Folk Legends of Japan (14 page)

"I want to go to the festival of Nyorai-san. I want to go to the festival of Nyorai-san," the boy kept saying every day as he lay in his bed.

The grandmother of the main household came to visit him. She patted him on his head and said: "I'll put off the festival until you can come. So hurry and get well."

The boy finally got well in September, and all the children were invited to the main house for the festival. But the other children were spiteful: not only had the festival been postponed for the sick boy, but they had had to give up their favorite toys—a lead rabbit here and some other wonderful plaything there—so the boy would have something to play with while he was in bed.

"We've paid dearly for his being sick," they said among themselves. And they promised each other: "We won't play with him when he comes to the festival today."

While they were playing in the
zashiki
one of them suddenly cried: "Oh, here he comes, here he comes."

"All right, let's hide." And with these words they all went running into the next room.

But look! There, in the center of the next room, was the boy who had had the measles and whom they had seen just approaching the house. He was sitting there politely with a new toy bear on his lap. He was gaunt and pale and seemed on the point of weeping.

"It's the
zashiki-bokko!"
one of the children cried and ran out of the room. The others ran out after him, shouting.

The
zashiki-bokko
sat in the middle of the room weeping.

Such is the story of the
zashiki-bokko.

4. Once the ferryman at the Romeiji Crossing of the Kitakami River told me this tale:

"Once on the night of August 17 of the old calendar I had been drinking
sake
and went to bed earlier than usual. Then someone called me from the opposite bank: 'O-o-i! O-o-i!' I got out of bed and went outside. The moon was high in the sky. I rowed quickly to the opposite bank, and there I found a pretty boy wearing a crested coat and a
hakatna,
with a sword at his side. He was all alone and wore white-strapped sandals. 'Do you want to be ferried across?' I asked, and he answered: 'Yes.'

"As I rowed him along, I watched the boy on the sly. He sat with his hands folded tightly on his lap and looked at the sky. I asked: 'Where are you going? Where do you come from?' The boy answered in a melodious voice: 'I stayed at the Sasadas' for a fairly long time, but I got tired of them, so I'm going some other place.' 'Why are you tired of them?' I asked, but he only smiled and didn't answer. So I asked again: 'Where are you going?' Then he said: 'I'll go to the Saitos' at Saraki.'

"When we reached the other bank, the boy had already disappeared from the boat and there I could see myself sitting at the door of my cottage. I don't know whether this was a dream or not. But it must have been true, because about that time the fortunes of the Sasada family rapidly declined, while at the Saito house in Saraki their invalid got well almost at once, their son graduated from a university, and the family has prospered greatly."

Such is the
zashihi-bokko.

PART THREE

SPIRITS

FOR THIRTY-THREE YEARS after bodily death, the
reikon
(spirit, soul) of a deceased person hovers about its lifetime residence. In this state it can inflict powerful curses on the living; after that period, however, it becomes a general ancestral spirit. Death is therefore regarded as a great pollution in the folk religion of the common people, who insist that the bereaved family live in isolation and cleanse themselves with purification rites. Formerly a widespread custom of double graves separated the body and spirit of deceased persons. According to the researches of Takayoshi Mogami, the common people of Japan buried a corpse in an
ume-baka,
but after the expiration of the mourning period they visited and held memorial services at a
maeri-baka,
where the spirit of the departed one rested in peace and purity. In the
ume-baka,
the spirit was contaminated from the presence of its corpse, and of fresh corpses deposited in the communal cemetery.

Under extreme circumstances the spirit can leave the flesh even before death. If death occurs when the
shirei
(spirit) is troubled, inflamed, resentful, or in any way disturbed, that angry spirit presents a fearful danger to any human being it encounters, and may indeed enter and possess that person. Hence the reason for
goryo shinko,
the honoring of a revengeful spirit with a special shrine and a summer festival and noisy pageant, quite at variance with the gravity of the winter festival for tutelary shrines.
Goryo shinko
began under imperial auspices in 863 to placate the spirits of grudge-bearing warriors believed to ravage cities with epidemics, but eventually the practice spread to the peasantry. The
goryo
shrines subordinate embittered spirits to more powerful ones, who control their passions. If a person dies suddenly, without opportunity for proper death rites, say by drowning at sea, that spirit
(yurci)
also grieves and is tormented. In paintings and drawings the spirit-ghost appears without feet, clad in a flowing garment.

All spirits are on their way to becoming
kami,
who might roughly be described as ancestral or tutelary deities. The social structure of farm-village life, based on a kinship group called
dozoku,
increases the veneration toward the common ancestral
kami
of the villagers, who are all his descendants and worshipers. From the viewpoint of legend, it is the vengeful spirit which interests us most, because a story lies behind his hostility and is written into the
goryo
shrine.

