逢魔が刻。

逢魔が刻。

逢魔が刻。

夏の夜に幽霊でひんやりしましょう、という話。

逢魔が刻。

都市にはすっかり、暗闇がなくなった。 街灯に照らされて夜でも明るいどころか、 そこかしこに防犯カメラが設置され、24時間、 いつでも誰かに見られている。 これでは幽霊や妖怪が潜む場所がない。 日本には怪談話があり、そのなかで幽霊や妖怪に出会えた。 そこには、いわゆるホラー系にはない、 情念や業、怨念といった 人間の深奥をまさぐるようなドラマがあった。 儚く、美しく、おぞましい物語を久しぶりに見聞きしたい。 そこで今号のyoffでは「逢魔が刻」をテーマに特集。 幽霊画と講談を取り上げて、 円山応挙の絵やお岩さまの話も登場。 この号を読んで、夏の夜に涼を感じてもらえるとうれしいです。

逢魔が刻。

Feature | 2025.7.24


夏の夜に幽霊でひんやりしましょう、という話。

Chill out with some ghosts on a summer night.

True darkness has vanished from the city,
and streetlights and round-the-clock
surveillance cameras leave no room for spirits to lurk.
Japan’s old kaidan (ghost stories) describe encounters
with ghosts or apparitions.
Unlike modern horror,
these tales delve into the depths of human emotion—
passion, karma, and grudges.
As we yearn to revisit these fleeting, beautiful,
and chilling tales,
this issue of yoff features “Ōmagatoki,”
the Twilight Hour of Spirits, through yūrei-ga (ghost paintings) and kōdan (storytelling),
including works by Maruyama Ōkyo
and the Tale of Oiwa.
May this issue bring shivers to your summer nights.

「東海道四谷怪談」、「怪談牡丹燈籠」、「番町皿屋敷」・・・。
古くから親しまれてきた怪談はどれも
怖さとともに情がある、とても日本らしいものだった。
夏の夜、部屋を暗くしての百物語。
百話目の話が終わると、そこに物の怪が現れる。怖い、でも楽しい。
世間にまだ暗がりがあった頃、その闇に幽霊や妖怪を見た。
そして24時間明るい現代では、その想像力がなくなってきた。
いやそれでも、今もクローゼットの中や廊下の片隅に、それは潜んでいる。

“Yotsuya Kaidan,” “Botan Dōrō,” “Banchō Sarayashiki”…
Such ghost stories are terrifying yet full of emotion and deeply Japanese.
On summer nights, people gathered in dimly lit rooms to share a hundred tales.
At the end, a spirit would appear. Scary, yet delightful.
When darkness still existed, people saw ghosts in the shadows.
But in our ever-bright world, our imagination has faded.Yet even now, they lurk in closets and hallways.

Ōmagatoki— dusk, when day meets night. Crimson bleeds into the dark blue sky, and the world blurs.
This twilight is also called tasogaredoki, a term folklorist Kunio Yanagita traced to “tasokare”–“Who are you?” As faces blurred in the fading light, people asked, “Who goes there?”Perhaps to be sure they weren’t meeting something otherworldly.
For centuries, twilight was believed to be the hour of spirits. A lone figure on a dusky path. A sound in the woods. A flickering torchlight in the dark. People glimpsed the otherworld in such shadows.
Such encounters largely faded after early Shōwa. Now, with streetlights and glowing windows, twilight spirits are rare. And with them, our imagination has dimmed—once, it was not monsters in the dark, but imagination itself that lurked there.

Online, countless YouTubers chase haunted ruins and ghost spots. Some are chilling, but most are entertainment—missing the quiet dread twilight once held.
Ephemeral beauty, melancholy, vengeance, obsession, sorrow, and the pathos of things. To rediscover them, I visited a temple of ghost paintings and a master of ghost tales.
It was nearly Obon—the time to welcome ancestral spirits. Such midsummer nights, when the worlds of the living and the dead draw close, invite use to find our own twilight hour—pausing, imagining, and gently seeking the spirits that may still linger.

谷根千にある由緒ある寺、全生庵。ここに五十幅もの幽霊画が所蔵されている。

Feature | 2025.7.24


Zenshō-an, an old temple in Yanesen, holds fifty ghost paintings.

