Toshiden: Exploring Japanese Urban Legends: Volume Two Read online

  Contents

  Title

  Copyright

  Introduction

  Supernatural

  Sukima-onna

  Human-faced Dog

  Even Though You Can See Me

  Ski Resort

  Oshima

  The Granny Who Sells Legs

  Kudan

  Headless Rider

  Sadako's Phone Number

  Blue Crayon

  Daddy's Back

  The Knock

  Running Ghost

  Middle of the Photo

  Red Scarf

  Turbo Granny

  Jumping Granny

  564219

  Tripping Over a Tombstone

  Exclamation Point Road Sign

  Gomiko-san

  Watching Woman

  Red Hanten

  Society

  Mysterious Sticker

  Red Fundoshi

  Car Guillotine

  Yellow Ambulance

  Kokkai-gijidomae Station

  Beneath the Research University

  Skylark Billboard

  Cell Phone Abuse

  Interview Photos

  Arm Wrestling Machine

  Meaning Behind the Kanji for "Road"

  Lake Shikotsu

  Earthquakes and Akihabara

  Medical

  Human-faced Carbuncle

  Diet Capsule

  Game Brain

  Lowering of Scalpels

  Sleep-talking

  Cup Noodles and Blood Donations

  Helmet

  Kendo and Baldness

  Human Body Anatomy Model

  Mamushi Zake

  Death Necklace

  Suicide by Tongue Biting

  Entertainment

  Peach Water CM curse

  The Fan's Present

  The Performer's Disappearance

  The Former Idol's Verbal Slip

  Phone Wallpaper

  Matsushima Nahomi's Curse

  Death Blog

  Dragon Ball GT's Meaning

  The Idol's Prediction

  Jungle

  Severed Head on Live Broadcast

  Mysterious Vinyl String

  Jokes

  Rhinoceros Beetle

  Blue Urine

  A Brother's Jealousy

  The Hairdresser's Customer

  General Offensive

  Favourite Type

  Is That All You Can Do?

  Hanage

  Crime

  Lost Girl

  Stalker

  If You Had Turned On The Lights…

  Fake Police Officer

  The Terrorist's Gratitude

  Tokyo Disneyland kidnappers

  Murder Corps

  Love Hotel Mirror

  Manhole Thieves

  Accident Scammer Fax

  Sources

  Rate This Book

  Reikan Snippet

  Want Even More?

  About the Author

  Newsletter

  Toshiden Vol. 2

  Exploring Japanese Urban Legends

  Tara A. Devlin

  Toshiden: Exploring Japanese Urban Legends Vol. 2

  First Edition: May 2019

  taraadevlin.com

  © 2019 Tara A. Devlin

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

  INTRODUCTION

  When I released Toshiden: Exploring Japanese Urban Legends Vol. 1 in 2018, I wasn’t sure how the book would be received. I’ve loved urban legends since I was a child, but how would other people feel about a book that didn’t just look at the stories of Japanese legends, but their histories, their origins, and their variations? Thankfully, people took to it very well! I received numerous requests and comments asking if and when a second volume would be coming out.

  Here it is!

  If you’ve read the first volume of Toshiden, you’ll know what to expect here. The book is split into sections featuring urban legends not just of the supernatural variety, but also from society at large, medical oddities, dark secrets from the entertainment industry, punny jokes, and horrific crimes all straight out of Japan. All research comes straight from Japanese sources and looks at the development of these legends, how they came to be in the first place, whether they are true or not, and interesting variations you can find in different areas of Japan.

  So, without further ado, get ready to feel your skin crawl. Get ready to laugh. Get ready to think. Get ready to cringe. This volume has it all! Welcome to Toshiden: Exploring Japanese Legends Vol. 2!

  Supernatural

  Sukima-onna

  A young man lived all alone. One day, he felt someone looking at him from within his room. He looked around but, of course, nobody was there. There was no reason for anyone else to be there but him. And yet, the feeling that someone was looking at him continued.

  Worried, the young man searched his room, but he found nothing. It was possible that someone was peeping at him from outside, but his curtains were closed, so there was no way to see in. Maybe someone had installed a surveillance camera, or a listening device… He got even more worried, and carefully searched through every inch of his room. Then, he found the source of the gaze.

  In the thin gap between the dresser and the wall, a woman was staring right at him…

  ABOUT

  There’s a good chance you’ve heard of Sukima-onna, or the Gap Woman, before. She’s a favourite of 2chan, and her popularity has spread to Western shores as well. At her most basic, Sukima-onna is a woman that peers out from the gaps in one’s room. Any gaps. It can be from between the dresser and wall, as in the above story, or it can be from underneath the bed, behind the curtain, in the drawers… absolutely anywhere. There’s no gap too small for her, and the only way to avoid her gaze is to make sure that every single little gap is covered. That means even the cracks in the floor, wall, or doors. Everything. You’ll need a lot of tape, if the idea of her gazing at you from every nook and cranny doesn’t drive you insane first.

