When I was a child, my uncle used to tell me this story.
My family had always lived in Tokyo.
During the war, when the air raids on the mainland began, my grandmother and my uncle, who was in elementary school at the time, evacuated to the countryside, relying on relatives.
My father had not even been born yet.
Even after the war ended, Tokyo was still a very unsafe place to live, and they were not immediately called back.
I heard that many strange things happened at the evacuation site.
It may have been the same not only there but all over Japan.
I have heard that strange rumors occur at the turn of the age.
My uncles were evacuated to a small village.
One day, a trunk of a sacred tree on the edge of the village was suddenly covered with scales that looked like a big mouth, or a ghost carp as long as five feet appeared.
Many people have also witnessed the procession of lantern lights passing along the path in the middle of the night, even though there was no one there.
It is unthinkable today, but there was a serious belief that foxes and raccoon dogs could scare people.
It was at such a time, my uncle said, that he came across “Tsumbo Yusuri”.
There was a deep forest on the edge of the village, which was called the “Rain Forest”.
Many people had the strange experience that even if they encountered rain in the forest, the sky was clear when they left the forest.
My uncle found an abandoned village deep in the forest and used it as a secret hideout with his friends.
It was a small cluster of four or five houses, and of course they didn’t tell their parents.
They played chambara and hide-and-seek.
One day, one of our friends could not be found, and we were getting impatient as dusk was approaching.
They had a peculiar fear of going through the rainy forest after the sun had set.
As he was frantically searching around for someone, saying “Hey, come on out”!
He heard someone crying.
My uncle said, “Who is it? Don’t cry, you little bitch!” My uncle shouted at him, but gradually he noticed something was wrong.
I thought it was one of my friends who had started crying, but when I looked around, I saw that they all had doubtful looks on their faces.
Then, out of nowhere, the crying became louder and louder, and it became clear that it was the baby’s crying.
The crying was so fiery that it sounded as if the baby was in some kind of crisis.
Startled by this unusual behavior, his friends, who had been mischievously hiding, came running out of the barn.
Then, in the dusk, something faintly resembling a human figure began to appear around the frontage of one of the houses.
The silhouette looked as if it was carrying a child in its arms, but no matter how hard I strained my eyes, it seemed to be nothing more than a shadow.
My uncle said he thought it was like a being on the border between human and darkness.
When the sun was setting and the place was covered with evening darkness
I felt as if that shadow was going to change from a mirage to something more.
My uncle ran away at once with his companions.
He wanted the adults to hear this story, but he wanted to keep it a secret from his family.
One day, I told the story to a neighbor, a pleasant man named Mr. Yoshino, who was easy to talk to.
Yoshino began to tell story.
“My grandmother told me that in that area, young children often died in the past.
A deaf mother would put her child in her arms and baby-sit him, not realizing that the strap was slipping.
Usually they would notice that the child was crying abnormally, but since they were deaf, they couldn’t tell.
So she shakes the child so violently that the child ends up dying.”
The uncle felt a chill.
Poor thing. It must have been very painful for her to kill the child she had given birth to by herself.
I wonder if that is why she is still wandering around, nursing the child.
That’s what you call “Tsumbo Yusuri,” Yoshino murmured.
Also known as “Oni yusuri.
“Oni yusuri?”
I don’t know why you call it that… Well, it seems to be a place where such things often happened.
My uncle somehow thought that that was the village where those people used to live.
When the dust had settled, my uncle and his friends went back to that village.
They went from door to door chanting Buddhist prayers, and put Rakugan on the earthen floor to comfort the spirits of the father and son.
Then one day, after playing around as usual, we were about to return home before dusk when something unusual happened.
It started raining after we entered the forest. It had been perfectly clear and we had seen a beautiful sunset earlier.
My uncles tried to run through the rainy forest.
But I don’t know how it happened. They could not find the direction to go back.
One said it was this way and one said it was that way.
My uncle, who was still the leader of the group, was about to lead the way when he said, “The way home is this way, I am sure of it.
As he was about to lead the way, they heard the faint sound of a baby crying from the direction he was pointing.
One of them turned blue and shouted, “No! That is the way we came from.”
The uncles stood there as rain trickled down from the leaves and branches of the trees overhead.
The others all covered their ears and began to back away from the direction of the crying.
“No, no, no. Don’t be fooled. The way back is this way. There is no doubt about it. There is a village in the direction of the baby’s cry.
My uncle screamed frantically.
While he did so, the cries drifted around the area with an unpleasant sound.
My uncle hit one of them and pulled him by force.
“Cover your ears,” he said. Just follow me.”
And with that, my uncles walked in the direction of the crying.
When they finally broke through the trees and passed through the forest, they found themselves on the outskirts of their usual village.
Everyone ran back to their respective homes.
When I heard the story, I asked my uncle, “What about the rain? Did it not rain after all?”
My uncle nodded his head and said, “I just can’t recall that.
There is a further story to this.
When my uncle came home in tears, he was asked what had happened and was severely scolded.
Naturally, he was strongly warned not to go into that forest again.
After a while, my uncle was summoned to the room of Touji, who was also the head of the family.
Touji sat my uncle down and said to him.
Tumbo yusuri is not what it sounds like.
This Touji, who must have been a distant relative of mine, was a very dignified man.
“I don’t know who told you this,” he began.
Once upon a time in this village, as was the case everywhere, newborn children were killed to reduce the number of mouths to feed.
It was an unavoidable wisdom of the poor times.
Normally, after the birth of a child, the mother would immediately strangle it with a cloth and pretend that it was never born.
However, when the child had to be killed when it was big enough to be a baby, there was the world to deal with.
So, the mother would intentionally kill the baby in such a way as to shake it to death, just as a deaf person would shake a baby to death.
They kill baby by pretending it was an accident.
It is a deeply religious custom. It is a very sinful custom. That is why it is also called “Oni yusuri” and is avoided.
I heard that you would have felt sorry for the mothers of the oniyusri, pitying them.
My uncle nodded.
The old villages in that area were all poor.
You see, it is not the mother who cannot stay afloat, but the baby who has been killed.
The baby cried out for help, and when it was unable to get it, its cries became a curse, a curse that They capture the mother’s soul and don’t let her go to heaven..
My uncle got very scared when he heard it. After all, the voice he heard in the forest that time was inviting my uncles.
Because he wished the mother to go to heaven.
If they had continued on the path they were on, they would have been killed.
Touji said quietly.
It is our role as women to carry on the tradition of demon shaking.
Men who do not give birth or kill will keep their mouths shut and will not see, say, or hear anything.
My uncle was so horrified that he swore to himself that he would forget all about it.
When times change so drastically, he always concluded, the dying legends and customs become bizarre, as if they were the last light in a lamp.
My uncle always ended his story in this way.
