Lady Rokujō's Ghost: Spirit Possession, Buddhism, and Healing in Japanese Literature

^ Lady Rokujö's Ghost: Spirit Possession, Buddhism, and Healing in Japanese Literature Nancy J. Barnes Early in the eleventh century, Murasaki Shikibu composed her great novel of life at the imperial court of Japan, The Tale of Genji. Its hero, Prince Genji, loves many women, but his first lover is the Rokujö lady, an elegant older woman of great discernment and brittle pride. Too young and curious to be faithful, Genji is soon attracted to other beauties and lets his ardor for Lady Rokujö cool. Her rancor and wounded pride smoulder and flame up into violent jealousy, transforming her while still living into a malevolent spirit bound to pursue and destroy Genji's most treasured loves. At the bedside of his pregnant wife, Lady Aoi, who is gravely ill and seems to be possessed by some baleful force, Genji meets the spirit of Lady Rokujö face-to-face for the first time: The malign spirit refused to move. The most eminent of exorcists found this stubbornness extraordinary, and could not think what to do. Then, after renewed efforts at exorcism, more intense than before, [the spirit] commenced sobbing as if in pain. "Stop for a moment, please. I want to speak to [Prince] Genji." "I was hurting so, I asked them to stop for a while. I had not dreamed that I would come to you like this. It is true: a troubled soul will sometimes go wandering off." The voice was gentle and affectionate. "Bind the hem of my robe, to keep it within, The grieving soul that has wandered through the skies." Literature and Medicine 8 (1989) 106-21 © 1989 by The Johns Hopkins University Press Nancy J. Barnes 107 It was not Aoi's voice, nor was the manner hers. Extraordinary— and then he knew that it was the voice of the Rokujö lady. He was aghast. He had dismissed the talk as vulgar and ignorant fabrication, and here before his eyes he had proof that such things did actually happen. He was horrified and repelled.1 Common belief in Heian Japan held that spirits and demons were all around, haunting the world of the living;2 unappeased, these supernatural beings could cause illness, death, or other calamities. Such beliefs, widespread in many cultures, appear in the most ancient Japanese folklore . A distinctive feature of Japanese belief, however, was the notion that a living person could, if his or her spirit were sufficiently provoked, assume a kind of secondary existence and rush out invisibly to attack its enemies. The person whose spirit had become such a living ghost would not even be conscious of what was happening, at least at first. It would take something extraordinary to evoke such a horror; of all emotions, jealousy, raging out of control, was believed most likely to force a spirit out of its body to wreak supernatural vengeance on others. Jealousy was, therefore, roundly despised and greatly feared as a force that could assume demoniacal proportions and threaten the very survival of living people. If a spirit, maddened by jealousy, should invade the body of a living person, the only means to combat it and cure the illness it caused was to call in the Buddhist clergy to exorcise the spirit by chanting holy scripture. Yet demons and spirits play no role in Buddhist doctrine; on the contrary, the cause of a person's misfortunes is unequivocally placed on his or her own shoulders. Men and women, it is said, walk in ignorance through this world, not understanding that their own self-centered desires cause all their misery. The sensible Buddhist will strenuously try to rid him- or herself of desire and self-centeredness by following the path of meditation and moral discipline that the Buddha taught. A person who does not strive for liberation (nirvana) by pursuing the Buddhist path will continue to be beset by trouble, mental anguish, and physical suffering— inevitable consequences of ignorant actions. This is the law of karma. Nonetheless, belief in demons and spirits and other fantastic beings may indeed seem real to the ignorant sufferer; such convictions certainly add, then, to his or her agonies. Buddhism reached Japan in the sixth century by...