Japanese Ghost Stories Dwell in the Spirit of Their Times
In Japan, ghost stories are not to be scoffed at, but provide deep insights into the fuzzy boundary between life and death
By Christopher Harding
It was a moonlit night in early summer, about a year on from the great tsunami. As waves broke gently on a beach half-obscured in fog, Fukuji could just about make out two people walking along: a woman and a man.
Fukuji frowned. The woman was definitely his wife.
He called out her name. She turned, and smiled. Fukuji now saw who the man was, too. He had been in love with Fukuji’s wife before Fukuji had married her. Both had died in the tsunami.
Fukuji’s wife called to him, over her shoulder: ‘I am married now, to this man.’
‘But don’t you love your children?’ Fukuji cried out in reply. His wife paused at that, and began to sob.
Fukuji looked sadly at his feet for a moment, not knowing what more to say. When he looked up, the woman and the man had drifted away.
— From Tōno Monogatari or Legends of Tōno (1910) by Kunio Yanagita, author’s translation