THE GHOST THAT CARED FOR A CHILD

A closely parallel story is in Heam,
Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan
(V, ch. 7, p. 192). A pale woman buys a
mizu-ame
at a shop and is followed by the
ame-
seller to a tomb, where he finds a live child beside her corpse. There are world-wide references under Motif E323.1.1, "Dead mother returns to suckle child."

Text from
Shintetsu Mintan Shu,
pp. 61-63. Collected in Yasuhara-machi, Date-gun, Fukushima-ken.

Note:
Ame,
a caramel-like candy made of wheat or rice gluten.

A
LONG TIME AGO
someone knocked feebly at the door of a certain confectionery shop at Yasuhara-machi, Date-gun. It was midnight. When the shopkeeper got up and opened the door, a woman slipped into the house. It was a young woman but her hair was disheveled and she wore white clothes. She had a newborn baby in her arms. Nervously putting up her frowzy, loose-hanging hair with her lingers, she said that she wanted some
ame,
and handed a penny to the shopkeeper. He felt suspicious, but put some
ame
on a stick and gave it to the woman. She thanked him and went out of the shop.

Next night and the following nights she visited the shop at the same time and with the same appearance and each time bought a penny's worth of
ame.
The shopkeeper thought it very strange. One day when he met a painter who was an old acquaintance, he told him about the woman. The painter also had suspicions. He asked the shopkeeper for his permission to stay at his house that night and observe the woman. The shopkeeper agreed.

That evening the painter visited the shop with drawing paper and brush, bringing along
sake
and some food. He spent hours talking and drinking
sake
with the shopkeeper until midnight. Then there was heard the same knock at the door as on the previous nights. The shopkeeper opened the door, winking at the painter, and the woman slipped in and demanded a penny's worth of
ante.
While the shopkeeper was intentionally taking time putting the
ante
on a stick, the painter who had hidden himself in the rear of the shop, drew a portrait of the woman.

A young man of Hashira-mura, sobering up from the effects of
sake
that he had drunk at a wineshop, was walking homeward along a lonely, drizzly path one midnight, murmuring a little song. Suddenly he heard a baby's cry behind him. He stood still to listen to it. Who on earth was coming that way with a crying baby at the dead of night? He thought he would wait for the person and walk with him. So he remained by the wayside. As the baby's cry came closer, he looked in the direction of the sound. There was a woman, in white clothes with disheveled hair, coming toward him with a crying baby in her arms. She hardly seemed to be a woman of this world. The young man was astonished.

Soon the strange woman slipped past him and went toward Hashiramura. The young man, as soon as he came to himself, followed after her from curiosity. Or he might have been bewitched by the woman. When she came to the graveyard of Toko-ji at Hashira-mura, she turned back and smiled at the young man. No sooner did she do so than a fiery host set the night ablaze, and she disappeared in the smoke. The young man lost his senses on the spot. Next morning the priest of the temple cared for him and sent him back home.

The wife of a certain farmer at Hashira-mura, who was in her last month of pregnancy, died of a sudden illness. On the forty-ninth night after her death, the forty-nine rice cakes that had been offered before the tablet of the deceased in the temple disappeared. People grew suspicious and examined the graveyard, finding a big hole dug beside a new grave. The relatives talked over the matter and decided to open the tomb in the presence of the village officials. When they dug up the coffin and opened it, they saw that the corpse looked as if death had just occurred. Still more strange to say, it embraced a baby in the sleeves of its shroud, and the baby had grown fat and was licking a piece of rice cake which he was holding in his hands. All the people were astounded at the sight. The child had been born alive in the coffin after the funeral ceremony had been performed.

The people tried to separate the child from the dead mother, but they could not, because she would not loosen her arms. After consultation, they took a woman who had a newborn baby to the corpse and had her show her breast and speak to the dead one, saying that she would give milk to the baby and that the other need have no worry if she entrusted the child to their care. Then the dead woman loosened her embrace and let the baby be taken from her arms.

The rice cakes that had vanished from the temple and six
ante
sticks were found inside the coffin.

THE GHOST OF THE FIRST WIFE

The theme of a dead wife's revenant twice intrigued Hearn. The Izumo legend in
A Japanese Miscellany,
"Of a Promise Broken" (X, pp. 190-207), gives a cruel climax to the idea treated below; the ghost of the dead wife terrifies and then decapitates the samurai's second wife. In "The Story of O-Kame" in
Kotto
(XI, pp. 25-29), a husband again promises his dying wife he will not remarry; her spirit haunts him, until a priest opens her grave and traces holy words on her warm