The Ghost in the Japanese castle − 6 September, 1993

Jet lag from the flight back from America woke me at 4:00am. My wife had weathered the trip to Osaka better than me and so rather than waking her, I decided to walk to Osaka Castle.

Our apartment faced the castle from across the Neyagawa river- one of the best views in the city. On the right side of our main window, one saw the castle’s top roof resting like turtle's helmet. There are two secondary roofs, one curves downward in a wide inverted V shape evoking shoulders and a deep barrel chest. The lower roof forms the wide skirt of a wrestler. The left side of the apartment window revealed the glass and steel of Osaka Business Park. Silvery forty floor spikes staked into the ground, Matsushita's Twin 21 Towers bristled with antenna and satellite dishes. Across from them stood Crystal Tower, which was another forty floor steel shard. Cutting the sky with perfect corners, it often reflected the castle on its blue glass skin.

It is said that the side of the castle facing Osaka Business Park was an execution ground during the reign of Hideyoshi Toyotomi, the private soldier turned unifier of Japan. My wife is a modern Japanese woman- educated, cultivated, doesn't believe in ghosts, doesn't take chances nonetheless. Others told me of strange occurrences around Osaka castle at night and jet lag coupled with their warnings became more temptation than I could bear.

I crossed the Katamachi bridge, passed through Osaka Business Park, and entered a network of ringed fortifications extending for several square hectares. The outer walls curve inward and up from the base, as if they had been pliant clay swiped by a giant's hand. There is the castle building itself, then a moat surrounded wall which extends to a second wall which was bounded by a second moat originally, but in modern times leads to playing fields and a runner's circuit that traverses both rings.

On this particular morning, instead of walking round the castle, I explored the inner groves ringing the base of the castle. I crossed the bridge spanning the inner moat to the grounds of the castle proper without having seen a soul and felt that for once in Japan, I had the environment all to myself. The wall stones in the inner courtyard, some of which were strewn haphazardly on the ground, have been replaced intermittently since ancient times and one can still find a stonecutter's signature smoothed by ancient lichens or moss, a coded bill for services rendered. I was running my fingers along the whorl of a design in a castle base stone when I heard the first sound. It split the morning air with a short sharp "kleek!" I looked up from the stone and the sound came again- "kleek!"

In these situations the mind runs through a litany of possible causes for unexplained phenomenon. I thought about water dripping from a great height but soon discarded it for I was familiar with the castle's layout and nothing indicated that there had been a heavy rain. "Kleek!" I indignantly supposed that a salary man had invaded this area to hit golf balls. I remembered some spicy local dialect with which to set him straight when at once I heard a low hum and for the first time felt hackles rise. Suddenly, it felt cold and I rubbed my chicken skin arms trying to smooth the bumps. The air stilled and female chanting filled the space of the trees like a creeping fog.

I followed the tone to some large wall stones which formed a semicircular ring around a sparse garden studded with stone stele at the rear of the castle. Kneeling in front of one of the largest stones was an old Japanese woman in a blue cotton summer yukata. Her back was ramrod straight and she was in a perfect seiza pose on her knees. Prayer beads intertwined among her fingers and she moved them rhythmically while intoning a chant.

Dawn was still weak and the available light merely offset her rounded form, which could have been that of a ghost. I found myself unable to take my eyes off of her even though she was only a silhouette. The sound of the two teak (“kleek!”) sticks and her monotonous drone floated up and over the castle stones, padding the ground on little cat feet. Listening, breathing, feeling my own heart beat, I lay down on a large cool stone among ruins of a former wall, watching the sky change from black to indigo to a ruby port glow from where the sun began rising. I felt warm within her song, believing us to be the only two people awake in the whole world.

She finished and I watched her carefully pack the teak wood rods (hyo shi gi) and prayer beads into her bag and walk silently away. Her body shape relaxed and she became one of thousands of grandmothers. I never saw her face.

I walked some more in the park. The sun was up and joggers started filling the once empty roads and trails. The streets began to growl with trucks filled with the morning's first deliveries. Gray suits trickled from the train station and headed towards Osaka Business Park. I found a bench close to the outer moat and sat. An older Japanese man in an immaculate white jogging suit ran over and sat on the other end, red faced and sweaty. He greeted me in bad English and asked me how long I had been in Japan. We conversed while people ran, walked, and cycled by us. I told him what I had seen in the rear of the castle and asked him if he knew what she had been doing. He sucked his teeth slightly and asked me to show him the spot. We went back to the rear garden and he broke into a large grin when he saw the stone stele, then told me the following story.

Ieyasu Tokugawa won mastery of Japan in the decisive battle of Sekigahara, a low pass between Kyoto and the eastern provinces, in 1600 and legitimized his position by taking the title of Shogun in 1603. Yet his rule couldn't be secure until he defeated the last adherents to the cause of the late Hideyoshi Toyotomi's heir. Campaigning against the castle and its outlying area in 1614-15, he slaughtered his enemies to the man. Facing certain defeat, the knights of the castle rode out to meet death on the battlefield. After making sure that the men were dead or gone, the noble women of the castle met to plan their own deaths.

As Ieyasu's forces breached some of the outer defenses, a group of women gathered in the garden and one by one committed suicide to avoid the shame of capture. The jogger told me that he had heard that occasionally certain old people come to the rear garden to pray for the vanquished samurai women's souls yet he couldn't be sure that the old woman was one of them. Apologizing for being unable to tell me more, he ran off to continue his circuit.

The sun had fully risen and the park became more crowded. Light began to bounce off the side of Crystal Tower and I knew that before long the first tour buses would arrive. Their passengers would traverse a curving bridge to the inner walls and pass hurriedly through a shabby rear garden behind the castle in order to get to the main entrance where they could take an elevator to the roof and enjoy a panoramic view of their city. My day had begun as well for I felt the first rumblings of a stomach hungry for breakfast.