The collection of Zenshō-an holds the ghost paintings of rakugo master San’yūtei Enchō.Each summer, they are aired—and exhibited—for the public.

Yanesen is cherished for its old-town charm and quiet streets.Incense drifts through the air, and temples line its historic lanes.
Up the hill from Sendagi Station on the Chiyoda Line lies Zenshō-an, founded by the Bakumatsu-era samurai Yamaoka Tesshū. It is also the resting place of rakugo storyteller San’yūtei Enchō, and home to a famed collection of ghost paintings.
Zenshō-an holds fifty scrolls from the collection of Enchō, who was famous for ghost stories such as Botan Dōrō and Shinkei Kasane-ga-Fuchi. Enchō hosted ghost-story gatherings in Yanagibashi and began collecting ghost scrolls in homage to the Hyaku-monogatari tradition. Some now reside at Zenshō-an.
Each year from August 1 to 31, the scrolls are aired and displayed to the public.
Highlights include the ghost painting attributed to Maruyama Ōkyo, Itō Seiu’s Chibusa Enoki,and eerie works by master artists such as Shibata Zeshin and Kawanabe Kyōsai—an exhibition sure to give you goosebumps.

Chief priest Shōshū Hirai says the temple is simply a caretaker: “We leave research on these paintings to the experts,” he says. “What matters to us is that these were entrusted to us by Master Enchō. The fact that he collected them carries deeper meaning than their simply being here.”
Exhibition of the ghost painting s was born out of a desire to revitalize the local community. “We started airing the scrolls privately around August 11, Enchō’s memorial day,” says Hirai. “Then the neighborhood asked us to open it to the public. That was nearly 40 years ago—and it’s grown ever since.”
Why did Enchō entrust these ghost paintings to Zenshō-an? “We can’t say for certain, but it’s said that Master Enchō was a Zen student of Tesshū. Perhaps that connection inspired his choice.”
The scrolls line the main hall at Zenshō-an’s quiet grounds. As viewers admire them under the buzz of cicadas, the summer heat gives way to a subtle chill. The perfect Japanese summer: quiet, reflective, and gently haunted.

全生庵


東京都台東区谷中5-4-7

https://zenshoan.com/


円山応挙や伊藤晴雨といった著名な画家たちによる幽霊画の傑作を楽しむ。

Feature | 2025.7.24


Presenting ghostly masterworks by Maruyama Ōkyo,Itō Seiu, and others.
Four standout scrolls from the Zenshō-an collection—best viewed alone, on a quiet summer night.

Ghost Figure; Maruyama Ōkyo

A pale, ethereal woman stands in silence—but she has no feet. Without that one detail, she could be mistaken for the living.This ghost portrait, by Maruyama Ōkyo—master of shaseiga (sketching from life)—may be one of the earliest depictions of a ghost without feet, a style that became iconic. Graceful, not grotesque, it quietly unsettles, as if it might draw your soul away.Only three of Ōkyo’s ghost scrolls survive: one at Zenshō-an, —at Zenshō-an, Kudōji in Hirosaki, and UC Berkeley. Seeing one at Zenshō-an is a rare privilege.


The Flower Basket and the Ghost; Matsumoto Fūko

Matsumoto Fūko, an imperial loyalist and noted painter of historical scenes from the Bakumatsu to Taisho eras, brings chilling intensity to this piece. The woman’s expression is terrifying—sharp eyes, a face contorted with fury. She clenches her own hair in both hand and mouth, her posture radiating a staggering rage. Beside her, a flower basket lies crushed—the blooms inside spilling out. The painting brims with raw emotion, yet its stillness amplifies the unease, making the quiet all the more disturbing.Incidentally, Fūko’s grave is at Zenshō-an. Might he himself return during Obon, silently gazing at the scroll he once painted?


