Storymania - The Ghost Story Of Yotsu-Ya by Norman A Rubin

The Ghost Story Of Yotsu-Ya
Norman A Rubin

Welcome my friends... Sit beside me as I turn the pages of the Kojiki, the book of traditions, to a tragic story of infidelity towards a faithful love; the tale I will relate tells of the innocent blood reaped by damning accusations and by the sword of a samurai. It is also a story of fear in chase and of haunting, which led to Yomi-tsu-kuni, the ‘Land of Darkness’, and to judgement in the kingdom of the dead. Let your mind be carried to the Land of the Rising Sun as I spell out the mystical story of "The Ghost Story of Yotsu-ya"…..

Many moons ago, during the reign of the great Emperor of the Eastern Peaks, lived Yotsu-ya, a cruel and tyrannical samurai warrior. Bushido, the way of the warrior, endowed his middling supple stature with sinewy muscles and knotted flesh. His features were hard and cruel, born out the code of his heriditary warrior class.

Yotsu-ya was fierce in battle and equally fierce in his loyalty to the reigning Mikado. Thus he was titled in the name of the emperor to lord over the administrative area of Nikko in the heartland of the island of Honshu in the Imperial Empire. Yotsu-ya ruled with a heavy-handed despotic regime that was a terrible burden to its citzens. Taxes were high and those failing to meet its due were punished till the soul of the body left the offender.

High walls surrounded the villages in his domain, not too defend them against brigands, but to achieve order in his rule over the populace. The warrior’s character was such that it displayed itself in wicked deeds by his cruel soul. Judgement at the hand of Yotsu-ya ended with slash of a finely honed samurai sword, and the gory head of the offender impaled on spikes atop the walls.

It was told by rumoured tongues that at a certain day, upon entering his palace of ‘Six Moons and Six Suns’ after a short and arduous service for the emperor, he heard of a nefarious deed of unfaithfullness; it was whispered about by malicious tongues and darted with pointed fingers. Deep anger swelled within his hardened heart, and with the cruelty of his punishing words and the threat of his sword he learned of the affair. One of his wife’s servants, namely a foolish youth in his early years, had relations with his favourite concubine. After the discovery of their betrayal, the samurai became enraged and without the recourse to judgement in the Ten Courts of the Great Myoo, he fouled his sword with their blood. Then he nailed their mutilated bodies to a wooden plank, and threw them into the nearby river that coursed to the outland sea.

His continual fear of discovery to the murders gradually increased, and, in turn, caused him to have a deep hatred for his wife, Oiwa. "On the name of the great Dhyana, the great warrior god, it was was her cursed servant that forced me to bloody the blade of my sword," he reasoned the cause for his hatred. She suffered in his hands with cruel beatings, harsh words; and even being driven from the house on stormy days or cold nights, but Tsuki-Yomi, the God of the Moon, and Amateseru, the Goddess of the Sun, shielded her in their rays and protected her from the cold and wind.

But, the cruelest punishment suffered by Oiwa, was the love of Yotsu-ya turned from her to the granddaughter of his neighbor, who returned his love and wanted to become his wife. Oiwa had to endure the daily torture of the painful suffering of love’s betrayal, which she bore in the silence of her tongue. Finally the thin thread of hope broke and she became distraught which sickened her in dispair.

As the days past, her illness increased in its misery of pain, weakening the very fabric of her thinning body. Soon she became bedridden and the taking of food became lessened. Famous doctors were called in; they prodded her thin body, cupped her weak blood, and applied leaches to her pallid skin. Days went by, weeks too, but the famous physicians shook their venerable heads, as they could find neither cause nor no cure for her mysterious ailment. The coming of Jizo Bosatu was feared; the formidable god who judges the souls upon entering the inner world neared.

Everything was tried to heal her. Oiwa was brought to the shrine of Yakushi Nyorai, a divine healer whose knowledge can overcome every disease. She was bathed and purified with the remedial waters of the hot sulphur springs of Mii-no-Kami, whose healing power cleanses and relieves the body. In the Shinto shrines, priests prayed for her health to Kamu-Nahobi, the gentle god who puts everything to right. Everything was offered, except the needed medicine, which was the love of Yotsu-ya, her brave samurai.

Then evil lurked in the heartless soul of the grandfather of the samurai’s newly found love. He gave the warrior a potion, which was supposedly a medicine to cure his ailing wife, but it was actually a poison. The poor woman was forced to swallow the ill-tasting brew, until the last of the murderous dregs flowed into her body. However, it hadn’t killed Oiwa, though it disfigured her face and body most dreadfully. The sight of her disfigurement was abhorrent to Yotsu-ya, and he inflicted additional suffering upon her. She endured the endless tortures, until the calming balm of dissolution of the soul from its earthly form to the world of the shadows. There Oiwa was taken to the blessed arms of Yakushi Nyorai, the divine healer, the heavenly god whose knowledge can overcome every illness. .

Then Yotsu-ya discovered that her wife’s loyal maidservant also knew of his crimes, and he accused her of theft of a jade piece, which she denied. The poor creature threw herself at his feet and begged for mercy, but the samurai sneered at her grovelling form. The samurai judged her without pity to her cry for grace; he inflicted his manner of punishment, which was to kill her by his own sword, thus getting rid of the only witness.

Then he nailed the mutilated bodies of his wife and her maidservant onto a door and threw them in the nearby river that flows into the endless seas of the realm of Shio-Zuchi, the god of the tides. Their silent cries could only be heard by gods; cries, not of revenge, but of a just reward of retribution for the act committed by Yotsu-ya.

The samurai believed that his troubles were over, and he began to make preparations for his wedding with his neighbor’s granddaughter. It was a fine night for Yotsu-ya; a new and lovely bride, and her richly endowed dowry was in offering. The festivities began, but when he approached the bride and lifted the veil, the terrifying visage of Oiwa was revealed. Yotsu-ya was terrified at the sight and drew his sword and beheaded her; and in a fit of horror he realized that he had killed his bride-to-be.

Horrified by the deed, Yotsu-ya, turned to the grandfather and tried to explain, but he only saw the ghostly spirit of Oiwa and again he cut off the head with his sword. The samurai was terrified and that wherever he turned he saw the disfigured face of his wife. He was gripped in terror and he ran like a demented soul, trying to flee from the haunting.

Yotsu-ya realized that there was no end to the sight of the ghost of Oiwa. He saw her ghostly face in the lanterns swaying in the breeze, on the pale moon as it drifted through the clouds, and even on the very pillow in which he slept. The spirit of Oiwa hovered over him wherever he turned. It floated over him in every step he took, glowing in cold flames. At times a voice whispered a great anger and a fierce desire for revenge, "May your tendons and bones be closed up, be broken, be melted, be washed away!!"

The samurai went to the nearby river to seek solace, but instead he visualized wooden doors and planks with its load of mutilated corpses with the terrible voices of the demons issuing from them. Yotsu-ya, fled in terror to a hut on the Ontake-San, the Snake Mountain, where spirits and demons fear to tread. Yet the ghost of his wife Oiwa continued to torment him. She appeared to him in terrible guises; at times her head was bald, one of her eyes staring upwards and the other was swollen and closed in her crooked face. And, at times the ghostly image floated above him with a widemouth stretching from ear to ear, sharp horns and all-seeing eyes.

Everything was confusion to him. His body was buffeted by the Shina-Tsu-Hiko, the wind god; thundered at by Kami-Nari, the god of rolling thunder; and chased through the mountains by 0-Yama-Tsu-Mi, the lord of the mountains. The gods drove the samurai, Yotsu-ya to the Miyajima, the ‘middle country between the land and the underground’. As he crossed the bridge of several leagues, which spans the river How-Nai-ho, he fell into the rushing waters beneath. The air of life was denied and his soul escaped from the corrupted flesh.

The swift flowing waters carried the soul of the samurai, Yotsu-ya to the Jigoku, the underground realm of the Lord Yama-raja, the fierce ruler of the nether regions; the eight regions of hell and eight regions of ice. There under the vast earth lies the kingdom of death, which is known to all as the ‘Yomi-tsu-kuni’, the ‘land of darkness. It is a bottomless and mysterious abyss, which engulfs the inner seas. There is one entrance, ‘The Gate of the Demons’ which a sinner’s soul must enter, but never to exit.

As the spirit of Yotsu-ya entered the deep land, the fiendish Oni, the devil demons with green bodies and heads of oxen put him in their custody. They laid their sharpened nailed hands upon his venal soul, clasping it tight with their powerful bodies. Then the demons, howling like the dogs of hellfire, threw the soul on a chariot of fire and carried it to the supreme and ferocious judge of hell, Emma-hoo.

Whoever comes before this formidable judge, their soul retains their appearance for some time after leaving the flesh. Yotsu-ya’s soul was reflected in a large clear mirror set in a flaming bronze brazier near the throne of the magistrate. In the mirror the samurai saw himself in the appearance he had in former life, and so perceived the crimes he committed. Emma-hoo witnessed the reflection of the sinner’s past life in the mirror and he puts Yotsu-ya through a series of questions. The soul of the samurai was judged for forty-nine days, and punished with a beating if his answers were not satisfactory to the ears of the fierce judge.

The samurai’s many sins were weighed and then Emma-hoo gave his judgement. The judge of hell thundered, "The souls of the dead are not only responsible for their actions in life they have just left, but also for those of life before that, if for some reason they have not received punishment for them. Sinner Yotsu-ya, you must stay in a region of hell according to extent of your sins, unless your soul is saved, through prayer, by one of the few living kin of those you had murdered."

But the soul of the samurai, Yotsu-ya was never saved as the rare prayers offered were blocked through the curse emitted through the terrible visage of the ghost of Oiwa. The avenging spirit never resting, as it constantly pursued her adversary. Yotsu-ya was condemned to live in the abode of the nether regions like a starving curr with no hope of ever being absolved...