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The Eternal Tetsuya · The Grim: Haunted Cemeteries & Graveyard Tales

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Grim morning and welcome to the Grimm.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: I'm your host, kristen.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: On today's episode, we'll be opening the gate and entering the Okinawa Cemetery, located at Mount Koya in Wakayama Prefecture, japan.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: So grab your favorite mug, cozy up and let's take a dig into history.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: It's long overdue, on the Grimm, that we open a gate in Asia.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: To be honest, part of the delay may have stemmed from my own hesitation.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: After all, I've been told more than once that I've butchered names like Palermo in the reviews.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: But places like Okinawa, they deserve a voice on this podcast, even if mine trembles a little bit in an attempting pronunciation.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: So let's serve this as a respectful disclaimer.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: I'll do my best to honor every name spoken today.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Okinawa is far more than a cemetery.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: It's one of the most sacred Buddhist sites in Japan, nestled within the deep forests of Mount Koya.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: To walk its moss-covered paths is to step into a realm suspended between the temporal and the eternal.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Japan itself is a country split across time, a land where bullet trains and neon towers flash like dreams, while just beyond the city limits, history lingers in wooden shrines and century-old rituals.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: It's a place that feels more like a paradox made real, and nowhere is that contrast more hauntingly beautiful than Okinawa.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Here are the dead-responny towering cedars, their graves shrouded in fog and reverence.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: This isn't just a walk among the departed.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: It's a journey through belief, memory and the thin places where our world brushes against something far older and quieter and older it is.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: As with most sacred places in Japan, the journey to Okinawa begins not with a whisper but with speed.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: A bullet train slices through the countryside with the precision of a whisper, but with speed.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: A bullet train slices through the countryside with the precision of a blade, carrying you away from Tokyo's electric sprawl.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: After five hours, the rhythm slows.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: At Okasa's Namba station, you transfer onto the Naka line, where the frantic pulse of this city gives way to the hush of the Kinaains.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: From there, the land begins to rise, the trains wind through soft green hills, brush with cherry blossoms, past ancient, broken and timber-framed buildings that have stood since the 9th century.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Time begins to slip, the path starts to seep in and then comes the final ascent a five-minute vernacular ride from the Gokunara Bashi Station, scaling 800 meters into the heavens.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: The trek climbs steeply, as if lifting out from one world and into another.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: With each meter, the noise from the modern world fades until it's nothing but a far echo below Okinawa, is one of the oldest active burial grounds in the world.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: First consecrated in the year 835, it holds within over 200,000 graves and memorials, making it not only one of the largest cemeteries in Japan, but one of its most sacred.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: The forests that surround the hallowed grounds was once vast and wild and thick, with nature's hush.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: Today, only a fraction of it remains, but what lingers is no less haunting.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: Being over 1,200 years old, the silence here feels purposeful, oh no, sentient.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: The gate to Okinawa is not merely a threshold, but it's a passage.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: The first step begins at the Ichi no Hashi, or first bridge, and crossing it feels like leaving the world of the living behind.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: From here, a two-kilometer path winds deep into the forest.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: Its cobblestone walkway leads centuries ago.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: This end outguides visitors, beneath towering cedars, past over 200,000 graves.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: The Datera are not nameless, though.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: Among them lie monks, samurai, feudal lords and those who helped once shape Japan from the shadows.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: Further along, the Gobi-Bashi Bridge marks the boundary of the inner sanctum.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: It's here that visitors stop before entering sacred ground, pausing at the bronze Mizumuke Jizo statues to pour water over them, an offering for the souls of lost ancestors.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: The ritual is quiet, tender and deeply haunting.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: The path accumulates at Torodu, the Hall of Lanterns built directly in front of Kukai's mausoleum.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: Inside, over 10,000 lanterns glow with eternal flame.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: Two of them, legends say, have burned without pause for more than 900 years.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: Their light casts long shadows that stretch across time, illuminating a devotion that has not wavered for over centuries.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: Beneath the hall, the basement holds 50,000 statues, each one donated during the 1,150th anniversary of Kuwakai's burial in 1984.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: They stand in eerie congregation, silent watchers of a legacy still burning.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: The mausoleum itself, tucked quietly behind the hall, is off-limits.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: No one enters, no one disturbs.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: It's believed that Kuwakai the Kobodashi never died at all, that he simply entered deep meditation and still waits within and still breathes, born in 774 in the ancient providence of Sanukai, what we now call Kuwagwa.