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
"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
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