Now seized by the longing to see his dead wife, the steward goes out and buys something that he thinks is soul-summoning incense, but which turns out to be medicine with a similar name. Back home, he throws it on the fire and waits. Finally he hears a knocking on the door and goes to answer it thinking it must be his wife, only to find someone coming to complain about all the smoke.
“A Fox’s Life”: Tenjinyama (Mount Tenjin)—rakugo
A rather peculiar man decides that, instead of having a cherry-blossom-viewing party under the trees like everyone else, he will go to the graveyard. Finishing up his solo banquet, he sees part of a skeleton sticking out of the earth, and takes it home. That night a beautiful woman appears to him, and ends up becoming his wife. When the man boasts to his neighbor about how cheap a ghost-wife is to maintain, the neighbor sets out to the temple find himself such a woman, but fails. He heads into the mountain and prays for a wife. On the way back he runs into a man holding a fox he has captured, and buys it off him. He then frees the fox, and again prays to be delivered a good wife. The fox transforms into a woman, chases after the man, and becomes his bride. Three years after having a son, word of her true identity gets out and she runs away, leaving a verse on the shutters: “If you miss me, come to see me deep in the forests of Mount Tenjin in the south.”
“What She Can Do”: Kosodate Yūrei (The Child-Raising Ghost)—folk legend
One night, a pale-faced young woman knocks on the shutters of a candy shop, holding out a coin and asking for a sweet. The owner is suspicious, but relents and gives her one. This continues every night until, on the seventh night, the woman confesses to having no more money and instead offers to trade her haori jacket.
The next day, the shopkeeper leaves the jacket outside his shop. A rich man passing by recognizes the jacket as one that had been placed in the coffin of his daughter, buried just days before. When the shopkeeper explains the situation, the rich man rushes to his daughter’s grave, from which he hears the cries of a baby. Digging up the coffin, he finds his daughter clutching a newborn. The six coins with which she had been buried, needed to cross the river into the other world, are gone, and instead the baby is sucking on candy. “You became a ghost to look after the child born in the grave!” exclaims the woman’s father. “I promise to bring it up well in your stead.” At this point, the woman’s corpse drops its head as if to nod. The baby is taken in by the temple and grows up to be a great priest.
“Enoki”: Chibusa no Enoki (The Breast Tree)—rakugo
With great cunning, the villain Sasashige muscles his way inside the house of Shigenobu and his devoted wife, Okise. Eventually Sasashige persuades the house servant to kill Shigenobu, and takes his place as Okise’s husband. Next he orders the servant to kill Shigenobu and Okise’s child, Mayotarō. The servant is about to throw the child into a river, but Shigenobu’s ghost steps in and saves him. The servant decides to bring the child up in secret, surviving by living next to an enoki (Chinese hackberry), rumored to produce curative milk, in Akasaka-mura in the outskirts of Tokyo.
Meanwhile Okise has a child by Sasashige, but it dies. She develops growths on her breasts, which the enoki resin temporarily cures, but her dead husband comes to her in dreams, causing her more suffering. Sasashige attempts to let the pus in Okise’s breasts by lancing them with his sword, but accidentally strikes her too deep, killing her. Sasashige goes mad and appears in Akasaka-mura where he is slayed by Mayotarō and Shigenobu’s ghost.
“Silently Burning”: Yaoya Oshichi (Oshichi the Greengrocer’s Daughter)—folk legend
In Japan, every Buddhist temple and Shinto shrine has several unique woodcut stamps, or shuin. For a small fee, worshippers can have the temple or shrine calligrapher (often one of the monks or the kannushi) print these stamps in red ink on a piece of paper, and write the name of the temple, the day of the visit, and so on around the stamped portions. People often collect these stamps in purpose-made albums called shuinchō.
“A New Recruit”: Zashiki Warashi—folk legend
The zashiki warashi is a much-loved member of the Japanese yōkai canon. A young child-spirit with a bowl cut, he or she usually takes up residence in zashiki—tatami-matted guest rooms. Although zashiki warashi have a reputation for being somewhat mischievous, they are also said to bring good luck to anyone who sees one, and to bestow fortune on the houses they reside in.
“Team Sarashina”: Momijigari (Maple Viewing)—kabuki
The kabuki version of this story, adapted from the more classical Noh play, was the first ever motion picture to be made in Japan. Out hunting deer in the mountains, the warrior Taira no Koremochi stumbles across a beautiful woman and her retinue, enjoying a banquet to celebrate maple-leaf season. The warrior tries to ride past, but the woman bids him to drink with her. She turns out to be a demon-princess called Sarashina-hime. When the man falls into a drunken sleep, Sarashina-hime goes to abandon him and curses him to never awake, but a mountain god steps in and hands Koremochi a divine sword with which to defeat the demon-princess.
“A Day Off”: Shinobiyoru Koi wa Kusemono (The Suspicious Nighttime Visitor)—kabuki
Mitsukuni, a young warrior, is exploring the
