Toshiden: Exploring Japanese Urban Legends: Volume One Page 3

  The village where if you fall over, you die

  Have you ever dreamt of “the village where if you fall over, you’ll die”? It’s said to be a communal dream, and most people will dream of it at least once during their lifetime. In most cases, people will wake up without remembering they dreamt of it, but there is a lot of shared evidence for the dream of this village.

  The setting is a small farming village located in a gorge, painted with the colour of sunset. The area is littered with blue corpses. Before long, some young girls dressed in kimonos approach and explain the situation. “This is the village where if you fall over, you’ll die.” As soon as she’s done explaining, one of the girls trips over a dead body and falls. The others scream as the young girl’s body turns blue and dies.

  What happens after that depends on the individual. People have given varying claims. Some run away from the girls. Others are given stilts by the girls. For some nothing happens, and they just wake up. But perhaps the strangest thing is that, above all, there is no testimony from those who have fallen over in the dream.

  ORIGINS

  Does this story sound familiar? Perhaps you’ve had this dream before and were lucky enough not to fall over… But there’s a good reason for those in Japan to find that this dream sounds oddly familiar. There’s an old legend called Sannen Toge (Three Year Ridge) wherein if you fall over in the village you’ll only have three more years left to live. When an old man trips and falls over, his wife suggests they do it again, and again, and by doing so extend the three years to six, and then nine, and so on. Soon all the villagers are falling over themselves trying to extend their lives. It’s likely that this village where if you fall over, you die, has taken this legend as its basis.

  Different to the dream

  A high school girl had a dream. In the dream she was on her way home from school when a strange man jumped out from behind a telegraph pole and recklessly started stabbing her. It was so vivid that when she woke up she clearly remembered it, and even after she went to school she couldn’t forget it.

  Then, on her way home, the girl approached the telegraph pole that the man attacked her from in her dream.

  “Something doesn’t feel right…”

  Overcome with a sudden sense of unease, the girl turned back and called her mother to come and pick her up. She went to the convenience store to read a few magazines while she waited, but feeling someone’s gaze on her, she looked up. Standing in front of her, on the other side of the window, was the man from her dream the night before. He looked at her through the glass, grinning, and then whispered, “Now, now, you shouldn’t have acted differently to your dream.”

  ABOUT

  You can find several variations on this legend, but in general they all have the same things in common.

  A girl has a dream.

  She does something different to avoid what happened in her dream.

  In the end, the man tells her not to act differently to what happened in her dream.

  This legend became popular because of its mixing of two genres. Most urban legends either fall into one or the other; human monsters, or supernatural monsters. This one successfully mixes both. Another version in which the girl is older goes as follows:

  It was a 20-minute walk from the nearest station to Kanako-san’s house. There was a bus stop right in front of it, however, so she always took the bus home.

  But recently she’d been having nightmares. They were as follows:

  Due to working late, Kanako-san missed the last bus home, forcing her to walk the rest of the way. It was raining, and the surrounding areas dark. Finally she arrived in front of her house. But suddenly she sensed someone behind her, and turning around, she saw a man holding a sickle. He dug it into her head, and Kanako-san died on the spot.

  She had the same dream for roughly two weeks, and then one night she really did miss the bus thanks to overtime. It was raining. She called her mother to come pick her up. Hearing about her daughter’s dreams, her mother agreed to pick her up right away.

  They arrived home safely, and Kanako-san was relieved. But then she felt someone’s presence again and turned around.

  It was the man from her dream, standing there holding a sickle.

  “This wasn’t how the dream went down,” he said.

  A version of this story appeared in fortune teller Moira Yuuki’s book My Ghostly Experience, a collection of people’s ghost stories released in 1993. In it, she claims that in reality this story was not a dream but an out-of-body experience, and the girl was actually wandering around in another dimension. When she woke up and had another similar experience without realising it, she thus accepted it as a “real experience.” Furthermore, the man was in reality an evil spirit that she had dragged over from the other dimension.

  The photocopier that shows your face of death

  There are rumours of a photocopier in a certain convenience store. When you copy a photo of your own face, it will print out a version that shows your face just before your time of death.

  One day a young man heard about the rumours, and checking to see that no-one was around, copied a picture of his own face. When the picture came out, there was nothing different. It was exactly the same.

  “So it was all just a lie then.” He left the store, laughing, and was hit by an out-of-control car. The young man died instantly.

  The photocopier really did show his face right before the moment of his death…

  ABOUT

  This is a pretty famous joke urban legend. You’ll find a lot of stories in Japanese horror that revolve around taking or showing a photo of someone’s face just before their moment of death. This is called shinigao, which literally means death face, or the face of a dead person. A quick search on Google will pull up thousands of results for scary stories revolving around shinigao, so it’s not surprising there would be an urban legend or two as well.