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: Kuwakai was first known as Saki-no-Mwa.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: He came from a family of privilege, destined for life and courtly comfort, but something in him stirred differently While others chased rank and reason, he pursued silence, symbols and the space between worlds.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: He would leave behind the halls of Confucius' learning and enter the shadowed temples of Buddhist mystery.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: In 804, he boarded a vessel bound for China, its wooden frame cutting through the Sea of Japan like a question in the dark.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: His destination Chang'an, the heart of the Tang Dynasty, where he would apprentice under the great master Huangua.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: Here, in the flickering candlelight of the Qinglong Monastery, kulakai was initiated in the arcane world of esoteric Buddhism rituals, mantras, mandalas and the silent language of the divine.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: Before his teacher passed, he named Kulakai his heir.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: With that blessing, he returned to Japan, not just as a monk, but as a bearer of cosmic secrets.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: In the years that followed, kulakai would become known as Kobodanshi, the grandmaster who propagated the Dharma, shaped the soul of a nation.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: He established the Shingon school, a powerful current in Japanese Buddhism, where the visible and indivisible dance together through sacred ritual.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: But his legacy isn't confined to the spiritual.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: He was a master calligrapher, a scholar, a civil engineer who revived reservoirs and reshaped the landscapes.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: He opened one of the first public schools in Japan and may have even helped craft the kana writing system, giving voice to a language that until then only whispered through the borrowed Chinese symbols.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: And then came Mount Koya, high in the mountains, where the mist clings to cedar trunks like incense to old robes.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: He built a sanctuary, a mandela in the forest, a realm where the sacred geometry of the cosmos could be walked, breathed and lived.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: When Kuwakai died in 835, or as many believed enter eternal meditation.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: His followers buried him here in a crypt that breathes with candlelight.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: Even now, it's said, the two lanterns within have been burned for over hundreds of years, never left to darken.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: They say he hasn't truly died, that he sits cross-legged beneath the earth, waiting, listening.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: In Okinawa, his spirit lingers among more than 200,000 tombstones.
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: Pilgrims come to whisper prayers to feel the presence of a man who bridged heaven and earth.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: Buddhist monks bring ritual offerings and meals twice a day Along the lantern-lit path to Kobo Deshu's eternal rest.
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: Okunwa becomes more than a cemetery.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: It becomes a silent battlefield where the echoes of warring states still linger in stone To the left and right of the path.
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: Within the Ichun Hashi and Ino Hashi, two figures still face each other Takeda Shinjin, the Tiger of Kai, and Uishiki Kenshi, the Dragon of Ichiko.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: These two feudal lords clashed across five brutal battles at Kawanakajima, and yet their rivalry birthed more than bloodshed.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: When Shinjin's lands were cut off from salt, it was Kinshin who sent provisions, not out of pity but respect.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: Out of this gesture came the old proverb even enemies deserve salt.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: Today, the memorial's towers stand like two warriors locked in one last stand an eternal standoff, vermilion and solemn, as if the battlefield never truly faded off vermilion.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: And solemn as if the battlefield never truly faded Further.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: Along this sacred path, a lone stone marks another name Oro Nabunaga, the ruthless unifier who once set the fires of ambition ablaze.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: His tactics rewrote the rules of war, gunpowder, free markets and Christian tolerance, balanced against the brutal raising of Mount Hiei.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: He even turned his gaze toward Mount Koya, but before he could take the nation, his closest vassal, hekiche Matsuhide, betrayed him.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: Nabunaga died at Honnoji Temple, consumed by fire.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: Yet Konan, perhaps in defiance or mercy, accepted him in death.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: His tower now stands among saints and scholars.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: Mitsuha, too, has a memorial, but it tells a different tale.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: His small Gorontu is tucked beside the path near the Nakanobashi Bridge, and no matter how often it's restored, cracks always seem to return to the stone, unmistakable and unhealed.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: Some say it's Nabuganda's lingering grudge, etched deeper than time.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: Just beyond, another name rises Tayutomi Hideyoshi, the peasant foreign general who rose to rule it all.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: After Nabunaga's fall, hideyoshi completed the unification of Japan.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: His reach extended into land surveys, rights, taxation, cultural refinement and war.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: From Osaka Castle he sent his armies into Korea, and though he sought to suppress Mount Koya, he also restored it.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: He built the Saiganji Temple to honor his late mother, and his memorial tower now stands just before the Yobubashi Bridge, one step above the path, his soul forever climbing even after death.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: Near him lies a humbler stone marking the memory of Ishida Minasari, hideyoshi's loyal vassal.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: After Hideyoshi's death, minasari took up arms to protect his master's legacy.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: At the Battle of Sakakahara he stood against Tagu Leusu and lost, captured and executed.