Few of those who come to this metropolis suspect that the Japanese capital is a kind of nature reserve, where almost in every quarter you can encounter strange, unknowable, inhabitants of the world of shadows.
This is not surprising. Over the past four centuries, Tokyo has been home to millions and millions of people who yearned for money and power, loved, suffered and from time to time killed each other. And as experts of the supernatural explain, behind every crime there is a train of unsatisfied grievances, a thirst for revenge, all those unbridled feelings that give rise to ghosts that can not only pursue the direct perpetrators of crimes for decades, but also frighten bystanders.
The shadow world of Japan in this sense is much richer and more densely populated by spirits and ghosts than good old England or the gloomy castles of feudal Europe. This characteristic stems from the peculiarities of the national Shinto religion, proceeding from the fact that the souls of the dead are transformed into deities - good or evil, depending on the life lived - inhabiting the heavens and the world around them. They not only follow people, but, if necessary, interfere in their affairs. It is not without reason that the whole country celebrates the 0-Bon holiday in August, during which the Japanese, even those who are very far from religious dogmas, get the opportunity to communicate with their long-dead ancestors. Literally the whole country these days is colored with lanterns, showing the spirits the shortest way to their home. Therefore, for a Japanese, a meeting with a ghost, no matter how frightening it may seem,is as natural an event as an unexpected call from an acquaintance with whom you have not seen for a long time.
In general, the inhabitants of the other world are divided by the Japanese into two main categories. One of them - bakemono - is represented by creatures of the wild - foxes and badgers, capable of transforming into humans, strange-looking guardians of mountains (tengu) and reservoirs (kappa). Accordingly, you can meet them in the forest, in the mountains, on the banks of lakes and rivers. The viciousness and harmfulness of these monsters is not unconditional. Some of the bakemono look pretty comical. There are beliefs that tengu or kappa are even capable of helping a person. But, as they say, you can get under the hot hand.
But for the city it is much more characteristic of a meeting with the yurei - the ghosts of those who were treacherously killed, deceived, became the victim of a conspiracy. The souls of these sufferers (warriors, abandoned wives, unhappy lovers), finding no rest, wander the earth, most often around the places associated with their death, in the hope of revenge. Their phosphorescent contours in the night, with long flexible arms, but no legs, with eyes glowing with ruby light, according to experts, can often be seen in some hotels or in dilapidated houses where a crime once occurred, at the cemetery gates or abandoned duckweed ponds. And if you don't see it, you can hear their heavy breathing in an empty room, footsteps behind the wall, heartbreaking groans, the clatter of the heels of wooden shoes in a dark alley.
Shadows visible in the windows of an empty hotel
There are a lot of such "bad" places in Tokyo. For example, in the old Imperial Palace, which was destroyed by a fire a century and a half ago, “seven mystical wonders” were recorded, among which are clearly audible behind the partitions of female steps, a dog that appears and disappears from nowhere, a pond in which the moon is reflected even in moonless nights.
It is believed that the passage to the other world is often bridges, tunnels, dark gateways. It is there that the meeting with the yurei is most possible. And this is not idle talk. Taxi drivers, who, by the nature of their profession, often travel around Tokyo at night, can tell about dozens of cases when shadows chased their car in a particular transport tunnel, looked into the cab, knocked on the roof, asked for a ride. This happens especially often in the Sendagaya Tunnel, laid under the cemetery at the Senjuin Temple in Harajuku. Another haunted spot is north of Ueno Station, where criminals were executed during the Middle Ages.
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Ghosts also feel at ease in the Sunshine 60 skyscraper, built on the site of the Sugamo prison, where the death penalty was carried out from 1895 to 1971, including over war criminals convicted by the International Tribunal. However, it is not only about the possibility of meeting with ghosts. This is generally a "bad place", where accidents were frequent during the construction of the skyscraper. In the ten years that have passed since the end of construction, 150 suicides have jumped from the roof of a high-rise building. To this day, people from time to time see fireballs chaotically moving through the rooms of the upper floors of Sunshine 60.
Flying "balls" in the temple
Yurei even chose the residence of the Prime Minister, which became the scene of a bloody murder during the days of the 1932 armed putsch. For two decades, politicians who succeeded each other as prime minister refused to live in this house. Witnesses, moreover, very authoritative, claimed that at night translucent figures in old military uniforms roam the corridors of the residence, strange noises are heard, door handles twitch, electric lamps blink. More recently, Prime Minister Dz. Koizumi decided to move his residence to another building.
How densely the territory of the Japanese capital is inhabited by representatives of the afterlife can be judged at least by the fact that a special route of a tourist bus, introducing visitors to the "bad places" of Tokyo, provides for a detour of more than a hundred such points.
Shadows on the platform of the Tokyo subway
However, in order to get to know yurei, there is no need for a personal meeting with ghosts. A large proportion of Japanese culture, literature, and fine arts is to one degree or another associated with descriptions of this shadow side of life. The first mention in the literature of a vengeful ghost can be found in the pages of "The Tale of Genji", written a thousand years ago. Then, the authors of plays for the Noh theater began to acquaint their compatriots with the appearance of the representatives of the afterlife. In the XIV-XV centuries, ghosts and spirits became the main characters on the stage of this theater. During the Edo period (1603-1868), ghosts took root on the stage of the Kabuki theater. The most famous woodcutters, such as Hokusai, devoted their engravings to this topic.
After the Meiji Restoration (1868), the Japanese government felt a certain inconvenience in connection with the way the Land of the Rising Sun looked in the eyes of visiting foreigners. Ghosts, spirits, demons were officially recognized as the product of base superstition. The works of some folklorists have been censored. In the classroom it was explained to the students that theta and kappa were just inventions of people of little culture.
But the fight with the other world was soon curtailed. The country that embarked on the path of ultranationalism at the beginning of the last century needed a new ideology in which spirits and Shinto deities played an important role. Adherents of the new science of yokaigaku (monstrology) appeared, who in all seriousness began to study and classify the manifestations of the other world in the life of the Japanese. For example, the bird-headed mountain monster theta was declared the embodiment of the spirit of bushido (samurai's code of honor). The belief in ghosts and demons became one of the components of the formation of the national spirit of Yamato.
Removing taboos from superstitions breathed new life into the work of authors who made ghosts heroes of their short stories, stories, paintings, sculptures. Comic books (manga) about the collisions of the real and otherworldly worlds came out in huge numbers (and continue to be published!). Dozens, if not hundreds, of brilliant animated films have been created on this topic. An example is the recent success of Hayao Miyazaki's animated film Spirited Away, which won an Oscar in the United States for its undeniably talented tale of a ghost scene in a small resort town.
And to make it clear how deep the tentacles of the underworld have penetrated into the reality of modern Tokyo, you can turn to the Internet. There, on a frequently visited site (www.nichibun.ac.jp/youkaidb), you can easily find out about the haunted habitat closest to your home. Today, the Internet has a list of 13,000 such points in Tokyo alone. In other words, a ghost can always be found in the neighborhood. Every year 1.5-2 thousand new addresses are added to this list.
It remains only to find out how much the Japanese themselves believe in these superstitions and prejudices. A public opinion poll conducted in Tokyo showed that 29.5% of respondents are firmly convinced of the existence of the other world, 40.9% prefer to believe in it, even if they do not have sufficient evidence, the rest are pragmatists, but their number is less than 30%.
A. Lazarev