Uncanny Japan

Not all Japanese revenge ghosts are wronged women. Meet Kohada Koheiji: a failed Edo-period actor who became famous for playing ghosts, only to be murdered, drowned, and returned as the very thing he once performed. In this episode, we explore the tangled history of the “real” Koheiji, Santō Kyōden’s gruesome tale, Nanboku’s kabuki adaptation, strange actor superstitions, severed fingers, rotten revenge, and one very silly sushi pun. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of Uncanny Japan, we follow Benzaiten — also known as Benten — from her origins as Saraswati to her place among Japan’s Seven Lucky Gods. Along the way: Enoshima’s five-headed dragon, white snakes as divine messengers, snake-skin wallets, house snakes, and Ugajin, the wonderfully strange human-headed snake deity linked to rice, water, fertility, fortune, and wealth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Have you ever heard of the nodo-hotoke, or “throat Buddha”? In everyday Japanese, it usually refers to the Adam’s apple. But after death, especially in the context of cremation, the nodo-hotoke becomes something else entirely, the actual seat of your soul. In this episode of Uncanny Japan, I talk about the fascinating and beautiful funeral custom of gathering bones after cremation, using long chopsticks to place them into the urn from feet to head, with the nodo-hotoke placed last. I’ll also touch on the taboo against passing food from chopsticks to chopsticks, the role of the crematorium attendant, and the belief that this Buddha-shaped bone can be connected to the soul, the life lived, or rebirth into the Pure Land. After that, I read my dark story “The Buddha Bone,” originally published in Weird Horror Issue 7 by Undertow Publications. I also explain a couple of story-context words: hifuki-take, a bamboo tube used to blow into and stoke a fire, and hyottoko, the puckered-mouth comic figure associated with fire-blowing imagery. Content warning: this episode discusses death, cremation, funerary ritual, and contains a dark fictional story on those themes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices