning off her left leg and arm as if she were a bonsai tree and throwing them into a ditch.

From that time, the ditch grew nothing but a weed called kataba no ashi, which means “one-sided reed” and has leaves that grow on only on the right side.

Even now, they say that this reed is the spirit of Oyoshi.

Translator’s Note:

This print, by Utagawa Kuniteru, is called Kataba no Ashi  (片葉の葦), and depicts one of the Honjyo Nana Fushigi (本所七不思議) meaning one of the Seven Wonders  of Honjo.

Translated from Edo Tokyo Kaii Hyakumonogatari

On the 20^th day on the month of the sign of the bear, when the moon grows white and even the paper street lanterns that shine in every direction fail to brighten the gloominess of the street, rain will come with a rushing downpour.  On that day, the temple bells resound with the tones of the afterlife.

At first the cries of the nighthawks and street walkers, the sellers of soba noodles and bottled beer, of tea noodles and red-bean bread, will harmonize with the resounding bells, but these sounds will fade out and die away as the night stretches on and the people grown thin.

While trying to make your way home in the dark and the rain, covering your paper lantern with the sleeve of your raincoat to prevent it from soaking and going out, you will hear the sound of a pair of wooden clappers banging together behind you.  As you walk on, the bang of the clappers will synchronize with your footsteps and the faster you run the faster and closer the sound of the clappers will come.  This is the spirit known as the “Following Wood Clappers”.

Translator’s Note:

This print, by Utagawa Kuniteru, is called Okuri Hyoshigi (送り拍子木), and depicts one of the Honjyo Nana Fushigi (本所七不思議) meaning one of the Seven
Wonders  of Honjo.

Translated from Edo no Kimyo no Hyakumonogatari

There are days when the clouds are too thin to carry rain, but pour down anyways.   On such a day fish can be pulled from the water with abundance.    A fisherman need only cast his rod about without care, lazily chatting with his friends without any other care, and the fish will come.   When a day like this pulls to a close, those stragglers remaining behind may be witness to a mysterious phenomenon when they finally make for the road home.

From the moat in which they have been fishing, a voice comes telling them to “leave it behind…” This may cause them to only shudder in their hearts, but as they try to leave their feet become heavy and drag on the road. Their big sacks which had been filled with fish become suddenly empty.

It doesn’t matter if they listen to the voice and empty their sacks, or if they ignore it and  struggle to make their way home.  It doesn’t matter if they put only a little back in the moat, and still try to make off with a mere remnant of their catch.

Either way, they will find themselves with nothing to show for their day’s labor.

Translator’s Note:

This print, by Utagawa Kuniteru, is called Oite Kebori (置行堀), and depicts one of the Honjo Nana Fushigi (本所七不思議) meaning one of the Seven Wonders  of Honjo.