Everyone has a ghost story. If you do not believe me just ask the next person you see. It may be in the first, second, or third person, but they will have one. I have a few even though I think most of these stories are the result of too much garlic and red wine.
When I catalog my experiences there are a few more then I expect. One from my mother-in-law's childhood in Sumter, South Carolina, one from a drunken night in the dorms at Cambridge University, there were basement spirits in Las Cruses, New Mexico and ghosts around the campfires deep in the Western wilderness. I can even remember poltergeist at a friend’s house in Sauganash.
All these stories are unique, individual to the teller and the tale. There appears to be no common thread, but then I happen on a book about the faint spirits of Japan, the yurei and quickly change my tune. Lafacdio Hearn, a lecturer on English Literature at The Imperial University in Tokyo, wrote the book in 1899 called In Ghostly Japan. He devotes fourteen chapters to the telling and the interpretation of classic Japanese ghost stories.
His book starts with an eerie non-attributed Japanese poem--Think not that dreams appear to the dreamer only at night: The dreams of this world of pain appear to us even by day. I think you will agree that this is a sobering introduction to any topic, let alone one about ghosts.
Unfortunately for me I began to read his book late one night close upon the Hour of the Ox, the early morning hour reserved for Japanese ghosts and goblins. The book commences with a Bodhisattva and a young patron ascending a cloud-shrouded mountain in what I assume is to be a search for enlightenment.
To the horror of both the young man and myself only a mountain of his skulls awaits him at the summit. I am not sure what the point of this story is. It seems unusually cruel, but then it is a ghost story after all.
One day while reading about Japanese pottery I learned that Japan has one of the oldest, if not the oldest ceramic traditions in the world. Over twenty thousand years in the making. A culture this old has had ample time to develop a richness of culture that we in America can only guess at, and hence the number of phantom classifications that exist in Japanese literature.
In my short reading on the subject I come upon no less than 25 unique paranormal beings and I am sure there are more. They are represented by white kimono clad humans, non-human phallic-nosed goblins, fanged and horned demons, and mischievous foxes. They run the gamut from harmless sea ghost to dead vampire babies, from vengeful aristocrats to impish children, and even haunted lanterns with eyes and long tongues.
These ghosts exist for many reasons. Some become eternal due to improper burial rites, some because they have no family to care for their spirit after death and some because of violent deaths. Some haunt the places where they died or were buried. Some stalk their murderers and some look after their beloved.
There is a notion of exorcism, of fulfilling the restless spirit’s needs. There are the yearly festivals of Obon and setsubun. The former a festival to pay tribute to the dead held in July or August, and the latter a casting out of evil and welcoming in the good held in February. These festivals are so popular that foreign tourist are discouraged from traveling to Japan during these times because of the congestion caused by the whole country traveling to family reunions.
I like the thought of the shiryo-yoke that protects the living from the dead, the segaki services that care for the dead that have no living relative to care for them and the o-fuda, the religious texts used as charms or talismans to ward off ghosts.
I like the thought that all ghosts deserve respect, and mostly I like the thought that I have only begun to scratch the surface of understanding the ancient Japanese culture.
Volume 5705 (21), 3/21/2008
