Oiwa, the Ghost of Yotsuya
Japan's most famous ghost story is about a betrayed wife who returns for revenge. Actors who play her still visit her shrine, so the play won't be cursed.
What was reported
Yotsuya Kaidan, 'the ghost story of Yotsuya', is a kabuki play written by Tsuruya Nanboku IV in 1825. It tells of Oiwa, whose husband Iemon wants to marry a richer woman. She is given a poison that ruins her face, and dies; her ghost returns to haunt Iemon until he's destroyed.
The story is so famous that it's said to carry a curse. Before staging the play or filming it, casts and crews traditionally visit the Oiwa Inari shrine in Yotsuya to pay respects, and people tell of accidents on productions that didn't.
Explanations offered
The play is fiction, built on older legends and perhaps on a real woman named Oiwa who lived in Yotsuya in the 1600s and was honoured at the shrine. The 'curse' stories grew around it, as they have around Macbeth in the West.
- When
- Play of 1825, legend older
- Where
- Yotsuya, Tokyo, Japan
- Witnesses
- Japanese theatre and legend
- Status
- Legend
Famous cases are real, widely reported events. Each file sets out what witnesses said and the explanations that have been offered, without taking a side.
More from Tokyo