Japanese Ghost Stories – The Demon’s Arm (Ogre of Rashomon)

Summertime is ghost-time in Japan. It’s time to tell scary stories in order combat the summer’s heat with the cold chill that only ghost stories can bring.

This story is a version of the Ogre of Rashomon as the story is named in Yei Theodora Ozaki’s Japanese Fairy Tales. I however refer to the titular creature as a demon based on the Japanese word “oni” which is demon/devil.

Hirosaki Neputa Festival shows Watanabe fighting the Demon of Rashomon Gate

Rashomon is a gate that once stood in Kyoto that lapsed into disrepair and became a place of ill repute. According to legend a demon took up residence there and snatched up passer-bys. Eventually it bit off more than it could chew when it tried to grab a samurai.

The photos were taken by me of the temple gate of Zojo-ji Temple in Tokyo, a shot of a float from the Nebuta festival of Aomori showing a samurai fighting a demon (Raiko and Shuten-doji), and a depiction of the story on a float at the Neputa Festival in Hirosaki, Aomori Prefecture. The other images are 19th Century woodblock (ukiyoe) prints.

Check out my other ghost stories:

Japanese Ghost Stories

Modern Japanese Ghouls Hold a ‘Grudge’ – film review

 

“The Grudge,” based on the more distinguished Japanese film “Ju-on,” is light on plot but garners a 4 out of 5 on the Scare-O-Meter.

©2005 Sony

Japan has a long, ghostly tradition with beings from beyond the grave. Many of the ghosts that appear in plays and stories are females seeking revenge for wrongs done to them during their lifetimes, typically by cruel, heartless husbands. 

In the old ghost stories, vengeful Japanese ghosts would continue to haunt their victims until they went insane, died, or at least made some form of restitution to appease the angry spirits. 

Some Japanese ghosts were born out of tragedy or sorrow and would haunt any person who came near. These spirits were particularly feared because they represented a danger to all unless they were somehow put to rest.

Although I knew about the horrific nature of old Japanese ghosts, I had thought modern Japanese ghosts would be more polite and demur. I had imagined a modern Japanese ghost timidly coming up to someone and saying “Sumimasen (Excuse me)! BOO! Gomen nasai (I’m sorry)!” before whisking away. “The Grudge” (2004) showed me how wrong I was about modern Japanese phantoms.

	©2005 Sony

Starring Sarah Michelle Gellar of TV’s “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” fame, “The Grudge” depicts a haunting by very impolite spirits. Gellar plays an American student nurse in Tokyo who accidentally gets involved with a haunted house that has the nasty habit of killing visitors. The ghosts of the house were victims of a tragedy and now they rudely kill anyone who comes in contact with them. 

The spirits’ motivation for killing is explained at the beginning of the film in a brief written prologue, which states: “When someone dies in the grip of a powerful rage, a curse is left behind.”

For Western audiences it may seem unusual that the two main ghostly antagonists who having been innocent victims of a violent death themselves would seek to cause the death of another innocent person. In many Western stories, ghosts are often motivated by the same things as living people namely the pursuit of justice for wrongdoings. The ghost of a murdered person will seek vengeance on the person or persons responsible for their death.

If a ghost is malevolent, it often turns out they were a bad person in life — as in the back-story to the main ghost character in the “Poltergeist” (1982-1986) movies.

To understand the nature of the supernatural entity of “The Grudge,” one has to understand Japanese belief in spirits and the supernatural.

In the book “Ghosts and the Japanese: Cultural Experience in Japanese Death Legends” by Michiko Iwasaka, there is a passage which is a direct echo of the opening lines of the movie:

“Anyone who dies under great emotional stress creates an energy which is not easily dissipated; these yurei [ghosts], thus, have an impact on the local environment…”

This type of spirit is called a “goryo” — vengeful ghost. A goryo, however, is less like a consciously aware ghost that plots revenge and would be more familiar to Western audiences. A goryo is more like the energy of the emotion created at the time of death. And to some degree it represents the unconscious mind free of the limitations and morals of the conscious analytic side.

	©2005 LionsGate

Formal belief in goryo can be traced to the Heian Period (794-1185) when goryo were thought to be the angry spirits of political enemies that had died in exile or had been executed. 

