Yotsuya Kaidan · The Face of the Woman He Cast Off

Yotsuya is the oldest haunted ground in the city of Edo. The story goes that after a low-ranking samurai divorced his sick wife, she died under the eaves of his house, and her body was nailed to a door and set adrift on the water.

Every summer since, in the old compounds of Yotsuya, people have heard a woman crying — from the well, from behind the doors, through the paper screens of empty rooms.

Kabuki turned it into a play, and incense is burned backstage before it opens. The old actors put it this way: the play can be performed again, but the people in the story have never left the stage.

Folklore / Tokyo · Japan / Edo period