hear the word “yurei.”
The Story
Coherent English summaries of Oiwa’s story are few and far between. Read on and you’ll understand why. Her most famous turn, the 1825 kabuki “Tokaido Yotsuka Kaidan,” packs more twists into a few hours than a modern TV miniseries does into an entire season.
Oiwa is married to Iyemon, a disgraced samurai. After the couple has yet another row, Oiwa’s father takes her home. Iyemon sets up a private meeting to beg for forgiveness, but Oiwa’s father reveals proof that Iyemon stole money from his former government job. Enraged, Iyemon stabs Oiwa’s father to death.
Oiwa’s sister Osode is happily married to a loyal man named Yomoshichi. But Naosuke, the neighborhood medicine peddler, carries a torch for her. In a coincidence of the sort that only happens in kabuki, Naosuke picks this very night to murder his rival. (Getting all this?)
When Oiwa and Osode stumble on the respective scenes, Iyemon and Naosuke convince the two that the victims were killed in robberies. They console the ladies by promising they’ll get their revenge on whatever villains perpetrated these foul deeds. And so life goes on, with Iyemon and Oiwa reunited, and Osode and Naosuke able to court Osode.
But fickle, philandering Iyemon quickly loses interest in Oiwa after she gives birth to their child, and begins focusing his amorous attentions on Ume, the daughter of a high-ranking government official. Frustrated by his marital status, Iyemon bribes a masseuse to seduce his wife in an attempt to trump up grounds for divorce.
Meanwhile, Ume takes matters into her own hands by sending Oiwa a little baby-shower gift: a powerful poison disguised as a medicinal cream.
The poison does its job: the skin sloughs off Oiwa’s face and her hair pulls out in clumps, leaving her horribly disfigured. The masseuse can’t bring himself to carry out the deed, and blows the lid off of Ieymon’s intrigue as Oiwa gazes upon her ruined face in a mirror.
She commits suicide while coldly proclaiming a curse on the soul of the man who’d wronged her. Iyemon responds by nailing her corpse and that of a lawman (who he also kills after the man comes sniffing around about a certain vial of missing poison) to a door, and hurls them into the Kanda River to make it seem as if the pair had died in a love-suicide.
The Attack
Things take a turn from “soap opera” to “spooky” on Iyemon and Ume’s wedding night, when Oiwa’s furious apparition manifests in the conjugal suite, causing Iyemon to lash out wildly and accidentally kill his bride. In the hallway another appearance causes him to mistakenly cut down her father. Pursued by the remainder of the household, he hurls Ume’s mother and her servant into a canal, where both drown.
Iyemon doing his thing, on the cover of the program from a 1925 Kabuki production of “Yotsuya Kaidan”
Meanwhile, Naosuke finally gets his wish when Osode agrees to sleep with him. But the minute the pair bed down, Yomoshichi’s ghost appears in the room. Naosuke wrestles with the phantom intruder, accidentally killing Osode in the melee. And in yet another twist, it turns out that she was none other than his long-lost sister! Shocked (and presumably grossed out), Naosuke commits suicide.
Iyemon continues to be confronted by the deformed visage of his dead wife; she appears everywhere, even in the form of the paper lanterns swinging over his head. On the run and destitute, he attempts fishing for some food, only to hook the door he’d thrown in the river earlier, still festooned with the now horribly rotting corpses of his victims. Ghostly voices fill his ears as he runs far, far from the city to an isolated cottage on the ominously named Snake Mountain. Still he is unable to escape. Oiwa’s face haunts him from the windows, walls, floor, even the trees and vines outside. He tries committing suicide, but her phantom hand stays his blade again and again.
Iyemon, by this point a total gibbering wreck, finally gets a lucky break when Yomoshichi pops up and puts him out of his misery. Making this one beautiful happy ending... If you’re an angry ghost, anyway.
Surviving an Encounter
You’re in big, big trouble if Oiwa is on your case. In spite of the fact that she is ostensibly a fictional character, she is believed to be as potent and dangerous a force today as when she first manifested. But you can content yourself with the fact that Oiwa doesn’t want her victims dead — she just wants to make their lives a living hell.
Unconfirmed stories abound of those who become involved with her story being injured — often those who portray her in kabuki productions, but the cast and crews of television and film as well. For this reason, it is customary for anyone involved in a production of Yotsuya Kaidan to visit Oiwa’s grave, at Myogyo-ji temple in the Sugamo district of Tokyo, to show their respects.
Want a little extra insurance? No problem. Visit the Tamiya Shrine, which is located on the site of Oiwa’s family home in Yotsuya. For a fee, the priest there will perform a custom-tailored Shinto exorcism ceremony to cut any ties one might have to Oiwa’s eternally furious spirit*.
Analysis
In creating his portrayal of Oiwa for the 1825 kabuki production of Yotsuya Kaidan, the playwright Tsuruya Nanboku IV synthesized elements from several real-life murder cases (one of which really did involve a samurai nailing his wife and her lover to a door!)
Within the next few years, five people associated with the play would die under mysterious circumstances—including Nanboku. Curse of coincidence? You make the call.
Know Your Lantern
Oiwa’s manifestation as a lantern is often mistaken for the very similar-looking yokai known as bura-bura or baké-chochin (see Yokai Attack!). The key to telling the difference: look for hair. Yokai lanterns tend not to have any.
Hokusai’s famous rendering of Oiwa, is often mistaken for a Bura-Bura haunted lantern. 1831 woodblock print.
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* Don't worry: We went ahead and did this. (Really!) - Hiroko and Matt.
Sexy & Scary: 02
OKIKU
Sexy & Scary: 02
OKIKU
Name in Japanese: お菊
Origin: “Bancho Sara-yashiki” (The Plate Mansion of Bancho”), 1741
A.K.A: The Plate-Counting Ghost
Gender: Female
Date of Death: Various. Early 1500s? Mid 1600s?
Age at death: Early 20s (Estimated)
Cause of