The noted scholar Sugawara-no-Michizane became one suchgoryo. Through guileful manipulations, his enemies at the Imperial Court engineered his banishment from Kyoto. Sugawara died in extreme sorrow while in exile. Shortly after his death, a number of natural disasters occurred from droughts and epidemics to lightening strikes, which were believed to be caused by the angry spirit of Sugawara. 

To appease his goryo, Sugawara was given a ceremonial promotion at the Imperial Court and eventually he was made into a god-spirit whom modern-day students pray to for success on their exams.

Goryo were vengeful spirits from the aristocracy who like Sugiwara have the power to affect the very seasons. Another more commonly experienced type was onryo. While less powerful than the goryo, the onryo were the ghosts that kept Japanese of then and now frightened out of their wits. Onryo are typically depicted with wild unkempt hair in a white burial kimono.

Although onryo could be either male or female, the most popular onryo were women. Often powerless while in life, these female onryo wielded great power in death. They would wreak vengeance on husbands and lovers who spurned or hurt them in life usually by driving them mad with fear.

Director Takashi Shimizu has built on this old concept to create a deadly onryo of a very frightening ghostly mother and son duo. “The Grudge” is an American remake of the original Japanese thriller “Ju-on” (2003). “Ju-on” is Shimizu’s horror franchise that grew out of a short TV story to become a successful and scary theater-release movie which was followed by a sequel. Famed “Evil Dead” director Sam Raimi, who helped produce the American remake, thought “Ju-on” to be one of the scariest movies he had ever seen.

Jason Behr and Sarah Michelle Gellar stare down a ghoul in “The Grudge.”

©2005 Sony

“The Grudge” opened in America during the Halloween season last fall but it has only recently opened in Japan. One notable difference is the inclusion of a few extra violent moments that were left out in the American version in order for the movie to keep a PG-13 rating in the States. 

Overall there’s not much of story. Some people die, then some other people die. Most of the film is just one scare after another, with little character development or plot. “The Grudge” is more like a series of creepy vignettes strung together to make a film. However, these vignettes are quite scary. It’s the cultural nuance of the goryo/onryo-type spirit that “The Grudge” represents and the genuinely frightening moments that makes the film an interesting experience for Japanophiles and horror fans alike.

On the Scare-O-Meter, “The Grudge” rates about 4 out 5 screams.
On plot, it rates about 2 stars out of 5; however the concept behind the movie rates about a 4.

—————————————————–

This is a film review I originally did for OhMyNews, an online Korean newspaper, back in 2005. I’ve included a video review of the Ju-on series by the late Rodger Swan.

R.I.P. Japanese Horror Fan – Rodger Swan (1986-2010)

Some of you who don’t frequent Youtube may not be aware that a long time Japan Vlogger on Youtube, Rodger Swan, recently passed away suddenly. He put out a lot of videos of his experiences in Japan, first as Tokyo Swan then later as Iwate Swan when he accepted a job offer from JET to teach in Iwate Prefecture.

http://www.youtube.com/user/rodgerswan

His most popular series was his Japanese Horror movie reviews where he looked at the good, the bad, and the gory of Japanese horror cinema. If you like Japanese horror you should check out his work. This is the first video of his playlist where he reviewed the Ring series. He has a whopping 50 reviews!

Japanese Ghost Stories – The Tree Spirit

Stories of ghosts, monsters, and things that go bump in the night were the favorite past time of Japanese in olden days as a way to cool down on hot summer nights.

This story is about a greedy woodcutter who encounters a tree spirit.

Trees are or were believed to become alive after a thousand years or so.

Japanese Ghost Stories – Better Late Than Early

Ghost Stories – old fashion air conditioning in Old Japan and environmentally friendly to boot!

Here I tell a tale about the terrible fate of a man who went to work too early.

Japanese Ghost Stories – Mujina

Ghost Stories kept the people cool back in Old Japan before electric fans and central air.

Cold sweats, icy fingers down the spine, and blood turned to ice in the veins by chilling stories of the supernatural were just the thing for hot summer nights.

Here I retell a story called “Mujina and the Faceless Ones.” This story is one of the collections of ghost stories in Lafcadio Hearn’s Kwaiden.

I goofed up and called the man in the story Mujina but in fact this is what Hearn called the ghoulish antagonists in this short story.

Mujina is actually the name for badgers who in Japanese folklore could play tricks like the one in this story. However, the type of yokai (Japanese monsters/ghosts/devils) is Noppera-bo – humans (if you can call them such) with no faces who delight in scaring people.