Guest Blog 16
Changing Locations, Changing Perspective
by Linda Gould
I love ghost stories. I grew up on the east coast of the US and spent my summers ensconced in a dark corner of the town library reading about ghosts and the supernatural from an old tome that was nearly as big as I was. In my teen years, I visited the haunted places of Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New York, checking for cold areas and hoping to see ghosts. I never did, but that didn’t stop my lifetime of interest in the supernatural.
Kasa-bake (public domain)
When I was 23, I moved to Europe where ghosts and legends are as much part of the culture as beer and bread. So, it was no surprise that the first stories I wrote were about ancient castles and haunted manors, or that my ghosts were always vengeful because ghosts exist from some form of trauma, right? The unjust imprisonment and death of a nobleman’s rival, a woman lover murdered when she became pregnant, a suicide after a betrayal…the presence of ghosts signaled a violent event, and the stories I wrote at that time reflected all the tropes of the genre.
Dungeon in a Swiss castle Photo by Linda Gould
Then I moved to Japan, a Buddhist and Shinto nation that has an association with death and spirits that is vastly different than in western, Christian countries. A few years ago, I realized that those differences have influenced my writing.
To understand how, it is important to understand the Japanese belief system. To start with, the Shinto religion believes everything—animate and inanimate—has a kami, what English speakers would call a spirit. It’s why mountains like Fuji are worshipped and trees, rocks, and bodies of water, for example, are considered sacred. It is the foundation for Japan’s plethora of yokai—like Tengu and kappa—and tsukumogami such as kasa-obake (the famous one-eyed, one-legged umbrella). Everyday life, therefore, is filled with the mysterious, and the knowledge of those kami presences influences individual life.
Concerning my ghost stories, one of the most fundamental differences is that the Japanese have a relationship with the dead and a responsibility to them that has no equivalent in the west. From the family members washing and dressing the deceased, burning incense to protect the vulnerable soul from evil, and placing the bones in the urn for burial, this intimacy, coupled with the Buddhist belief in reincarnation, transforms the philosophy of death into a loving relationship rather than a fearful experience. That relationship continues indefinitely. Japanese homes have family altars (butsudan) where the family’s ancestral spirits reside. The living talk to their ancestors daily and expect protection from them. At specific times of the year, people visit their family gravesite to clean, burn incense, and say prayers that keep their ancestors happy and healthy in the afterworld.
There is even a holiday when the Japanese invite their ancestral spirits into their homes: Obon, one of the country's two biggest holidays. Special food is served for the visiting spirits, and communities hold dances and festivals in their honor.
It comes as no surprise, therefore, that my ghost stories would reflect details of Japanese culture, from the obvious, like language, food, and history, to the more nebulous, such as the morality and principles of Buddhism and Shintoism. What did surprise me, though, is how deeply and unconsciously living in Japan changed my writing style. I don’t plot out my stories in advance. I open my mind to whatever lies in wait and give release to the words and stories that demand to be told.
In Japan, I live in the world of women (yes, the two genders have distinct and roles in society). My most recent stories are slower-paced and subtler than anything I’ve written before. My female characters are gentle and indirect, intimating hidden strengths and revealing their independence in ways that are almost uncomfortable for my American self. I struggle to find authenticity with my male Japanese characters and must ask my Japanese friends pointed questions to learn about male behaviour (I hope they never discover that my curiosity has a hidden goal!). However, elements of my own upbringing blend with those of my adopted home in ways that I would struggle with if I tried to consciously include them in my writing.
For example, I recently finished a short story called “It’s Your Turn” in which foreign spirits use the Japanese Obon holiday to confront a living person. The story develops slowly, like the rising mist of burning incense, because wisps of smoke play a crucial role. Only because I’m immersed in Japanese culture and steeped in their traditions could my muse deliver a story with the right balance of subtlety and action, Japanese and American perspectives.
Increasingly, the main characters of my stories are ghosts. This is in direct contrast to my earlier work and to ghost stories, in general, where the ghost serves as a foil to the main human character. My most recent stories have evolved from a few principal human characters encountering ghosts in haunted places to environments where complex ghosts exist to tell their own stories, complete with tension, conflict, and characterization. The Japanese culture of multiple gods, spirits, and reincarnation provides me with far more opportunities for storytelling, so my ghosts’ living and dead experiences are deeply intertwined. Their conflicts, interactions with the gods or spirits they meet, and the choices they make have more consequences when held up to their future reincarnation. There is a texture to my ghost stories now that is only possible because of where I live and the culture I live in.
Sacred waterfall in Japan. Photo by Linda Gould
So, you don’t write about ghosts and you don’t live abroad. How can my experiences have any value for you and your writing? Not everyone can pick up and move to another location to be inspired. But everyone’s writing can be improved by being curious about people, cultures, and environments different than their own. If you live in the city, take a drive to the countryside and stop at that roadside diner. Watch the interactions among people, make note of what strikes you as interesting, listen to conversations, accents and speech patterns. At the coffee shop, stop working or reading and take time to observe the flow of people, what they wear, how they walk, their quirks. If you are writing about an elderly/teenage/disabled/colored person, etc., talk to someone in that classification, tell them about a scene in your story and ask what they would do. Every place you visit, every person you meet, and every interaction you have can be fodder for your writing if you take a moment to observe, with awareness, the little details—the smells, sounds, background noise, feel of things. Make note of them. Read those notes occasionally to let the ideas simmer in your brain, and definitely refer to them when writing. You’ll be surprised at how easily your observations texturize your work to make it come alive. Even if, like me, you write about the dead.
Author’s Bio: Linda Gould is an American writer living in Japan. She is a member of the Horror Writers Association and is the editor of White Enso, a publication of art inspired by Japan, and host of the weekly Kaidankai podcast that reads ghost and supernatural stories. Her fiction and non-fiction writing has appeared in publications in the US, Japan, and online.
Twitter: @GhostJapanese or @WhiteEnso
Websites: https://www.whiteenso.com/ &
