That Kind of Thing is Meaningless…

Two of my novels were partly inspired by tales such as those I am going to relate.

“29 Argyle Drive” [http://www.amazon.com/29-Argyle-Drive-David-Turri-ebook/dp/B00Q2ETTRS/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=] is a horror story – possession, spiritual and demonic; poltergeists; the whole nine yards. It owes a lot to these stories told to me by several Japanese friends who have a Sixth Sense.

“Escarpment”.http://www.amazon.com/Escarpment-David-Turri-ebook/dp/B016LX8U60/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8  is about the tragedy of the Battle of Okinawa and the innocent people who died in it. There are ghosts and spirits here, too. Again, the story was fueled by anecdotes told me by the same people.

The precincts of Osaka castle, its parkland, the Osaka Business Park and the district of Kyobashi stand on land drenched with blood. Haunted land. In 1614, during the winter siege of Osaka castle, the attacking troops couldn’t breach the walls. Couldn’t get at the enemy samurai. Couldn’t get their “kubi” (the decapitated heads of the samurai they killed). They took out their frustration on the villagers who lived around the castle. Killing thousands and thousands of them. Taking their “kubi’. So that Ogawa River, which still flows through Kyobashi, was more blood than water and clogged with headless corpses.

During World War 2, the castle was a command center and the area was crowded with armament factories. From March 1945, streams of B-29s swept over the Kyobashi district in nine separate raids. Ten thousand people were killed. On August 14, the day the war ended, 150 bombers pulverized the area a final time.

Bombs were dropped directly on Kyobashi JR station just as two crowded trains pulled it. More than 700 people died, of which 500 were never identified.

***

 

There seems to be a fundamental difference between a ghost and a spirit. Ghosts are there, but have no innate existence. They are psychic imprints on the landscape. Like a DVD stuck on a track and repeating it over and over. Spirits, on the other hand, exist in the places they haunt. They can communicate with the living. And they can harm the living.

 

***

 

 

Ms. A_____ lives in a condominium overlooking Osaka Castle. One night she was awakened in the early morning by the figure of a samurai in the bedroom sitting on a big war horse.

“Ken” used to work nights at a business hotel in Kyobashi when he was a university student. His duties included periodically patrolling each floor of the hotel. One particular floor, he always braced himself as the elevator doors opened. All along the corridor, furious and desperate samurai were engaged in bloody sword fights. He had to dodge his way down the corridor. Curiously, when he got married, he lost his power of second-sight almost completely.

Until a couple of years ago, a major company in the Kyobashi area used the top floor of its building as a new employee dormitory. Until the freshmen boycotted it and demanded to be moved to new premises. The reason was that their sleep was being disturbed by samurai racing through the night on their horses. The top floor is currently used for meetings and conferences.

I heard this anecdote from “Hiroko”. She met a friend of hers for lunch at a Kyobashi restaurant. The restaurant is located at the basement level. They went down the stairs, but as soon as they sat down at a table, the friend grew pale and became perturbed. Hiroko asked her what was wrong. She shook her head and whispered, “I feel awful things here. I see terrible things. We have to go.”

Ms M______ works in a high-rise office building in the business district. Because she has second-sight, she often sees dead men in factory clothes hanging round the elevators of the floor she works on. She doesn’t make eye contact. The women’s changing room often becomes unaccountably cold.

Ms M______ went to school in Kyobashi. She tells of an unwritten rule that when the day’s activities are done, students are told not to linger on the premises. They are encouraged to go home as quickly as possible. Teachers, too, don’t hang around the school after dark. (I heard confirmation of this from another Japanese friend of mine whose daughter went to elementary school in Kyobashi.)

All her life, Ms M______ has seen things that most people don’t see, things that should not be seen. At high school sports practice in the gym one day, she saw a spirit that had attached itself to the ankle of a boy. She said the spirit was blurry, elongated and the color of a shark.

Another time, a friend of hers had forgotten something in the gym. Ms M_______ told her to leave it until tomorrow. It was getting late. The friend said, don’t worry. I’ve got this.

She took a Buddhist omamori [see picture] lucky charm from her pocket.

She ran back to the gym and picked up whatever it was she had forgotten. As she was coming out, she heard a woman’s voice whisper in her ear.

“Sonna wa imi ga nai yo.”

Which means…

“That kind of thing is meaningless.”

Referring to the omamori.