出版と芝居が育てた都市怪談。江戸の妖怪事典

This edition follows in close detail—while fixing the boundary between history and legend—how a single Bandō warrior became the uncanny "flying head" and then turned into a god who guards Edo. First, history and the uncanny must be separated. The revolt itself is conveyed by the near-contemporary Shōmonki, which records in classical Chinese the private feud beginning in 935, the subjugation of the Kantō provincial seats, the proclamation as New Emperor, and the death in battle in 940. But here there is no marvel of a flying head. The supernatural story of a head that would not rot, cried out, and flew appears only centuries later, in the Nanboku-chō-period Taiheiki, with anecdotal relays such as the Konjaku Monogatari-shū in between. It is in this later stratum of legend that Masakado is told as a "yokai." The story of the curse around his head mound is newer still. The dread transmitted at the Masakado Grave-Mound at Ōtemachi—"move it and it curses"—is a modern urban legend, layered onto events that occurred in the heart of the city in the Taishō and Shōwa eras: the deaths of those involved in building the Ministry of Finance's temporary office after the Great Kantō Earthquake, and the bulldozer accident during the Occupation. The factual events and the interpretation that attributes them to Masakado's curse must be carefully separated. The path of deification, on the other hand, reaches back into the medieval age. In the second year of Enkyō (1309), the Ji-sect holy man Shinkyō Shōnin, who attributed a plague to Masakado's curse, pacified the spirit and added it to the enshrined deities of Kanda Myōjin. This, like Michizane, is the textbook goryō belief of enshrining a raging vengeful spirit and turning it into a protecting god. The ups and downs—drawing the reverence of the people as the great tutelary of Edo, being removed from the enshrined deities as a traitor in the Meiji era, and being restored at the end of Shōwa—also reflect well the duality of the image of Masakado as a hero who rebelled against the throne. In later ages, the story of his daughter Princess Takiyasha commanding a giant skeleton won popularity in kabuki and popular fiction and was depicted in Utagawa Kuniyoshi's "The Old Palace at Sōma"; it should be noted that this is a derivative starring the daughter, not Masakado himself.

Oiwa in the kabuki play "Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan" debuted in July 1825 at the Edo Nakamura-za, staged as a mixed, two-day performance intertwined with "Kanadehon Chushingura". The ronin Kamiya Iemon of the Enya clan, despite having Oiwa as his wife, seeks to switch to a marriage proposal from a neighboring family for the sake of his career, feeding Oiwa a poisonous concoction. In the second act, the scene known as "Kamisuki" (hair-combing)—where Oiwa, half her face grotesquely swollen from the poison, dies in agony upon seeing her altered reflection while combing her falling hair—became the Kikugoro family's most polished and renowned spectacle. In the third act at Sunamura Onbobori, the corpses of Oiwa and Kobotoke Kohei wash ashore nailed to the front and back of a wooden door. The "Toitagaeshi" (door-flipping) scene, where the door turns over before Iemon's eyes—with a single actor playing both roles through lightning-fast costume changes—is the pinnacle of stage mechanism. In the final act at the Heikiyama hermitage, countless stage tricks (keren) are rapidly deployed, including the "Chochin Nuke" (lantern escape), where the ghost emerges from a burning lantern, and the "Butsudan Gaeshi" (altar flipping), where someone is pulled into a Buddhist altar. These bizarre phenomena are purely theatrical fiction with no connection to the historical virtuous wife Tamiya Iwa, yet their compelling realism led people to fear Oiwa as though she were an actual vengeful spirit. The story's framework hinges on the selfishness of a man who discards his wife for social advancement and the helpless desperation of a woman whose sincerity has been trampled. Oiwa is not an evil spirit cursing without reason; she is formulated as an existence whose lingering love for the husband who poisoned her has been violently inverted. Evoking both sympathy and terror in the audience simultaneously is the true essence of Nanboku's drama. A custom arose whereby the cast and crew, centered around the actor playing Oiwa, would visit Oiwa Inari in Yotsuya to pray for success and safety before the performance. This tradition continues to this day in modern kabuki, film, and theater (by ancient custom, the actor playing the betrayer Iemon does not visit, as doing so is said to anger the spirit instead). The very fact that accidents and injuries occurring on stage have often been passed down as "Oiwa's curse" stands as a rare case where a fabricated vengeful spirit attracted real-world religious belief. Ironically, the source of that belief, Oiwa Inari, was originally an auspicious shrine dedicated to the virtuous wife Oiwa who had restored her family's prosperity.

