To celebrate de Spanish Death’s Day (1st November), here I show you a Japanese ghost’s story:
Ingwa Banashi
The wife of the daimio knew she was dying. From the beginnings of autumn of the year ten of Bunsei, she had been confined in her bed. It was already the fourth month of the year twelve of Bunsei -1829 in our chronology- and the cherries had started to bloom. The woman thought in the cherry-trees of her garden en the happiness of spring. She also thought in her husband’s concubines, especially in Lady Yukiko, who was nineteen years old.
“My dear wife,” said the daimio, “you has suffer a lot during three long years. We have done everything possible so you can get back your health. We have been taking care of you night and day, we have pray for you, we haven even fasted. But despite our loves efforts and the skills of the best doctors, it seems that the end of your life is no so far away. Probably we will suffer more than you when you abandon what Buda called wisely “the world’s burning home.” I’ll entrust all rites’ celebration necessary to favour your next reincarnation without caring about money. And each of us will pray restlessly so you don’t have to wander through the Dark Emptiness so you enter immediately in Paradise and reach Buda’s state.”
He talked with lots of tenderness while caressing his wife. Then, with closed eyes, she answered him with a so fragile voice as an insect:
“I’m so grateful for your kind words… Yes, it’s truth, as you say it has been three long years of illness. I’ve received all kind of attentions and the most caring cares… Then, why I should detour of the only Real Path in the precise moment of my death?... Maybe it’s not right to think in earthly issues in a moment like this, but I have to ask you one thing, just one… Make come Lady Yukiko; you know I lover her as if she was my sister. I want to talk with her about this home matters.”
Yukiko came to her Lord’s call and obeying his sign, she kneeled in front of the bed. The daimio’s wife opened her ayes, looked Yukiko and said:
“Ah, Yukiko! Here you are! I’m so happy to see you!... Come here just a little bit so you can hear me better: I cannot speak louder. I hope you will be loyal to our dear Lord. I want you to take my place when I leave… I wish he loves you forever; yes, that he loves you even one hundred times more than me. I hope that you ascend of rang very soon and you become his honourable wife… And I beg you to love forever or dear Lord: never let another woman to steal his keenness. This is what I wanted to tell you, dear Yukiko… Have you understood?”
“My dear Madam,” protested Yukiko, “I beg you not to tell me such things. You know very well that I’m from a poor and modest condition: how can I aspire to become in our Lord’s wife!”
“No, no!” answered the wife with a husky voice, “It’s not time to ceremonious words: we should talk frankly. After my death it’s sure you will ascend to a higher position. You have to know that I want you to become the wife of our Lord: yes, that’s my higher wish, Yukiko, even higher than become Buda… I nearly forget it!... I want you to make something for me, Yukiko. You know that there is a Double-Cherry blossom tree in the garden, which was taken here from Yoshino’s Mount, in Yamato, last year. I’ve been told that it’s all blossomed; I wish so much to see its flowers! Very soon I’ll have already died; I need to see it before die. I want, Yukiko, you to take me to the garden so I can see it… Yes, take me on your back, Yukiko, on your back…”
While she was demanding this her voice’s tone became stronger and lighter, as the intensity of the desire gave the woman a new strength: suddenly he started to cry. Yukiko kept kneeled, motionless, without knowing what to do; the Lord nodded with a light head’s movement.
“It’s her last will,” he said, “she has always loved flowers and I knew she fervently wished to see Yamato’s tree bloomed. Come on, my dear Yukiko, make her wish to come true.”
Yukiko offered her shoulders to the wife as nursemaid to a child and said:
“Madam, I’m prepared. Tell me, please, how I can help you.”
“Like this!” answered the dying woman getting up with a superhuman effort clinging to Yukiko’s shoulders. But as soon as she got up she slipped her skinny hands under Yukiko’s kimono and grabbed the breasts of the young woman bursting out a malicious laughing.
“This is my desire,” she shouted, “cherry blossoms, but not the ones in the garden!... I can’t die without accomplishing my desire. Now your beautiful flowers are mine!”
And after saying these words, she crumbled over the young woman and died.
Servants tried to lift Madam’s body up, under which was Yukiko, to place it in bed. But, despite weird it may seemed, they couldn’t carry out this easy task. The death’s cold hands had linked to the Lady’s breasts in an incomprehensible way. It looks as if the hands had grown up inside the flesh. Yukiko, terrified, fainted of pain.
Doctors came and they barely could believe the phenomenon their eyes witnessed. They cannot split the death’s hands from the body of her victim, though they tried in different ways. The hands were clinging in such way that any try to split them up will provoke a hemorrhage to the young woman. That the fingers grabbing strong the breasts was not the reason to not to be able to split them but, what happened was that the hands’ palm melted inexplicably with the flesh of the Lady’s breasts.
In that time, the most renowned doctor in Yedo was a foreigner, surgeon from Holland. The daimio decided to call him. After a careful examination he stated that he was unable to explain that strange case and that the only thing he could do to help the young woman, was to cut the corpse’s hands. And he said that it would be too dangerous to the Lady to try to split the hands from her breasts. So they follow their advice and cut out the hands by the writs. And the hands kept clinging in the breasts till they darkened and rot, as the flesh of a corpse.
But that was only the begging of the nightmare. Though hands seemed to be apparently death and lifeless, they were not death. Sporadically they moved stealthily, as big spiders. Night after night, counting on the Hour of the Ox (two in the morning) till the hour of the Hour of the Tiger (two hours later), the hands pressed, squeezed and tortured the young woman.
Yukiko shaved her hair and became mendicant nun. She got the religious name of Dassetsu. She ordered to make death’s splint for the death Madam, which she carried with her at every moment. Everyday she begged humbly so the death forgiven her and made a Budist ritual so her jealous spirit can finally achieved peace. But the negative karma that that harm had caused, cannot be calm so easily. Every night, over seventeen years, on the Hour of the Ox, the hands tortured, as the witnessed to who she had told her own story a night in the house of Noguchi Dengozayemon, in the village of Tanaka, Karachi district, in Shimotsuke province. All this happen in the third year of Koowa (1846). Since then, there were no more news from her.
This story it’s not mine, I just translate from a version I get of Lafcadio Hearn. If you want you can buy his book In Ghostly Japan.