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: Mahusari's grave in Okinawa is modest A stone stupa is small and quiet, the reward for loyalty in a world written by the victors.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: Taku Ka Leusa, the man who rose from hostage to shogun, built an empire that lasted over 260 years.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: His mausoleum in Okonat, near the Nayoni Duke Hall, honors both him and his son Hitada.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: Designated as an important cultural property, it forms the heart of a larger network of feudal memorials, proof that even in death the Tokugawa name cast a long shadow.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: But not all who dwell here wore armor.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: Matsuo Basho, the wandering poet of the Edo period, came to Mount Koya not with a sword or strategy, but with verse.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: Twice he visited these sacred heights the first time to mourn his lord and the second to pen the words the voice of the pheasant longs for my parents.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: A stone bearing that verse still stands along the Okinawa approach.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: It's said Pelshu's ashes were later interned in the Hunin Temple and even now visitors leave behind haiku notebooks in his honor.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: And tucked deeper into the woods, near the old Mikiyodu Hall stands a tower more tragic than triumphant.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: It belongs to the Shimazu clan, built to honor the war dead of the ill-fated Korean invasion.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: Shimazu Yoshihiro, though victorious in battle, lost his son and countless soldiers.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: After Hideyoshi's death, the campaign crumbled and the memorial stands not for victory but for sorrow for those who marched into foreign soil and never returned.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: Okinawa is not just a place of peace.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: It's a forest of legends, where dragons and tigers rest beside poets and rebels, where saints share the ground with betrayers and where every cracked stone, every weathered step bears the weight of history too proud and too haunted to forget.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: Scattered throughout Okinawa, like guardians from another age, are countless stone towers, known as Gorin II.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: They rise in silence, five sacred shapes, stacked one on top of the other, weathered by moss and sentries, yet still echoing the structure of the cosmos.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: Each chair represents one of the five great elements sky, wind, fire, water, earth.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: Together they form more than a gravestone.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: Their miniature mandela is carved in stone, physical embodiments of Dhanichi Norai, the cosmic Buddha whose presence flows through all things.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: It's a tradition that began right here on Mount Koya during the Heian period.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: From top to bottom, each segment bears a Sanskrit symbol etched with purpose.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: The jewels shape Kuren for the void, the crescent Furen for rind, the triangle Karen for fire, the circle Surin for water and the square Chayren for earth.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: Together they remind us that death is not an ending but a return to source, to silence, to elemental form.
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: But not all figures here stand tall in geometric silence.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: Some smile.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: The facing throughout the grounds, half in shadow, half in moonlight, belong to Jitsu Batsaru, the beloved Baritsapa of protection.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: These stone statues come in all shapes and sizes tall and lean, short and stout, some so small they're hidden, like Easter eggs, in the crooks of tree trunks or tucked beside ancient graves.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: Jitsu is often depicted smiling gently, a figure of compassion and warmth.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: Some even bear a pink blush across their stone cheeks painted lovingly to make them appear almost joyful, like characters from some softer worlds.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: Visitors who have lost children, born or unborn, tie small red bibs around the statue's necks, axing Jezu to watch over their little ones in the afterlife.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: The bibs flutter slightly in the breeze like whispered prayers.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: There's something heartbreakingly tender about them, and innocence folded into the sorrow of the stones.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: To walk through Okinawa is to pass through these guardians, tawaringorin too, that speak of eternity, and Jizu's statues that hold grief with grace Together.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: They remind us that in this forest of the dead, love and loss are carved into every corner.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: Yet even in this sacred space where monks still bring offerings to a man believed to be eternally meditating beneath the soil, to a man believed to be eternally meditating beneath the soil, time does not stand still.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: The forest may whisper with ancient prayers, but just beyond its older shadows, the modern world has crept in quietly, curiously and at times unnervingly.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: A second entrance near the Okinawa May bus stop leads to a newer section of the cemetery, where tradition meets the strange aftertaste of corporate eternity.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: Here lie company tombs purchased not for families but for employees.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: The first was commissioned in 1938 by Kawasaki Mashushida, founder of Panasonic.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: And amid these modern memorials are some odd sights A monument dedicated to the souls of termites exterminated in pest control and a towering replica of the Saturn V rocket, courtesy of Shinmeiwa Industries, though the company had no part in the Apollo 11 mission.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: These additions, bizarre as they may seem, speak to the way even the modern world tries to lay its offerings at the feet of the eternal.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: Maokoya is a mountain of silence and sanctity, but beneath its forested hush lies a pulse of legend coiled in its roots, whispered through the rain and carved into the stone steps that guide the faithful to Okinawa.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: Long before the monks swept these paths and pilgrims lay lanterns in the mists, maokoya was home to something far more menacing giant, venomous snakes known as habu.