Alt title: Morbid Curiosity
“SHOCKING!-- In the footsteps of a well-known Japanese superstition, the fourth entry to DBJSU is all about DEATH. Read on to learn about the everyday morbid curiosity that afflicts not only Japan, but everyone in the world. Can we never escape DEATH, even before we die?!”
The country to me just scream of DEATH, and Akita is no different. Shrines and temples dot the landscape, physical indicators of our long interest in this transition. The forest is coldly deep and dark. Corners of the city are covered in vines signaling centuries of history. Its tired little alleys tremble with a sense of great age. As if the whole of Akita is a stopper for an underground well of spirits-- A thin veil of a society holding back the dead.
“Places with long histories always fascinate me. Reflecting, it’s easy to consider the hundreds of years behind Akita’s (too, Japan’s) traditions as linear. In reality, countless generations have made Akita what it is today. The Namahage wasn’t born from a single creative cosplayer-- Instead, many different Oni have come, contributed, and left. The actors behind the masks have invariably grown old and died. The children whom those evil faces once scolded have lived full lives. Meanwhile, each generation iterates on the tradition. The way not just many lives, but many deaths play a role in forming cultures…” is what I thought about while standing in the Namahage Museum, on an outing which was intended to be less cerebral and more “fun.” Is something wrong with me?
Students whisper of DEATH in the classroom, under the hum of cicadas. Death, a universal taboo, is often the subject of hushed conversations. “Did you hear the story of the serial killer?” “Say yon instead of shi to avoid the bad luck of death.” “If you could kill anyone in the world, who would it be?”
One of my international peers cares enough about the subject to repeatedly disrupt class and bring it up. He uses the aforementioned unlucky shi in a way I’d describe as “provocative.” Maybe it's morbid curiosity, or an attempt to get a reaction out of our sensei. Either way, it seems disrespectful as hell. But can I blame him for being curious towards that which is taboo? Japanese culture, being so preoccupied with the forbidden, is built on hush-hush topics like these. In that way, there’s no greater provocateur of social order than gossipping school girls. As for my peer… He’s from the West, so I view his transgressions harsher than those of a native. Regardless, this curiosity in death unites youth globally.
In the woods, sirens scream of DEATH in the tinny echo of some endless Japanese war.
For all my ramblings of death in Akita, by far the deadliest thing here is the bears. They attack people all the time. We so often get warnings about making noise after dark (to keep them at bay), you’d think they’re out to get us. In truth, this is the endless battle: Between modernity and ye olde harbingers of death.
Sirens screaming of death is not metaphorical, in case you were curious. Last night, I walked around a grand sports complex. Only after the sun extinguished, and my company was more trees than people, did I hear these sounds: First, it was human screams. If my friend hadn’t explained their purpose of scaring bears away, I might’ve called the police on these sounds... That guttural choir of suffering... Next, it was gunfire. If they played this in America, there’d be more lawsuits than you could imagine. Finally, it was the roaring of huge animals. Even though I knew the sound on a loop, the sudden transition back to cries of pain made me jump... This eerie soundscape filled the darkness with vile images of lambs running to the slaughter… Hordes of people mowed down by machine guns… Primeval creatures on the hunt… Blood-painted trees, wet to the touch…
“So, why? Why do the city’s old ghosts haunt me? Why will that student never learn to respect taboo? Why does the speaker play sounds of death to avoid more death?”
Maybe the “holding back” of DEATH itself is the biggest reason: Of course it’s scary, but keeping it taboo, unseen, repressed, endangered, and enchained also keeps it fresh in our minds… Even Japan’s principal religion, Shintoism, has a part to play. It views death as a kegare, a contamination risk for Shinto’s esteemed purity. Life’s greatest question is deeply rooted in anathema here.
I bet that Japanese teens have whispered about such taboo for millenia. I advise you to follow suit if we’re ever to find our answer.