{"id":2152,"date":"2014-03-03T10:57:55","date_gmt":"2014-03-03T10:57:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/archives\/2014\/03\/03\/hijikata-explained-the-politics-of-ghosts-to-me\/"},"modified":"2015-01-04T17:06:51","modified_gmt":"2015-01-04T16:06:51","slug":"hijikata-explained-the-politics-of-ghosts-to-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/archives\/2014\/03\/03\/hijikata-explained-the-politics-of-ghosts-to-me\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"
Hijikata explained the politics of ghosts to me, as well as the opportunity and the risk they represented for the people of Tohoku. \u2018We realised that so many people were having experiences like this,\u2019 he said, \u2018but there were people taking advantage of them. Trying to sell them this and that, telling them: \u201cThis will give you relief.\u201d\u2019 He met a woman who had lost her son in the disaster, and who was troubled by a sense of being haunted. She went to the hospital: the doctor gave her anti-depressants. She went to the temple: the priest sold her an amulet, and told her to read the sutras. \u2018But all she wanted,\u2019 he said, \u2018was to see her son again. There are so many like her. They don\u2019t care if they are ghosts \u2013 they want to encounter ghosts.\u2019 \u2018Given all that, we thought we had to do something. Of course, there are some people who are experiencing trauma, and if your mental health is suffering then you need medical treatment. Other people will rely on the power of religion, and that is their choice. What we do is to create a place where people can accept the fact that they are witnessing the supernatural. We provide an alternative for helping people through the power of literature.\u2019 Hijikata revived a literary form which had flourished in the feudal era: the kaidan, or \u2018weird tale\u2019. Kaidankai, or \u2018weird tale parties\u2019, had been a popular summer pastime, when the delicious chill imparted by ghost stories served as a form of pre-industrial air conditioning. Hijikata\u2019s kaidankai were held in modern community centres and public halls. They would begin with a reading by one of his authors. Then members of the audience would share experiences of their own: students, housewives, working people, retirees. He organised kaidan-writing competitions, and published the best of them in an anthology.<\/blockquote>\n

Richard Lloyd Parry \u00b7 Ghosts of the Tsunami \u00b7 LRB 6 February 2014<\/a><\/p>\n\n

This is an amazing piece on death, disaster, grief, religion and the supernatural that I would expect to read in Fortean Times<\/a>, not the London Review of Books. The passages highlighted here reminded me of the film Kwaidan<\/a>, which I first learned about thanks to it being listed as a source of inspiration for the outstanding indie roleplaying game Dogs in the Vineyard<\/a>. Hat tip: Justin Pickard<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hijikata explained the politics of ghosts to me, as well as the opportunity and the risk they represented for the people of Tohoku. \u2018We realised that so many people were having experiences like this,\u2019 he said, \u2018but there were people taking advantage of them. Trying to sell them this and that, telling them: \u201cThis will … Continue reading <\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"quote","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[983],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-quote","hentry","category-tumblr","post_format-post-format-quote"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2152"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2152\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2488,"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2152\/revisions\/2488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leapfrog.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}