  This particular legend is said to have reached the public consciousness in a comic released in June 2011 called Gyaa Kaidan & Toshi Densetsu, a collection of horror and urban legends. The author is credited as Oracian from Tokushima prefecture. The original was a little longer and more detailed, however. It was as follows:

  Way out in the middle of nowhere, in a town so small it didn’t even have a single chain store, an old liquor shop was remodelled into a tiny convenience store.

  Inside that convenience store was an old, run-down, black and white photocopier; an old photocopier that had a weird rumour surrounding it.

  If you copied a photo of your own face, it would print out a photo showing your face at the moment of your death. However, being that the rumours of the photocopier were related to one’s death, no-one was brave enough to try it out. But then one person, my friend H, said, “That story is full of crap. I’ll show you,” and set out to try it by himself.

  He took a photo from home and went straight to the photocopier. Gon, gon, gon, the machine rattled as it printed out the copy. And then it came out… He was perhaps expecting to see himself looking old, or in pain at the moment of his death, but it wasn’t like that at all. It was exactly the same as the photo he put in to copy. It was H’s face.

  “I knew it was all a lie,” H said, and as he went to step away from the photocopier, a car ploughed into the convenience store. The shop was destroyed, and H died instantly. His expression after he died showed neither fear nor tears, it happened so fast that he looked exactly like he always did. When I heard about this at his funeral, I asked them to show me the photo. The photocopier really did show his face right at the moment of his death.

  Teketeke

  PART 1

  This happened one cold winter morning in Hokkaido, where a heartbreaking incident occurred at a certain railway crossing.

  Police and forensic investigators arrived at the scene, having received a report that a female high school student had just been hit by a train at the crossing. It was thought she died instantly, so no ambulance was called.


  The police and forensic investigators began gathering the pieces of her body right away. Her ankles, her hips, her thighs, her shins… Then, the upper half of her body. It really did appear to be an instantaneous death.

  But as the forensic investigator was putting the body into the car, he heard a voice.

  “…lp, help…”

  He looked in the direction of the voice and was shocked. The upper half of the female high school student’s body that he’d just put in the car was talking to him. It was thought the girl died instantly, but in the freezing chill of Hokkaido, the girl’s wounds froze over the instant she was hit, and so, her upper torso was able to talk.

  “Help… He…”

  Her voice started to get weaker and weaker, and no matter what they did, there was nothing they could do to help her like this, anyway.

  Thinking that there was nothing he could do to help her, the forensic investigator quietly placed the vinyl sheet over the girl as she continued to cry for help.

  PART 2

  A male student was walking home from school.

  He looked up and saw the figure of a woman standing by the telephone pole several metres ahead. Was she waiting for someone?

  As he got closer, the boy noticed that she was quite beautiful. She looked in his direction and smiled.

  Against his better judgement, the boy was happy and smiled in return. But in an instant that smile froze.

  The woman who stepped out from behind the telephone pole had no lower body.

  Teketeketeketeketeke…

  Using her elbows, the woman ran towards him with incredible speed.

  ABOUT

  Teketeke is up there with Kuchisake-onna and Hanako of the toilet as one of the most famous Japanese urban legends, and there are about as many variations to her story as there are people in Japan. It’s also interesting because there’s no one single story that acts as a full legend, like Kuchisake-onna or Mary-san. Teketeke’s story is pieced together by several different stories, all of which tell different parts of her tale. It’s not known exactly how the legend of Teketeke came about, but some have surmised that she’s a mash-up of Kashima-san and others, such as Kuchisake-onna, then set at a Hokkaido railway crossing.

  The first part of Teketeke’s story is considered to be her origin story. This is how Teketeke came to be. She was a high school girl from Hokkaido who was hit by a train at a railway crossing and cut in half. Only she didn’t die, thanks to the freezing cold which sealed her wounds and allowed her to continue living in horrific pain for quite some time after. She’s then ignored by the forensic investigator who thinks there’s nothing he can do for her, allowing the audience to build some sympathy for her plight.

  The next time we see Teketeke is where her ghostly legend comes into play. Here she’s revealed as a ghost (or a yokai, depending on who you talk to) that’s missing the lower half of her body, and she chases after people on her elbows, which creates the teketeke sound in Japanese. This telephone pole version is just one of many. Other versions exist where she appears above a window frame, and she’s often seen carrying a sickle. The window version goes as follows:

  A-kun forgot something at school, so he returned to the empty classroom after everyone had gone home.

  Finding what he was looking for, A-kun was relieved, but when he looked up at the window, he saw a woman looking at him, resting on both her elbows. A-kun was fascinated by her, and the woman put both her hands on the window frame and pushed herself forward.

  At that moment, A-kun froze.

  The woman was only an upper torso; she had no lower body.

  She took aim at A-kun, and propelled herself towards him on her elbows with incredible speed.

  “Teketeke.”

  WHO IS TEKETEKE?

  There are several key points about Teketeke that generally remain the same across all the different versions of her story. First is that she’s a high school girl from Hokkaido. Second is that she died at a railway crossing after being hit by a train. Third is that she has no lower body and lastly, she approaches people with incredible speed on her elbows, which creates the teketeke sound of her name.

