What is Kasanegafuchi?
Kasanegafuchi is a tale of a vengeful spirit set in Hanyu Village in Shimousa Province (today’s Hanyu-cho, Joso, Ibaraki Prefecture) in the Edo period. The spirit of Kasane, a woman murdered at a deep pool of the Kinu River flowing through the area, is said to have brought a curse, and the pool came to be called “Kasanegafuchi” (Kasane’s pool). It is sometimes counted among Japan’s three great ghost stories, alongside Yotsuya Kaidan and Bancho Sarayashiki.
The story of Kasane’s spirit
According to legend, Kasane, the wife of a Hanyu farmer named Yoemon, was despised by her husband because she was ugly, and one day, while crossing the Kinu River, he pushed her into the water and killed her. Yoemon took several wives afterward, but they died one after another.
In time, Kasane’s spirit possessed Yoemon’s daughter Kiku, and speaking through her mouth, began telling how she had been murdered by her husband, and how she too had borne the karma of her parents. While the villagers were at their wits’ end, the high priest Yuten Shonin, later head priest of Zojoji Temple in Edo, laid Kasane’s spirit to rest through the power of the nembutsu, it is said. The events were written up in 1690 in a book called Shiryo Gedatsu Monogatari Kikigaki and became widely known.
Shinkei Kasanegafuchi and Kasane’s grave
The rakugo storyteller San’yutei Encho, active from the end of the Edo period into the Meiji era, created a long ghost story based on this legend, Shinkei Kasanegafuchi, which became a sensation. A work in which the karma of the parents falls on the children and terrible events follow one after another, it is still performed in rakugo and adapted for film.
Hozoji Temple in Hanyu-cho, Joso, Ibaraki Prefecture, keeps a grave said to be Kasane’s and items linked to Yuten Shonin, and continues to memorialize her spirit.