  Gaps were once thought to connect this world to the next, but where did she originally come from?

  HISTORY

  In modern times, Sukima-onna gained popularity when comedian Sakura Kinzo told her story to the masses on the daytime television show Waratte Iitomo. His version, called the “One Millimetre Ghost” or “One Millimetre Woman,” went as follows:

  A certain man didn’t show up to work one day. Worried, his colleague called him, but was unable to get in contact with him. A week passed without word from the man, and so his colleagues went to his apartment to find out what was going on.

  When they got there, the man was inside. When they asked what was going on, the man informed his colleagues that he hadn’t taken a single step outside all week.

  “It’s not healthy to stay inside for so long,” one of his colleagues told him.

  “She gets lonely, so I can’t go out,” the man replied.

  Confused, his colleagues asked him, “What are you talking about? There’s no woman here.”

  Then, one of the workers pointed behind the dresser in the room. “She’s in there…”

  When they looked, they found a woman in a red dress standing in the gap between the dresser and the wall. She was staring right at them.

  The colleagues ran, and nobody ever found out what happened to the man after that.

  Yet Sukima-onna’s origins begin even earlier than this. Her story can be traced all the way back to Mimibukuro, written by Negishi Yasumori, a samurai wh
o worked in a senior administrative position during the latter years of the Edo Period. Negishi collected anecdotes and strange stories from various people, including his colleagues and the elderly, over a period of 30 years. He then collected these stories into 10 different volumes of 100 stories each which he called Mimibukuro. One of the stories he collected is nearly word-for-word the story of Sukima-onna that we know today:

  A young man lived alone, and he could sense somebody looking upon him in his room. Of course, there was nobody in the room but him. He thought he was probably just imagining things, so he soon forgot about it.

  However, starting from that day, the boy felt like someone was watching him; day in, day out. He lived on the second floor, so it was difficult to think that someone might be looking in from the outside. He started to think someone was hiding inside the room, so he began his search, but of course, it was all for nothing. He thought he was going insane.

  One day, when he felt himself succumbing to such thoughts again, he finally found the source of the gaze. A woman was standing in the few millimetres between his dresser and the wall, and she was staring right at him.

  Sukima-onna has changed little over the years, a rare yokai that finds herself able to comfortably fit into any time period without major revisions.

  VARIATIONS

  She’s not without variations, however. Some tales also tell of Sukima-otoko, the Gap Man. Depending on the story, Sukima-otoko and Sukima-onna can be interchangeable, but one variation goes as follows:

  The ordinary places people live are full of innumerable gaps. In those gaps resides Sukima-otoko, and it’s said that if you happen to meet his gaze, he will drag you off to a different dimension. You will never be able to return home again.

  In other cases, someone will suddenly approach you from behind and say, “Let’s play hide and seek.” You must hide, but when Sukima-otoko finds you, he will drag you off to another world.

  In stories exclusive to Sukima-otoko, it’s said the middle of his forehead, the area between his brows, has been smashed open. No reason has ever been given as to why.

  In other versions, Sukima-onna likes to hide in different areas of the house:

  One hot summer’s day, a young man was watching TV at home alone. It was just past one in the morning and he suddenly felt thirsty, so he made his way into the dark kitchen. Light from the living room filtered in, so he was able to see well enough without turning the lights on.

  He grabbed a can of beer from the fridge, closed the door… and then he saw it.

  A woman, standing in the 10 cm gap between the fridge and the wall.

  He screamed, and the woman disappeared. After that, the young man avoided using the kitchen at night. Just who was that woman?

  She also doesn’t necessarily have to be super thin:

  A man discovered a rather cheap apartment in the heart of Tokyo. Compared to nearby units, this one was three times cheaper, and when the man asked the real estate to show him around inside, he found no problems with it.

  “How lucky! What a bargain!”

  “We don’t often get places like this,” the real estate said. “The landlord asked us to rent it at this price, but there are people who would pay much more for it.”

  The man decided to move in.

  The first day he moved in he found it extremely comfortable. There was a convenience store just outside, and he was just a four-minute walk from the closest station. After he was done unpacking and putting away his stuff, he was overcome with exhaustion. He lay down on the sofa and fell asleep.

  When he woke up, it was past 3 a.m.

  “Crap. I’ll catch a cold sleeping here,” he said. He lay his futon out, but something felt off. He was alone in the room, but he could sense someone else in there with him. Or to put it more correctly, he could feel someone looking at him.

  No. It was just his imagination. He brushed it off and went back to sleep. But the next day, and the day after that, he continued to feel someone’s gaze upon him.

  Someone was watching him.

