Since Halloween is just around the bend, I thought I'd share a Japanese--nay, a Shimonoseki-- ghost story with my readers.
Long ago, there was a legendary fight between two samurai on a tiny island in the middle of the Kanmon Strait. The two samurai were the leaders of two very powerful clans: the Heike and the Genji families. The Heike family was structured around the seven-year-old emperor, Antoku. Eventually, the Keike family lost the battle, and, knowing young Antoku would be slain by the Genji, the child's grandmother took him in her arms and jumped into the strait.
I found this information on a website called Byzantine Sacred Art Blog: "Ever since the battle, fishermen from the Straits of Shimonoseki have been finding the crabs with samurai faces on their backs. Believing these crabs -- Heikegani -- are reincarnations of the spirits of the Heike warriors defeated at the Battle of Dannoura, Japanese fishermen kept throwing them back into the sea from their nets."
The Heike family graves are located within the walls of the Akama Shrine in Shimonoseki. On Saturday I saw the graves. My coworker told me that most Japanese don't visit the graves, because they are afraid the area is haunted.
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Name: Ruthie