Ah Exhibition of Ghosts

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 19, 22 July 1933, Page 19

Ah Exhibition of Ghosts

,; ; Thcre seem to ,be ; no -bounds to tins latest',: exhibition ~to" h& organised in TiJkio. is;: a.1 direct, challenge to a 'British institution of the remotest antiquity (writes J. Ward. Price in tUa "Daily Mail"). . ' If there is one staple commodity oi ours which has hitherto feared no comparison with foreign rivals it is the British ghost. He seemed a natural byproduct of our Tudor,architecture. Tlie paneled walls and stone-flagged passages of the moated granges and turroted castles of Britain provided an environment most favourable for his development, which was assisted by the gloomy and predominantly misty characterof our ' climate. It might have been thought impossible for a, country whose houses are built of flimsy wood and paper to compete with us in this respect,. After two visits to the Tokio Ghost''Exhibition I regret to report, however, that in ecrines?, blood-curdl-ing horror, malevolence, and general spookincss tho Japanese ghost is in no way inferior to tho British article. Fortunately for our native spectres, however, the otherwise most efficient phantoms of Japan •have a structural defect which renders them instantJy recognisable. No attempt at Japanese spirit-dumping can possibly delude British ghpst-lmnters into the; belief thai they are being offered a genuinehomebred' apparition. The difference lies in the fact that Japanese ghosts have no legs. - ' ' ' ■ ' 'Down to the waist they correspond to the best European models. The faeo is generally cadaverous, and of a graveyard pallor. ' Tho dank hair' falls in matted disorder over eyes that smoulder' with ■•' a baleful glow. The hands are long, and skeletonised, and arc carried breast-high. But tho legs merely taper off into a wisp of greyish vapour. Thus the Japanese ghost cannot walk; he merely floats along. Such traditional British effects as phantom footsteps or the dragging of chains are impossible for him

_, On the other hand the .returned spirits of Japan have some, special characteristics of their own. One of these

consists of a streamer of phosphorescent light, known.,.as the. hitodarna. This trail of violet-tinted luminosity em-> bodies the soul of the dead person, and always accompanies the earthly form that "he resumes. I am told that at the. present day there arc many people in Japan who claim that ivhcn a death occurs they can see the hitfldama, like an elongated balloon of purple fire, pass through the roof of the house at the moment that the soul leaves the body. These "corpse-lights," as the Irish call them, aro frequently to be noticed drifting about burial-grounds at night. Short of meeting an actual wraith, the Tokio.Ghost-Exhibition is the severest trial for one's nerves imaginable. .It is held in a huge amphitheatre, tho inside of which has been cut up into rooms connected by dimly-lighted passages. Each of these rooms is furnished to represent the scene of some historic Japanese ghost-story. Life-size wax images in natural attitudes represent the human beings concerned, but the ghost is :i mechanical figure which suddenly appears while you watch. Sometimes it glides out from behind a screen with a red light glowing inside tho eye-sockets of its gibbering skull; or it may swoop down from the ceiling kith dishevelled, trailing hair and clawing, bony fingers. Every one of the phantoms reproduced has its placo in Japanese, legend. Japan is a country which until sixty - fivo years ago had been completely cut off from the rest of the world for three centuries. There is no possibility of these spook-tales having been borrowed or adapted from, other countries. Yet their character is exactly similar to that of the ghost-stories of Europe, as if tho incidents they commemorate had their origin in identical but indeponddent experience.

Grimmest of all the horrors shown at the Ghost Exhibition are the representations of the banshees and evil spirits that infest desolate and .inaccessible places. You enter a reproduction of v bamboo thicket and find gnome-like figures lurking in its depths, while hairy, snatching hands shoot "out from among the leaves as you pass through.