  He checked every nook and cranny of the room, but he couldn’t find anyone else in there. Then one day, after returning home from work, he found a book from the shelf on the sofa. It was a book he’d bought 10 years earlier; he had no reason to be reading it now.

  Anxiety rose within him.

  He set up four cameras in the room, so he could see every single corner of it. The cameras ran all day long. He left for work.

  When he got home, he checked the video feed. Nobody was there. He lived alone, so of course no-one else was there, but he carefully checked over all the footage.

  Maybe it really was his imagination? Was he just tired? Come to think of it, his entire living environment had changed, so maybe his exhaustion had been building up without him noticing.

  He watched the footage absentmindedly, but then he noticed something unbelievable change on the screen before him. The closet door slowly began to open. It was so slow that it appeared to be happening in slow motion. He didn’t understand it. Then, slowly, an unknown woman with blank eyes stepped out and looked around the room.

  That very closet was right behind him. He didn’t have the strength to turn around and look at it. He broke out into a cold sweat. His entire body stiffened. A silence fell over the room. He prepared himself to run.

  Then. From behind…

  “You noticed me, huh?”

  He heard an unknown woman’s voice.

  This particular story might bring up images of the real news story that broke in 2008 of a 58-year-old woman who was found living in a man’s closet in Fukuoka for close to a year. The man installed security cameras after he noticed food going missing, and she was discovered emerging from the closet after he left to eat and use his shower. She slipped into the house when the man left the door unlocked one day, and police believed that she had squatted in other people’s houses as well. Police found her still huddled in the top of the closet when they came to search the house and arrested her for trespassing.

  METHOD OF ATTACK AND ESCAPE

  As we can see from the above Sukima-onna stories, she has various methods of attack. Sometimes it’s left up to the listener’s imagination what she does with her victims, but often she keeps them contained to their house, unable to leave her behind, or she takes them off to another dimension entirely. Colleagues or friends who visit the victim will find them fading away, unable to leave to buy food, and not having moved or exercised since the last time anyone saw them. Only a husk of a human remains, and unfortunately, if you happen to see Sukima-onna on your visit as well, she might transfer herself to you like a virus, and you’ll find your apartment haunted next.

  So, how can you deal with her?

  As is often the case with yokai in urban legends, you can’t. Not really. You can cover all the gaps in your house with packing tape, but it’s not a very practical way to live, nor is it guaranteed that you’ll seal every single crack. She can appear in the tiniest areas that the human eye might easily miss, and it ultimately amounts to putting a plaster on a knife wound. You might succeed in covering it, but it’s still festering away under the surface, threatening to break free and bleed all over the floor at any moment.

  Some have suggested that you can lure Sukima-onna to another house, although no successful method has ever been given. Some versions of the tale mention that seeing her is enough for her to start haunting you, but if you think inviting your friends around to get her off your case will help, beware; she generally won’t move on until the person she’s haunting is already dead. Sorry.

  TRUTH BEHIND HER POPULARITY

  When people discover the victims of Sukima-onna, a few things stand out: they are weak, exhausted, they haven’t eaten or moved in days, and find themselves unable to leave their house. While women have been known to fall victim to her, the majority are young men. Do these symptoms sound familiar? One suggestion for Sukima-onna’s rise in popularity in modern times is that she reflects a comm
on sickness that often goes undiagnosed in Japan today: chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS).

  It’s said that three out of every thousand people in Japan potentially have CFS, with 3% of those being women. Most, however, are mis- or undiagnosed, with many cases being treated as a psychosomatic illness or depression instead. Those suffering from CFS may appear lazy, unmotivated, or as skipping out on work/social events for no real reason. Sukima-onna may be symbolic of the times, an attempt at explaining why many young men appear so exhausted and unwilling to leave the house.

  MEDIA

  A film titled Sukima-onna was released in 2014. In it, a young office worker named Koharu hears that something strange has happened to her estranged younger sister, Kyoko. She visits her apartment and finds all the gaps covered in packing tape, and her sister weak with exhaustion. Kyoko explains that she went to a certain house for a test of courage—a house that was supposed to be haunted by the evil spirit known as “Sukima-onna”—and now she’s fallen under her curse. Koharu visits the house to learn more in an attempt to help her sister and discovers someone new has moved in, and she’s being locked inside by Sukima-onna as well…

  A light novel by Maruyama Hideto called Sukima-onna (Wide Width) was released in 2009. In the story, a Sukima-onna by the name of Harimi (using the kanji for “beautiful needle”) gets caught between the dresser and wall of a young man named Takumi. Harimi has a fondness for human food, and her overeating has led to her becoming “wide width,” or the size of a normal human being. The story examines the relationship between the two as they learn to co-exist in the same room and, in contrast to the horror the original legend might suggest, also comes with a happy ending.