  As with many other legends, Teketeke occasionally appears with slightly different variations, however. Sometimes she’s an office lady and not a student. Other times she’s hit by a car and not a train. Sometimes she becomes a ghost and other times a yokai. There are reportedly even versions where she is a man. What always remains the same, however, is the speed with which she chases after her victims on her elbows. It’s said she can reach speeds of up to 100 km/h, so once she’s set her eyes on you, there’s no escaping her.

  Teketeke’s mode of attack varies, but she’s often known to use a sickle, just like Kuchisake-onna, and just like Kuchisake-onna cuts her victims to resemble herself, Teketeke is also known to cut the lower half of her victim’s bodies off when she attacks, so they end up just like her.

  In some versions it’s said that just by hearing Teketeke’s story she’ll appear to you within three days. There doesn’t appear to be any way to escape this, but some legends state you can repel Teketeke herself just by yelling “Go to hell!”

  Like many other supernatural urban legends, you can find movies based on the Teketeke legend, aptly named Teketeke and Teketeke 2, and even mobile games that feature her. Teketeke’s legend is enduring, and her presence can be felt everywhere.

  Hikiko-san

  A young elementary school student was walking home one rainy day when he saw a woman cross his path dragging something. He concentrated his attention on her, and saw she was rather tall, had long hair, was wearing tattered white clothes and was dragging a doll behind her. Yet as the boy looked closer, he realised that what he thought was a doll was another child around the same age as him. He let out a scream and the woman stopped, turning to look at him. The boy ran away as fast as he could.

  After school the next day the boy told his friends what happened as it continued to rain. His friends laughed, but then the boy pointed to the school yard and said, “It was her!” As everyone looked outside they saw the woman standing there, and they ran out of the room. They tried to escape the school, but stopped as they reached the shoe racks.

  The woman was already standing there, inside the school. She was tall, had long hair, and was wearing tattered white clothes. She was considerably taller than the shoe racks. The children panicked, running back the way they came, hiding wherever they could find. In the cleaning closet, in the toilet, and under the desks.

  Abnormally fast footsteps approached, then faded into the distance. The children sat frozen, their hands covering their mouths so as not to make a sound. A short while later one of the children sensed she was gone and set out to find the others.

  Looking over those he found, he realised the boy who first saw the strange lady was gone. Then another child spoke up.

  “I saw her. That woman ran off with him, dragging him with incredible speed!”

  ABOUT

  The earliest recorded appearance of Hikiko-san on the internet is from July 2001. Her full name is Mori Hikiko. The kanji used in her first name represent a queen, princess and child. There’s a hidden pun in her name that English speakers are unlikely to pick up right away, but by reading her name in the traditional Western way you end up with Hikiko Mori. Hikikomori is a term in Japanese for a social shut-in who refuses to leave their room, much like Hikiko in the legend. Hikiko is also another word for a jinrikisha puller, which plays into the dragging part of the legend.

  She’s a ghost that attacks children, and is often described as rather tall with long black hair, and in life she was considered a well-behaved, cute young woman. So how did she end up an urban legend?

  According to some, Hikiko-san was well-loved and often praised by her teachers at school. She was studious, listened well in class and excelled on her tests. This led to jealousy, and as a result the other students started to bully her. They didn’t like how self-important her name seemed, eithe
r. One day, another student tied up her hands and dragged her around the school, chanting, “Beloved Hikiko, I’m gonna drag you around.” True to the student’s word, Hikiko was roughly dragged around the school, her body becoming battered and bruised and her face sustaining horrific injuries.

  After this Hikiko-san started to avoid school, locking herself up in her room. Yet she also suffered abuse at home, as both her parents beat and dragged her in her own house. Yet she continued to refuse to go to school, and hid herself away from the world.

  Hikiko-san loved rainy days, however, and whenever the ugly frogs showed their faces on rainy days she compared them to her own, forever disfigured from the bullying she’d undergone, and was able to feel slightly better about herself.

  It’s interesting to note about this particular legend that there is no link from her origin story to how she became a vengeful ghost. There’s never any mention of how Hikiko-san died. Did she commit suicide? Was she murdered? Did she die of malnutrition/neglect/abuse? It’s never once mentioned, but at some point she became a vengeful ghost with a taste for dragging children.

  METHOD OF ATTACK

  Hikiko-san is said only to appear on rainy days. Because children have their umbrellas up to keep the rain out, it makes them less likely to see her disfigured face, which puts her at ease. But those children that do see her on rainy days become her next targets, and she will drag them around like she was in life. The legend states that the boy initially thinks Hikiko-san is dragging around a doll, but soon realises it’s another child. Hikiko-san will continue to drag the body of her victim until she finds a new one, leaving them in a considerably disfigured state (and thus easy to mistake for a doll) until such time.