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: These creatures aren't just natural predators.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: They were patient, lurking in the underbrush.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: They would wait for worshippers to pass, striking from the shadows the mountain, the rich in nature grew feared, and so Kopodashi Kukai, the great master, took action.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: He bound the snakes, not in chains but in ritual, sealing them inside the bristles of a bamboo broom.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: He promised the seal would only break when people once again swept the mountain with bamboo.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: Since then, bamboo has vanished from Koya's soil Planting.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: It was forbidden a quiet ordinance known as the Prohibition of Adventitious Bamboo.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: Instead, the monks turned to nature's other gifts.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: Indoors, they sweep brooms made of Koya Boko, a cypress born in the mountain itself.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: Outdoors, they use branches of Kamoji, the spice brush.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: These weren't just tools.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: They were wards, a way of keeping what sleeps asleep.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: But the mountain doesn't just keep monsters beneath its surface.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: It holds other secrets, smaller, quieter, just as chilling.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: There, in the Nakanobashi Bridge, on the sacred approach to Okinawa, there's a small hall housing a statue known as the Sweating Jizu.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: Next to him is a well humble and often overlooked.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: They call the Nakushi no Ai, the Medicine.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: Well, some say its waters can cure illness.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: But as with all things on this mountain, blessings come wrapped in warnings.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: During the Edo period, a rumor took root that if you peer into the well and you don't see your reflection, you only have three years left to live.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: Senson the well has earned a new name Kagami no Ai, the mirror.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: Well, even now, pilgrims approach it slowly, unsure whether they're seeking healing or prophecy.
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: The reindeer also holds meaning too.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: Mount Koya forbids the taking of life, no animal is to be killed, no meat consumed, and when outsiders come bearing the customs of flesh and bone, the skies weep.
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: Some say it was Kuwakai's sorrow, manifesting his tears, soaking the sacred ground.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: Others believe he summoned the storm himself because the mountain of blood and impurity.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: Either way, rain still falls each year on the anniversary of his death, as if mourning repeats itself without fail.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: But then there's the steps Along the path from the Tsutami well to the Gabubashi bridge, you'll find a stone slope known as the Kakubanzaki.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: Here there are 43 steps, but it always wasn't so.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: The original count was 42, a number spoken with dread for, as in Japanese, shin-ni can mean to die.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: So one step was added, a symbolic defiance against death itself.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: It said that if you climb all 43 steps, you'll overcome death and will be reborn in paradise.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: But the mountain doesn't always give promises lightly.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: There's also a darker tale that lingers in the moss along the stone that if you fall on the Kaku-Banzaki, you will only live for three more years.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: The slope has another name, whispered by those who believe it the San-Niaki.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: The Three-Year Hill.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: A warning, perhaps, or a countdown disguised as a caution.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: Here in Okinawa, the sacred and the surreal walk hand in hand.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: A place of prayer, sealed curses and sacred cemetery when even the rain remembers.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: The stone counts your steps and the reflection in the well may not look back.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: This forested necropolis is not merely a resting place for the dead.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: It's where time falls in on itself, where sentries breathe in rhythm with rustling leaves and where memory glows softly by lantern light.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: Here, emperors, outcasts, saints, soldiers, dragons and poets all share the same soil, watched over by cedars older than war, older than empire.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: In 2004, okinawa stepped from shadow into spotlight, earning its place as a World Heritage Site.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: With this recognition, the world turned its gaze toward the sacred forest of the dead.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: For many, it was their first invitation to wander its hushed, haunted paths and to begin unraveling the centuries of mystery buried beneath its cedar canopy.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: Visitors are encouraged to walk the grounds at night.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: No ghost doors follow your steps, no apparitions rise from the stones.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: And yet many speak of a feeling, not of fear but unease, as if something ancient watches from the shadows, as if the silence is not empty but full.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: Perhaps that's what makes Okinawa so powerful it doesn't need hauntings.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: The weight of its history is its own spirit.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: The grave grind for Okinawa is a cappuccino from Higurashi.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: For more honorary grinds in the area, please visit the-grimcom.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: For now we're closing the gate on Okinawa.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: We hope you enjoyed our dig into history If you did subscribe today to join us next time when we open the gate on the Grimm.