Japan's supernatural side

Season’s Greetings, everyone! I hope you’re all having a fantastic week leading up to the holiday… by which of course I mean Halloween. Back in my youth, Halloween was the source of many a fond memory involving candy, costumes, haunted houses, and being frightened out of my wits by innocuous things. In fact, I think it’s pretty safe to say that overall, Halloween was my second-favorite Christianized-pagan-holiday-turned-secular, just behind Christmas.

It’s something of a problem for me, then, that All Hallows’ Even has yet to make much of a dent over here in Japan. Sure, Universal Studios Osaka is running a Halloween-themed party all month with Peanuts characters in costumes, but aside from that and some decidedly inadequate decorations, all it really seems to offer here is green squash passed off as “pumpkin” and a few novelty baked goods. Trick-or-treating, among the 31st’s many other sublime joys, is simply unknown. I’ve made an attempt to educate my students, who do seem curious about “those pumpkin face-things” and the opportunity to get a month’s supply of sugar in a single night, but the lack of enthusiasm is telling.

And that’s a shame, because when it comes to the supernatural, Japan is a veritable hotspot. Japanese folklore is replete with tales of mystical creatures roaming the mountains and forests, and the hauntings of vengeful, wronged ghosts told and retold in bunraku puppet-theatre and kabuki plays. You would think that when a country has such a stockpile of home-grown ghouls just lying around, they would put them to work repurposing a perfectly workable holiday for native sensibilities, but it just didn’t happen. Nevertheless, they at least provide me with a fascinating glimpse into the stories that have kept generations of Japanese up at night.

For starters, there are a ton of mythical creatures to be had in Japan. Aside from ghosts, the (legless) apparitions of the deceased, there are also oni (ogres who are alternately evil antagonists and mischievous-but-dumb troublemakers), tengu (strange avian creatures with long, beaklike noses), kappa (man-sized, turtle-like river creatures with a taste for young children), noppera-bo (humanlike-but-faceless tricksters who enjoy freaking out unsuspecting people by wiping off their features after lulling their mark into a false sense of security), tsukumogami (inanimate objects that gain life and creepy faces after 100 years of existence), and kodama (tree spirits that inhabit forests by the millions). Even real animals get in on the act, with foxes, badgers, and tanuki (think: the special suit in Super Mario Bros. 3) portrayed as shapeshifters who make sport of humans who ought to know better. If I were a Japanese child, I don’t know if I’d ever feel truly safe with such things lurking all around me. I mean, who wants to pull out an umbrella only to find it staring back?

As if that weren’t enough, if it’s a ghost story you want, there’s a ton of those to choose from too. There is the Yotsuya Kaidan, where a Samurai plots to kill his wife Oiwa and remarry, only to face the consequences of his actions; the Bancho Sarayashiki, where the servant Okiku is framed and killed for destroying an heirloom plate of the samurai who covets her; Yuki-Onna, whose snow maiden of the title lures men in the mountains to their deaths; Botan Doro, with a man’s otherworldly lover, and Hoichi the Earless Minstrel. These and many more were first compiled in English by Lafcadio Hearn (otherwise known as Koizumi Yakumo) at the turn of the 20th Century, and that’s still one of the most convenient places to find them all in one spot; check out Kwaidan or In Ghostly Japan for more like these.

For those wishing for something a little more modern to scare them senseless, however, Japan has a flourishing genre of horror films, or J-Horror, which have made a splash big enough for at least some of them to get big-budget Hollywood remakes. Perhaps you’ve seen a few of them already. One such film is The Ring (Ringu), the story of a cursed videotape that kills those unfortunate enough to watch it. It also draws liberally from older Japanese ghost stories, with the well borrowed from the story of Okiku, and Sadako / Samara’s appearance based more-or-less directly on Oiwa from the Yotsuya Kaidan. There’s also The Grudge (Ju-On), where the curse of a vengeful ghost begins to spread its influence along with its victims. And then there’s Dark Water, where what seems to be a leak in the ceiling above a young mother’s apartment turns out to be far more sinister. And just this year, there was another remake: One Missed Call (Chakushin Ari), where cell phone calls presage doom.

Generally speaking, the American versions of the above films change the characters and setting to the US (with the notable exception of The Grudge, which stays in Japan but brings in some American characters for the audience to indentify with), while polishing the visual effects and making the storylines more straightforward. As for whether the originals or their remakes are better, I think that’s a decision best left up to the viewer, but I do tend to prefer the originals. There are subtitled versions out there for those who don’t understand Japanese and are feeling particularly adventurous.

For Japanese horror even more off the beaten path, there is Suicide Club, where a rash of seemingly-unrelated suicides in Tokyo is just the tip of the iceberg. This is something of a cult film, even in Japan, with the public divided over its subject matter and the goriness of certain notorious scenes. And lastly, there is Audition, which I only mention because I’ve seen it, and not to recommend. I watched it once, and it was the closest I came to being physically ill due to a movie. Perhaps for those accustomed to more recent things like Saw or Hostel it’s nothing new, but I have to say this: piano wire should only be used for pianos. Ugh.

But enough on films to scar impressionable young minds; the important thing is that, with a wealth of ghost stories and other curious tales here, I can at least keep myself in the Halloween spirit, even if the only evidence that it’s Halloween comes from a few cutesy decorations and green squash being passed off as “pumpkins”. That, and the prodigious amounts of Halloween candy my parents have sent me, in an apparent ploy to thwart my efforts at the gym. Now if I could just get Japan to adopt Halloween as readily as it absorbed Valentine’s Day…