THE OIRAN'S GHOST
(#2 in a series of 5)
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Kabaya Ghost Stories
Copyrighted Takaki Yamamoto 2004.
Originally written and created by Takaki Yamamoto.
Lego vignette version created by Patrick Yrizarry 2004.

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STORY:

The following story is a work of fiction and is not based on any actual people or events.


THE OIRAN'S GHOST
Oiran - "grand courtesan", a high ranking geisha and very expensive prostitute in old Japan.

"K", as we shall refer to him, was a man who loved fishing. He spent every day that he did not work on 
his hobby, usually fishing in and around Lake Okutama, outside of Tokyo. One morning, "K" went fishing up
a river. After a while, he had not caught anything and decided to continue up the river to look for a 
better spot. Try as he might, he could catch no fish, so he continued to hike up the river, noticing that
the river itself was getting smaller and smaller. Finally, he came to a spot where the water made a
gurgling-like sound, and he decided that he had found a great fishing area.

"K" placed his yellow fishing bag on a rock, and sat on it, trying to catch fish. Finally after a long while,
he felt a nibble at the end of his line. The fish must have been big because it pulled very hard on his pole!
He used every muscle that he could to reel the fish in. When he finally saw a movement under the surface 
of the water, "K" gave one great heave, but to his dismay, he didn't pull out a fish but a woman! She wore
the remains of a faded purple kimono with a loose red obi around her waist, and her face was very sad and 
scary. "K" was so afraid that he ran back down the stream as fast as he could!

"K" finally came upon a road and he noticed a tombstone with a warning on it that chilled him to his bones.
The old stone told travelers to be careful of a ghost of an Oiran from many years before. This woman was an
expensive prostitute who was in the employ of a miner. The miner eventually lost his fortunes, and he had
no gold or money to pay for the Oiran. Instead he murdered her by pushing her over a cliff and into the very
stream that "K" had been fishing!  

The End.

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BACKGROUND:
These Lego vignettes were based on a Japanese 'candy-toy' which I found in a local Japanese grocery
store in the fall of 2004. The toys were crafted by Takaki Yamamoto, a talented Japanese artist who also 
wrote the stories for each scene. Each box came with a random toy, a piece of chewing gum and a folded 
card with the story of the ghostly vignette scene.

An elderly female neighbor originally from Japan translated the stories for me to the best of her abilities,
but she can not speak English very well and I added a bit more to the stories for effect, so I know some
parts of some of the stories were not properly translated.

If anyone can read Japanese and is interested, please e-mail me at good.fortune@verizon.net. I can 
scan and e-mail the story booklet to you and if you help me with any major problems I have in my 
translation, I can redo these read-me files and will mention your name in them. Thank you.