Subject
Ikiryō 生霊
The living spirit — the ghost of someone who is not dead. The danger is a person asleep in her own bed, at her own work, in the place she is every day, while her soul is somewhere else being seen in daylight by people who know the face.
Notes
- Ikiryō: The Ghost of Someone Still Alive Lady Rokujo sleeps in her own rooms while something wearing her face makes Genji's lovers ill.
- A Living Spirit in the Capital The woman in this tale is not dead. That is the whole of its difference from the ghost stories it resembles.
- The Matsutooya Haunting, Kyoto 1729 A merchant house in Kyoto, two living spirits in one boy, and a record specific enough to name the priest and the year.
- Three Names for the Dead Yūrei, onryō, goryō: three words the Japanese record uses for a dead person, and the difference between the last two is something the living decided.
- Rokujō and the Incense That Would Not Wash Out The chapter gives her one piece of physical evidence: after the exorcism the smell of the rite stays in her hair. It never tells her whether she did it.
- Ikiryō and Shiryō Are Not a Matched Pair The dead spirit is written down three centuries before the living one, and the earliest use of the characters for living spirit means something else entirely.
Volume
Japanese Horror Folktales Collection
IKIRYŌ
Tales of the Living Ghost
Eighteen Japanese tales of the ikiryō — the ghost of a person still alive.
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