The Ghost of Sakura

With Halloween fast approaching, my thoughts returned to a centuries old ghost story from Japan that I unearthed while researching my 24 Hours in Sakura blog post. The story tells the tale of the farmer Sogoro Kiuchi, a real life person who is immortalized at the Sogo Reido Sanctuary half way between Sakura and Narita. His tragic story is well known throughout Japan. In short, he sacrificed the life of his family and himself to go over the head of his regional lord to make a direct appeal for tax relief to the shogun. The shogun granted his appeal due to the onerous tax burden, but his lord had him executed, essentially for embarrassing him. The shrine dedicated to his memory is a poignant and popular local tourist spot, and a traditional farmhouse is preserved on the site of his original home nearby.

The Ghost of Sakura was published in English by A. B. Mitford in 1871, and the story is made available in pdf form from the website Horrormasters.com. Don't let the site name fool you, the story is not particularly grisly by modern standards, but makes for an interesting read for anyone interested in Japanese folklore. Readers of Lafcadio Hearn's Kwaidan stories will recognize the low key tone and the theme of supernatural punishment for uncorrected real life injustices. For an illustrated look at the original edition, the story is also available at the Project Gutenberg website.

Whether or not you check out Mitford's story, be sure to return on Halloween to have a look at my own ghost story set in Sakura. Called "Fushigi Meeting," it has a premise familiar to Raymond Bradbury fans. Although I didn't have Bradbury's "Night Meeting" in mind one dark night while cutting through Sakura Castle Park, once I put pen to paper, I realized that there was a subconscious debt to the original that had to be acknowledged in the story lest his fans cry foul. Hope you enjoy it.

Related Post: Kwaidan's Hidden Depths