![]() The coastal city of Ishinomaki in Miyagi Prefecture was devastated by the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. You can visit the shrine and learn more about this ghostly tale on a Haunted Tokyo Tour. ![]() The ghost story became so prevalent that a kabuki play was written about the sordid affair, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Board of Education posted a sign at the shrine’s remains debunking the terrifying myth. Oiwa’s ghost is said to haunt the remains of the Tamiya family shrine in Yotsuya where Oiwa once worshipped. Her last breath was used to curse her husband’s name. Her face became disfigured, and her hair fell out in clumps. The poison wasn’t potent enough, and Oiwa’s death lingered. His intention was to kill his wife and marry a younger woman from a rich family. In the early 17th century, Oiwa’s husband fed her a poisoned lemon. Legend has it that Oiwa was the wife of a member of the Tamiya family. The frightful specter of Oiwa, disfigured, with bald patches marring her flowing black hair, is said to be seen roaming the Yotsuya neighborhood. One of Tokyo’s most famous ghosts is that of a fated wife known by the name Oiwa. When investigators searched the house, and broke down the door to the mother’s cell, they discovered a tiny room resembling a rat’s nest, and the withered, shrunken corpse of the long-deceased mistress of the house. Servants watched in horror as the mistress of the house grappled with an unseen assailant, shrieking curses directed at her imprisoned mother-in-law.īy the end of the melee, the entire family perished. After the realization was made, all five members battled with each other, fighting to be first to leave for the doctor’s office. One night, with all five family members soused from spirits, rat poison was surreptitiously administered to their food. When one of the maids, who suffered the brunt of the abuse, attempted suicide, the vengeful apparition of the confined mother began appearing before family members, materializing in the mirror to rip at her daughter-in-law’s hair. While their mother whiled away in seclusion, the debauched couple and their three sons ran up debts and abused the help. Her corpse went undiscovered for seven months, during which time the professor committed a murder-suicide act with his family of four.ĭoryo-do temple has become a favorite haunt for ghost hunters, and unwitting passerby supposedly hear the heavy sobs of an elderly woman, or the cry of a young woman’s voice calling out, “Here! I’m here!” She Wouldn’t Even Harm a Fly…įollowing the death of a successful Edo-era wax wholesaler, his dastardly son and daughter-in-law confined his well-respected widow to a small cell of their own making. Instead he strangled the girl and buried her body in a shallow grave near the remains of Doryo-do. The professor invited his student to his country home in Hachioji with the ruse of patching things up. Her corpse went undiscovered for seven months. However, the student became despondent, attempted suicide and threatened to reveal the affair to the professor’s wife. As the relationship soured, and as university officials became suspicious of the salacious relationship, the professor broke things off. In 1973, a married literature professor had an affair with one of his students. The temple witnessed a second tragedy 10 years later. In 1963 a thief robbed the temple of its meager funds, and killed the elderly woman maintaining the grounds when she resisted the cowardly burglar. Located at the center of Hachioji’s Otsukayama Park is Doryo-do temple, sometimes translated as “the end of the road temple.” As visitors declined, the once robust temple became a dilapidated husk of its former self. However, one morning, the young couple was discovered dead in their bed, covered in blood, their wrists bound tight by a decorative tea towel, victims of a ghostly handmaiden scorned.Īfter the construction of the Yokohama railway in 1908, foot traffic slowed to a crawl along the Silk Road connecting Yokohama and Hachioji. When his new young wife became pregnant with a child of her own, all seemed right in the cotton wholesaler’s world. The man was betrothed to another young lady of more respectable roots, and when his torrid affair came to light, the handmaiden was banished to a faraway farm, committing suicide the night she arrived. ![]() Over the course of 18 months a total of four couples committed this “tea towel suicide.”Ī century later a young heir to a Nihonbashi cotton wholesaler had a steamy affair with a handmaiden that led to her pregnancy. In the early 1700s it was all the rage for Tokyo’s lovelorn couples to commit double suicide by tying their wrists together with trendy tea towels before throwing themselves into deathly waters. ![]() Here are six of our favorite Japanese ghost stories… The Ties That Bind As a country rife with history, tradition and mythology, it is only fitting that Japan boasts some fantastical and frightening tales of spectral spooks.
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