In Kyoto, dragonflies are particularly numerous, a reminder that although the ancient capital is renowned for its 12 centuries of noble dignity and cultural refinement, it was long the center of the Shogun and his warrior culture. The 14th century Onin Ran was a decade of lawlessness and bloodshed, which ultimately spread to the rest of the country. Four centuries later, Kyoto was the center of political intrigue and violence that accompanied the implosion of the samurai class, and the growing pains of this new nation now called Japan.
Some of these spirits resonated more loudly than others. Sugawara no Michizane was a scholar and politician in the mid-Heian period, before a conflict with the powerful Fujiwara clan got him banished to Kyushu in 901. He died there two years later, of an allegorical broken heart. Plague and drought quickly followed. To appease his spirit, Sugawara was deified as Tenjin-sama, originally a god of sky and storms, before being repackaged into the more benevolent kami of scholarship. The principle shrine dedicated to this kami is Kyoto’s Kitano Tenmangū, which oversees 12,000 smaller affiliate shrines nationwide, at which students can often be seen in prayer. Kitano Tenmangū also hosts a lively flea market the 25th of every month.
Not all spirits can be so easily appeased. Shaded in a quiet pass over Mount Ỏe, on Kyoto’s far western outskirts, is a shrine consecrated to one of Japan's top three malevolent yōkai spirits. Legend has it that in life he was known as Shuten-dōji, leader of a clan of oni ogres who terrorized either this area or around the similarly-named Mount Ỏe to the northwest (though in reality they were probably simply bandits). A large number of women went missing in the old capital, and the famous onmyōdō geomancer Abe no Seimei identified Shuten-dōji as responsible. After being incapacitated by his beloved sake, the oni king’s subsequently decapitated head continued to snap at the five warriors sent by the Emperor to subdue him. Not wanting to bring the head back into Kyoto, it was buried here in 995, beneath a small mound of gravel at the back of the shrine. The pass was then dubbed Kubizuka, long considered a very haunted place.
A far more bustling pass on Kyoto’s eastern edge hums with the near constant traffic of the old Tōkaidō post road, now paved and called Sanjō-dori. Historically it was known as Awataguchi, one of the seven gates to the old city. The execution grounds that once stood here displayed dispatched bodies as a warning to those traveling past, including the corpse of Akechi Mitsuhide, the assassin of Oda Nobunaga. (The aforementioned Kubizuka no doubt served a similar purpose, intimidating travelers on the San-in Kaidō.) During the Edo period, executions were carried out here three times a year, a large number of them Christians, a practice officially banned in 1612. An estimated 15,000 people were executed before the grounds were abolished in the Meiji period. However a dissection laboratory was established here in 1872, with autopsies performed on executed men in a building glassed-in on four sides. This practice ceased a year later, leaving the quiet patch of land a cursed site.
Another set of execution grounds was Rokujo-gawara, on the site of a former 1184 battlefield beside the Kamogawa river. The executions of political prisoners began long before that, mainly those on the losing side of history. Ishida Mitsunari was brought here after being found hiding in cave upon his defeat at the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, and those generals who maintained loyalty to Toyotomi Hideyoshi were brought here after that clan’s ultimate collapse at Osaka Castle fifteen years later. Perhaps the grounds are more interesting geographically than historically, as a massive collection of graves stretches up the adjacent hillside. Atop stands both Kiyomizu-dera Temple and its neighbor Jisshu Shrine, where women betrayed by lovers curse them by nailing straw dolls to trees at the hour of the Ox. Bizarrely, the Kamogawa’s riverside walking path disappears for a few blocks as it passes the old execution grounds, and one wonders if those who once worked at the original Nintendo headquarters above (now the trendy Marufukuro Hotel), were subconsciously supernaturally inspired as they crafted their artistic playing cards, and the fantastic video game characters to come.
I suppose it is little surprise that the area’s bloody history gave rise to the belief that the well at Rokudo Chinno-ji Temple is a passageway to the underworld. The temple is named for the six paths of reincarnation in Buddhism, each path representing a different realm. In the Heian period, it was said that Ono no Takamura climbed down the well at night to judge the souls of the newly dead. His near contemporary, Murasaki Shikibu, supposedly descended to hell from here, as atonement for writing her lustful book, The Tale of Genji.
A more benign legend was born around the corner at Minatoya Yurei Kosodate-Ame Honpo, Japan’s oldest candy shop. For seven consecutive nights, a pale woman came to the shop to buy one mon’s worth of millet jelly. Not having that sum, the woman traded her haori jacket, which was later recognized by a neighbor as that belonging to his recently deceased daughter. Digging up her grave, they found a crying baby feeding on the candy. The baby was allegedly adopted at Rokudō-Chin’nōji Temple and became a monk. The visitor can try this same candy, unchanged since the shop opened in 1599.
Kyoto’s most popular spooky sites are surely the blood stained ceilings of a handful of temples, notably, Genko-an, Hosen-in, Yogen-in, and Shoden-ji. The Battle of Sekigahara in 1600 stands as the most influential battle in Japanese history. A narrow pass threads through the mountains between Sekigahara and Kyoto, and whoever controlled the capital controlled the Emperor. Tokugawa Ieyasu placed 1800 men at Fushimi Momoyama Castle in order to slow Ishida Mitsunari’s approach from the west, buying time to establish better positions on the battlefield. This small contingent had no hope of defeating Mitsunari’s army of 40,000, but they stalled them enough, until the castle was set ablaze, trapping 380 defenders. The men committed seppuku ritual suicide, with the surviving blood-stained floorboards placed into the ceilings of these temples, to honor and appease their spirits. Shoden-ji is particularly notable, as the garden, and its borrowed scenery of Mount Hiei, was a favorite of David Bowie during his long stay in Kyoto.
Above all these apocryphal stories, a more recent Kyoto site is considered one of the most haunted places in Japan. The 444 meter-long Kiyotaki Tunnel above Arashiyama was built for the rail line in 1928, the scene of a number of worker fatalities and suicides due to harsh working conditions. Nighttime drivers claim to have seen ghostly figures in their mirrors, or have had the ghost of a women jump onto the hood of their car. Most often, the screams of this woman penetrate the dark of the surrounding forest.
While the spirit days of August are now past, the popularity of Halloween in Japan presents an excellent opportunity to follow in the paths of the dragonflies. But if put-off by the distaste of violent historic events, or the fear of the supernatural, one can find compromise in a visit to Toei Kyoto Studios, home of what they dub “the most terrifying Haunted House in history.”
On the turntable: Talking Heads, "Remain in Light"
