The Japanese Ghost Story of Okiku

Ghost Stories are a popular subject of Japanese woodblock prints. The ghost story of Okiku, an unfortunate servant maid, is one of the best known and was transformed into a Kabuki play and numerous novels.

Bancho Sarayashiki

In the kabuki play Bancho Sarayashiki, Okiku is a maid at the mansion of the Japanese samurai Tessan Aoyama. The samurai wants to seduce the cute girl but she rejects his advances. Aoyama uses a trick. He hides one of ten valuable Dutch plates and threatens Okiku to make public that she had stolen the plate unless she agrees to become his mistress. In her desperation Okiku throws herself into the well and drowns.

Okiku's ghost comes out every night, counting from one to nine and then breaks out into a terrible howling and sobbing. Finally Aoyama goes insane by the daily apparitions at night.

Different Versions of the Ghost Story of Okiku

There are different versions of the ghost story of Okiku. What they all have in common is the description of her ghost coming out of the well and counting from one to nine and then breaking out into a heart-rendering sobbing.

In another version, Okiku really breaks a plate and is killed by her master and her corpse is thrown into the well.

In yet another version, it is the wife of Aoyama, who breaks the plate. To hide her guilt, she throws the broken plate into the well and accuses Okiku of having it stolen. In this version she is also killed by her master for punishment and thrown into the well.

There is also an alternate version for the end of the story. To stop the nightly sobbing, a friend of the family of Aoyama is hired. He is hiding at the well during the night and after Okiku had counted from one to nine, he is stepping forward shouting loudly "ten". From then on the ghost of Okiku was never seen again.

One of the tourist attractions on Himeji Castle is Okiku's well. In the Himeji version, Okiku was a servant of Aoyama, a retainer who planned a plot against his lord. Okiku overheard the plot and reported it to her lover, a loyal warrior. The plot was averted. When Aoyama found out that Okiku had been the cause for his failure, he decided to kill her. So he accused her of having stolen one of ten valuable dishes. She was tortured to death and thrown into the well.

Okiku's well on Himeji Castle is in competition with another location of the well, the garden of the Canadian embassy in Tokyo - established on land bought from the Aoyama family. Looks like there are at least as many locations of the well of the poor girl as there are different versions of her story.

All the variations of the ghost story of Okiku have an extremely wrongful and cruel treatment of a poor girl of the lower classes in common. But different from the ghost story of Yotsuya, revenge towards the tormenter is not the big Leitmotiv (apart from one variation of the story).

Shinkei Sanju-roku Kai Sen - 36 New Ghosts

Among the artists designing ghost subjects, Yoshitoshi Tsukioka (1839-1892) should be mentioned in first place. Yoshitoshi strongly believed in the existence of ghosts and was convinced that he had personally seen supernatural apparitions in his life.

The print of The Ghost of Okiku at the Dish Mansion was part of the series Shinkei Sanju-roku Kai Sen. It was Yoshitoshi's last series before his death (together with one One Hundred Aspects of the Moon) and was published from 1889 to 1892. The series can be found under different English translations like New Selection of 36 Apparitions or Thirty-six New Ghosts.

Towards the end of his life, the subjects of Yoshitoshi's prints were predominantly chosen from Japan's rich cultural tradition and history. It was an appeal of the artist to his countrymen not to give up their traditional values in exchange for the Western modernization that had begun in the Meiji period.

Obake From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

"obakemono", are the traditional ghosts, goblins and monsters from Japanese folklore; the term is virtually the same as "yōkai", and includes traditional goblins and monsters, and "yūrei", spirits of the human dead. The term obake derives from the Japanese verb bakeru, meaning "to change"; thus obake are preternatural beings who have undergone some sort of change, from the natural realm to the supernatural.Obake can range from animals (kitsune, tanuki, mujina) that are thought to have shapeshifting powers, to mythological creatures, to inanimate objects that have come to life (called "tsukumogami"). Popular examples of obake are the kappa, a water-dwelling imp who drowns humans and animals if he can get his hands on them; the tengu, a long-nosed mountain goblin skilled at martial arts and having the wings and sometimes beak of a bird; kasa-obake, an umbrella that has come to life; and kitsune, foxes, the masters of shapeshifting.Obake also constitutes Yurei, the spirits of dead humans who have died in a great fit of rage or sorrow. Their spirit lingers on in the physical world, until their last desire has been fulfilled. This can range from obtaining revenge upon those that killed them, to ensuring that their children are properly cared for, as seen in the many tales of ubume.Stories and legends of these Japanese apparitions have also been imported to other languages and cultures, such as the Hawaiian Pidgin of native Hawaiians. In Hawaii, some of the original lore concerning obake has been altered or misunderstood; the most common example is the mujina, originally a tanuki-like shapeshifter, which has been confused in Hawaii for the noppera-bō, a faceless human apparition. The source of this confusion was a story by Lafcadio Hearn called "Mujina". Hearn neglected to explain the reasoning behind his title: in Japan, mujina are often known to shapeshift into the faceless noppera-bō.

Obake in Popular Culture

Various kinds of obake are encountered in folklore and folklore-inspired art and literature, particularly manga and Japanese horror. The man to whom most of the credit should go for keeping youkai and obake in the popular imagination (at least in Japan) is Shigeru Mizuki, the manga creator of such series as Ge Ge Ge no Kitaro and Sanpei no Kappa. With the exception of Ge Ge Ge no Kitaro, however, Mizuki's works have yet to be translated into English.

In the English-speaking world, knowledge of obake is slowly, but surely, developing a dedicated following. Hawaiian folklorist Glen Grant was known for his "Obake Files", a series of reports he developed about supernatural incidents in Hawaii; the grand bulk of these incidents and reports were of Japanese origin or concerned obake. Additionally, Mexican-American folklorist and author Alfred Avila included "La Japonesa", a story about a nekomusume, in his collection Mexican Ghost Tales of the Southwest.

Japan ghost

Japan ghost

Japan ghost

Japan ghost

Japan ghost

Japan ghost

Japan ghost

Japan ghost

A ghost on the sidewalk in Japan.

A ghost on the sidewalk in Japan

Ghost Bed

Don't know the origin of this, but it seems someone's bed is haunted.

Also watch for the door closing by itself.

Japan Ghost

Well: i've worked on a factory in Japan and there many people had already seen strange things. I didn't believed until one friend of mine was shooting his girlfriend on his celphone and then, some kind of dark figure shows up in the image... This is a copy of the original one, it's fast, so pay attention... It's weird!!