Chapter 60: Tōkigan (Part 4)
“But the sacrifice…” Junko began, her voice a hushed whisper, a profound unease settling over her features. “The sacrifice mentioned here… it has to mean human sacrifice, doesn’t it? In every folk tale, every ghost story I’ve ever heard, human sacrifice is always portrayed as something… evil. Barbaric.”
“And Yōsuke-san,” she continued, her mind clearly racing, recalling their previous deconstruction of Kimura’s fabricated tale, “you said before that a sacrifice is usually a gift offered to a god, a kind of bargaining chip in a sacred transaction. So, in this story, who is the sacrifice being offered to? Is it for the god who taught Tōkigan his forbidden techniques?”
Ōgami Yōsuke shook his head slowly. “If it were an offering to this god, then logically, why wouldn’t the sacrifice be required before the god agreed to teach Tōkigan his secrets? As a form of payment, or tribute?”
“No,” he said, his voice dropping, a new, even more unsettling theory taking shape. “I am more inclined to believe that the so-called sacrifice… it is an offering not to the god, but to the doll itself.”
Kana gasped, her eyes wide with a mixture of horror and dawning comprehension. “An offering… to the doll? So, you’re saying that in this story, the dolls that are created… they’re also a type of god?”
Ōgami Yōsuke considered this for a moment. “Rather than ‘god,’ I believe the term ‘yōkai’ is probably more appropriate. I suspect that the so-called ‘method of doll making’ is, in fact, a method of creating, or perhaps, more accurately, cultivating, a yōkai. A spirit. A monster. The first taboo, with its talk of balancing the number of lives, of souls… I believe that is its true, hidden meaning.”
“So that’s it!” Kana whispered, a thrill of horrified understanding running through her. Interpreted from this angle, the seemingly quaint folktale suddenly became much, much darker.
Takada Shōji, too, was now leaning forward, completely engrossed. “Then what about the second and third taboos? Do they also have some hidden meaning that can be deciphered?”
Before Ōgami Yōsuke had joined their small, strange club, they had often discussed various folktales and ghost stories, of course. But never like this. Never with such detail, such depth, such a professional, almost surgical level of analysis. Ōgami’s interpretations were giving them a completely new kind of experience.
“The second taboo…” Kana mused, a puzzled frown on her face. “Mirrors, and all that. They didn’t have modern, glass mirrors back in that era, did they? So why would looking into a mirror be such a strict and seemingly absolute taboo for the doll?”
“The earliest mirrors in Japan were called ‘kagami,’ which essentially just meant a ‘water mirror’ – a basin of still water,” Junko explained, her historical knowledge surprisingly decent. “After that came polished stone mirrors, then bronze mirrors, and so on. It wasn’t until the eighteenth century, when the German chemist Justus von Liebig invented the silvered-glass mirror, that modern mirrors became a thing.”
“The mirror mentioned in the legend of Tōkigan,” she continued, “considering the ancient time period, was almost certainly a bronze mirror. As for why a mirror would be a taboo for the doll… well, that’s something I can’t quite figure out.”
Takada Shōji, who had been listening intently, recalled something Ōgami had said earlier. “Didn’t you say just now that the god told Tōkigan that a mirror is a sacred object that reflects the truth of the world? Maybe that’s the reason? I mean, there seem to be a lot of urban legends and folktales that revolve around mirrors, right?”
Ōgami Yōsuke nodded, affirming his point. “Mirrors, in the study of folklore, hold a unique and powerful status. People believed that because mirrors could reflect the true nature of people and objects, they possessed a certain spiritual quality of their own. In Japan alone, even back in the ancient era of ‘water mirrors,’ people began to regard mirrors as sacred objects, and even worshipped them. For example, the Yata no Kagami, the Sacred Mirror, which is currently enshrined as one of the Three Imperial Regalia at Ise Grand Shrine, is believed to have originally been a water mirror.”
He paused, then continued, “If we consider this from the symbolic perspective of good versus evil, the second taboo becomes much easier to explain. Because mirrors possess a mysterious, almost divine, spiritual power, and are one of the sacred treasures associated with the sun goddess Amaterasu, they are believed to bring good fortune, to allow one to foresee life, death, and disaster, and even to expose the true, monstrous nature of demons and yōkai. Therefore, in this symbolic framework, mirrors belong to the side of ‘good’.”