"Okiku of Sarayashiki" is a vengeful spirit shaped as a creature of repetition, eternally counting her broken plates. Her terror lies primarily in her voice and numbers rather than her appearance—counting low in the darkness, "One... Two..." and unleashing a bloodcurdling scream upon reaching the ninth and missing the last. This structure of loss and repetition is the core of the Sarayashiki tales, causing the audience to cringe in anticipation of the inevitable dread of the "ninth." Okiku's grudge erupts from the absurdity inflicted upon the weak in early modern society: false accusations, class disparities, and the unreasonableness of masters. Here, the two major lineages must be strictly distinguished from their modern adaptations. First is the Banshu lineage—set in Himeji, where the maid Okiku is caught in Aoyama Tetsuzan's conspiracy to usurp the household. Tricked by Machitsubo Danshiro, she is framed for losing one heirloom plate, tortured to death, and sunk into a well. Second is the Bancho lineage—at the Edo Ushigome mansion of hatamoto Aoyama Shuzen, the maid Okiku is slain for breaking a plate (or for rejecting her master's unwanted affections), or throws herself into the well, becoming a well-dwelling haunt. Both are "Ghost Okiku," nurtured by early modern ghost stories, storytelling, and joruri. These must be sharply separated from the third layer—Kidō Okamoto's *Bancho Sarayashiki* (1916). Okamoto wrote this not as a ghost story but as a modern drama (New Kabuki), discarding the clan dispute plot and reimagining it as a tragic cross-class romance between the hatamoto Aoyama Harima and the maid Okiku. Okiku deliberately breaks the heirloom plate to test Harima's love; upon learning this, Harima, enraged that his true feelings were doubted, strikes her down—no ghost appears here, and the tale is elevated into a drama of tragic love and human psychology. In short, the "ghost Okiku counting from the well" is an image from early modern ghost stories, whereas Okamoto's Okiku is a distinct literary creation reinterpreted by a modern intellectual. The two must never be conflated.

A trickster figure based on mujina tales from across Japan. It appears as a beast about the size of a dog with slightly short forelegs; elders are said to show a cross-shaped patch of fur on the back. Skilled at disrupting attention and sense of direction, it makes travelers mistake fields for rivers, ridges for water surfaces, and straw stacks for human figures on night roads. Malicious ones disguise food and latrines as other things, causing shame or misfortune. When taking human form it favors inconspicuous looks such as a boy, a traveler, or a village woman, and may lure with voice alone. In many regions its lore blends with tanuki and fox tales, with the name “mujina” used regardless, but it broadly belongs to the class of beasts that bewitch. Rather than being repelled by martial arts or spells, most stories end with it vanishing once its true nature is seen through, after which it avoids the area. The proverb “mujina of the same hole” means birds of a feather, combining the observation that they share burrows with associations from trickster tales. Traditions are rich in eastern Japan, and Edo-period paintings depict it under the title “Mami” or “Badger.”

An amalgam of hair-cutting incidents reported from Edo and other early modern towns. At night, in the street or at the threshold of an indoor privy, there is a sudden brush of contact, and moments later the victim’s hair falls away still neatly tied, without their noticing. Witnesses describe a figure black from head to toe, catlike, or with the feel of velvet, yet its true form remains uncertain. Servant girls and maids were often noted as victims, with rumor-mongering and official crackdowns recorded side by side. Folklorically, taboos surrounding hair as part of the body overlap with notions of impurity tied to night roads and privies, casting an unseen assailant as a yokai. Its method and motive are never stated in tradition, placing it among urban horrors shaped by fear and unease.