The Breast-Enoki Ghost Tale; Itō Seiu

Based on San’yūtei Enchō’s ghost tale Chibusa no Enoki, this painting captures a spectral father rescuing his infant son from a waterfall. The child glows with warmth in soft color, while the ghostly father is rendered in cold monochrome, dark crimson evoking blood. The contrast heightens the scene’s intensity—his face etched with fear, anguish, and hatred, stirring the viewer to the core.A masterwork of Itō Seiu’s artistry and emotional power, this remains one of the most cherished ghost scrolls of the Edo tradition.


Ghost Under the Moon, ; Setsuō

A hauntingly beautiful work that fuses elegance and fear: beneath a full moon, a gaunt female ghost stands surrounded by crimson spider lilies and pale dokudami flowers bloom around her, one spider lily stalk broken—a dark omen. With moonlit clouds drifting past and gold flecks shimmering on leaves and petals, the artist’s rich textures and techniques captivate viewers even to this day. Terrifying, ephemeral, and beautiful, this scroll embodies all three core elements of the ghost painting tradition.

世襲制ではない講談界で初の三代目となった講談師、一龍斎貞鏡。

Feature | 2025.7.24


In the traditionally non-hereditary world of kōdan storytelling,
Ichiryūsai Teikyō is
the first third-generation performer.

Inspired by her father’s ghost tales, she now speaks of their lasting allure.

“Snow crowned his head like Echigo’s peaks, the waves of Aomi rippled across his brow, and at his waist a catalpa bow was strung—before he knew it, he had become an old man!” With this thunderous opening, the room is gripped, drawn into the tale in an instant. “He’s describing how snow settles into white hair, and wave-like wrinkles form on the brow. The lyrical beauty of the language is one of kōdan’s great appeals.”
So says Ichiryūsai Teikyō, daughter of the 8th Ichiryūsai Teizan, granddaughter of the 7th, and step-granddaughter of the 6th Kanda Hakuryū—making her the first third-generation storyteller in kōdan history. She is also the mother of five.
It was a ghost tale that first drew her to kōdan. “Strictly speaking, ghost stories are kaidan—tales of the strange. Enchō adapted one from a Chinese story called Botan Tōki. When I saw my father perform Botan Dōrō, I was captivated.” That was when she knew she would become a kōdan performer. “I’ve always loved eerie tales. Hearing my father’s Botan Dōrō, I thought, ‘This is amazing. I’ll carry on the tradition!’”
Her grandfather, the 7th Teizan, also excelled at such tales. “He was even nicknamed ‘Ghost Teizan.’ He’d stage immersive 3D kaidan—dimming the lights, rigging his lectern, and illuminating his face from below with a blue light.” Her love of the macabre is clearly inherited.

Before performing a ghost tale, she always visits Oiwa Inari Shrine in Yotsuya. “This year I gave birth and delayed my usual visit as I was rehearsing Yotsuya Kaidan. On May 5, which is Oiwa’s birthday, I broke my toe while playing with my kids, so I quickly rearranged my scheduled and went to pay my respects two days later. Just a coincidence? Some things science can’t explain.” She’s had other strange experiences while performing ghost tales.
What draws her in? “Karma. A person’s sins can haunt their children—and generations beyond. That’s terrifying. In one tale, a killer’s daughter marries the victim’s son. Their love festers into jealousy and murder. Horrifying—but fascinating.”
She also finds ghost tales deeply beautiful. “In Botan Dōrō, a woman’s ghost falls for a living man and seeks ways to be near him. The dim lantern light that reveals their fleeting meetings is wistful and beautiful.” “Oiwa-sama, on the other hand, is fierce.” “Oiwa-sama dies wretchedly and, in ghostly revenge, kills O-Hana—the woman who coveted her husband—and hides her severed head in a household altar. When her husband Iemon, who poisoned Oiwa, opens the altar… the head rolls out. By then, dozens who betrayed her have already met violent ends. But what truly chills me isn’t the violence—it’s the sorrow in Oiwa-sama’s spirit. That’s what makes it beautiful.”
Just hearing her speak sends a chill down the spine. This summer, I want to hear Teikyō’s ghost tales—and lose myself in the twilight hour of spirits.

〜 講談師 七代目 一龍斎貞鏡 高座予定 〜〈2025年8月〉

[PR]肌に蓄積した紫外線ダメージに新たなアプローチ!

Feature | 2025.7.24

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