Takada Shōji’s eyes lit up, the pieces beginning to click into place in his simple, straightforward mind. He said eagerly, “And you said earlier that in the legend of Tōkigan, the dolls made with the god’s technique might actually be yōkai, which would mean they belong to the side of ‘evil,’ just like the yōkai in other stories that harm humans. And mirrors belong to the side of ‘good,’ which is beneficial to humans, right?”
“So, if you think of it that way, the doll is a yōkai. And every yōkai, every monster, has a weakness, something it fears. In other words, the second taboo… it might be a clue, a warning, indicating the doll’s greatest weakness!”
Ōgami Yōsuke hesitated for a moment, a thoughtful expression on his face. “That is… one possible interpretation. But based on the subsequent events in the story, the idea of it being a simple ‘weakness’ is clearly not the correct answer. And to say that mirrors are universally ‘beneficial to humans’ is a bit too arbitrary, a bit too simplistic. A more accurate way to phrase it, I believe, would be that the mirror represents an opposing force to the doll. Like the fundamental opposition between good and evil, order and chaos.”
Kana frowned at this. “No matter what the correct answer is, just looking at the content of the taboo, isn’t it a bit too… harsh? Too impractical? Almost every household has a mirror of some kind. To avoid the doll, would everyone on the island have had to destroy all their mirrors?”
Ōgami Yōsuke shook his head. “My own hypothesis is that in the era when the Tōkigan legend originated, the population of Mie Island was even smaller than it is now, and the villages were not yet divided into three distinct settlements like Gogatsu and Rokugatsu. Therefore, bronze mirrors, which were rare and expensive items, were not something every household on the island would have possessed. So, violating this particular taboo would not have been so easy, so commonplace as it would be today.”
“But water can also reflect people and objects, right?” Kana pressed, still looking for a loophole. “Wouldn’t that also violate the taboo?”
Ōgami Yōsuke said, “According to my understanding of ancient Shinto beliefs, water and a ‘kagami’ cannot be so easily equated. Although their function of reflection is, on the surface, similar, only water that is contained in a specific, specially prepared vessel can be called a ‘kagami.’ And there were very specific, very strict regulations regarding the form and material of that vessel. At that time, Mie Island was a small, isolated, and likely quite poor village. Vessels that met the sacred standard of a ‘kagami’ were probably even rarer than bronze mirrors.”
Seeing that Kana still looked a bit confused, Ōgami Yōsuke tried another, more modern, analogy. “It’s easier to understand if we use something else as an example. Take a protective amulet, an omamori. Outwardly, it’s just a small, simple cloth bag with something sealed inside. But if it’s purchased from a shrine, if it has been properly blessed, it becomes an ‘omamori,’ an object imbued with the power to bring blessings, to ward off evil. And then you have to follow the rules, like not opening it to look inside, and returning it to the shrine after a year.”
“If you just make one at home, using the exact same materials, but it hasn’t been ritually consecrated at a shrine, then of course it can’t truly be considered an ‘omamori.’ Getting back to the story of Tōkigan, any object that met the strict, formal requirements of a ‘kagami’ would naturally be considered the sacred, and dangerous object mentioned in the taboo. But other objects, things that did not meet those formal requirements, even if they had a similar function, would not necessarily possess the required spiritual power.”
“Of course,” he added, with a touch of academic humility, “this is just my personal interpretation.”
Kana nodded slowly, though her expression was a little dejected. “That… that makes sense, I guess. And here I thought I’d found a genuine loophole in the story.”
Takada Shōji, his own ‘weakness’ theory having been so soundly shot down, said with a hint of petulant defiance, “Then what do you think the correct answer is, smart guy?”
Ōgami Yōsuke replied calmly, “The correct answer is likely that the mirror is a sacred object that can enrage the doll. Just as the god said, the mirror would force the doll to confront its own true, monstrous yōkai nature. And that revelation would drive it to a state of uncontrollable rage, perhaps even… to go berserk.”
Takada Shōji was momentarily stunned into silence. Although he was reluctant to admit it, Ōgami Yōsuke’s explanation was indeed more logical, and more consistent with the established narrative of the story. He let out a frustrated “tch” and said, “Well, whatever. It’s not like I knew the rest of the story, did I?”
“So,” Junko said, a bright, eager curiosity in her eyes as she began to count on her fingers, her expression utterly charming, “what about the third taboo? What does that one mean? Does it have some special, hidden meaning too? The first taboo hints at the true, monstrous nature of the dolls made with the god’s technique. The second taboo hints at the specific condition that can make the dolls go berserk. What’s next?”
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