Would Scary Ghost Stories Work Well To Blow Away Summer Heat?

I have been introducing Japanese summer seasonal stuff recently, such as traditional summer festivals, fireworks festivals, and so on. There is another typical summer activity people have been enjoying since old days. It is "listening ghost stories". Yes, scary ghost stories are often considered as summer seasonal stuff in Japan.

Why? When people listen ghost stories, the more scary the stories are the more people would feel cold shivers. It has been an ancestral wisdom against summer heat known among common people from the time without air-conditioning machines.  

People can listen these scary stories narrated by professional performers since Japan has a traditional entertainment performance of story telling called "Rakugo". Although it is often introduced as traditional arts of comedy talk, it actually includes hart-warming stories, scary stories, and love stories in addition to funny stories.

Between the Samurai era and early modern era listening scary type of "Rakugo" was very popular during summer, and at that time "Rakugo" performers used drawings of ghosts or scary masks for their staging effects. Listening scary stories surrounded by ghost drawings or monster masks under candle lights sounds enough frightening to feel a cold shiver even today!

Actually there is an annual exhibition held at a temple in Ueno, Tokyo, which you can experience the atmosphere of these old times scary "Rakugo" show. A famous past "Rakugo" performer named Sanyutei Encho had a private collection of ghost drawings. He was famous for a master of scary type of "Rakugo" and that's why he collected these drawings. The exhibition is called "Yanaka Encho Festival" and showing his collections every summer.

Last summer, Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music collaborated with the festival and held another special exhibition of ghost drawings as you can see in the upper photo. Unfortunately they don't have it this year, but "Yanaka Encho Festival" is being held as usual at Ueno Zenshoan Temple (5-4-7, Yanaka, Taito-ku, Tokyo) until August 31st as shown in the lower left hand side photo. In addition, another ghost drawings exhibition is being held at Edo-Tokyo Museum until September 25th. 

By the way, there is a typical image of ghosts in Japan. It looks like the drawing in the lower right hand side photo. A woman with a long tousled hair wearing white kimono and doesn't have legs. Apparently the typical image was created during the Samurai era. Some says a famous painter at that time drew this style first, then it was loved so much and spread quickly as the most common style for ghosts. 

What's more, the typical ghosts even have a routine action, such as holding their hands like shown in the drawing above and saying "Urameshiya-(I'm having a grudge...)". Well, if you hear the word when you are passing a graveyard there might be a Japanese ghost!