NOTES ON HIMURO MANSION ENTRANCE (玄関) Collapsed beams, torn shoji... Himuro Mansion is completely abandoned and has fallen into ruin. Local rumor has it that a forbidden ritual was carried out at this mansion... There is a gaping hole in the floor that exposes the darkness under the porch. A lukewarm wind and a groaning sound waft up from the hole - what is hiding down there in the darkness? On the day of the ritual, nobody left the mansion. It is said that a large sacred shrine rope was once hung over the entrance. The gates to the mansion are only opened by outside visitors now... THE ROPE HALLWAY (縄の廊下) The large mirror at the end of the hallway reflects the people who have visited the mansion. It is said that a white figure can sometimes be seen in the background... Above the mirror there is a small shoji window that allows a dim light to be filtered into the hallway. The room with the light is above the hallway. The hallway is long and narrow so that visitors may be invited in. The rotten ropes hanging from the ceiling are swaying as if someone has recently passed through them. FIREPLACE ROOM (囲炉裏の間) This room is filled with antique furniture that are mere shadows of their former beauty due to age and disuse. The sunken fireplace shows signs of recent use. Did the last visitors need it? Where did they go? At the top of the stairs light shines through the shoji of an adjacent room - this is probably the same room that lit up the Rope Hallway. The door to the right is sealed with a talisman, and behind the door you can faintly hear sutras being chanted.... The overhead space is criss-crossed with beams, a architectural style peculiar to old Japanese houses. The cold moonlight lights up the beams. DOLL ROOM (和人形の間) The souls of the girls who fell victim to the Forbidden Ritual were deified in this room in the form of dolls. Some visitors have asked about the whispering that one can sometimes hear coming from the doll room. The dolls on the pedestal are arranged in a circle around the doll of a girl covering her eyes. They appear to be playing the game "kagome, kagome," but does it also have something to do with the forbidden rituals? At the back of the room is a shrine deifing the doll of a woman dressed in burial clothing. This seems to be a special doll; it's larger than the others and is surrounded by shimenawa - the sacred Shinto shrine ropes. This must be the shrine to somebody important to the Himuro family. CHERRY ATRIUM (桜のある中庭) The courtyard of Himuro Mansion, where unseen birds can be heard calling. The Tsukuyomi Shrine stands at the end of a walkway lined with simple torii (Shinto shrine archways). Because this side of the house is exposed to the elements, the floorboards creak with every step, and a cold wind flows slowly out from underneath the porch. The entire courtyard can be viewed from the Observatory deck. It is said that the wind blowing through the branches of the conspicuous dead cherry tree sometimes carries the cries of someone in pain. THE ABYSS (逢鬼が淵 - the demon tryst abyss) Behind the Tsukuyomi Shrine lies the Abyss. There is a huge water wheel turning by the shore, and the pouring water drowns out almost every other sound. A row of lanterns leads to a bridge from the shrore to a sandbank. What is waiting at the end of the bridge? A deep fog drifts over the surface of the lake, and the opposite side is not visible. Only the distant fireflies, which fly over the water surface like wandering souls, lights up the night. BACKYARD (井戸のある裏庭　- well courtyard) A massive bamboo forest stands behind Himuro Mansion. Inside the trees there is some kind of gravestone. It is very old. The inscription can not be read. There is also a crumbling well along the pathway, covered by a heavy wooden lid. Nobody knows what's inside it, but some say that the lid moves when people walk by. From the backyard, you can see a boarded-over window on the second floor of the mansion. It looks like it's "the room that has never been opened", but sometimes you can see a small hand reaching out between the boards... NARUKAMI SHRINE (鳴神神社) The trees on the path to the Narukami Shrine are decorated with shimenawa. It's likely that some sort of ritual took place here. The darkness between the trees is so complete that it can't even be pierced with a flashlight. Inside the shrine, there is a strange altar. It seems to be enshrining something important, but the doors of the little shrine are fastened shut. Beside the altar is a giant mirror that reflects the worshipper at the altar. On the other side is a huge statue behind a lattice. It is missing its head, but it seems to have been cut off rather than crumbled away due to age. WRITING ROOM (書院の間) The moonlight shines dimly into the crowded writing room, which looks like it once was a beautiful room. On the wall past the torn screens are two hanging scrolls, their pictures faded with time. An eerie voice seems to come from the closet in the corner of the room - whose voice is that? In the neighboring room, kimonos are hung up in heavy rows, making it hard to see into the room. Kind of creepy... BURIAL ROOM (弔いの間) Many candles are burning in this room, supposedly to calm the souls of the people lost in the "Calamity" - or is it because the souls are not resting in peace? The candle flames never go out. In the dark hallway behind the burial room, there is a small locked shrine. Light shines up from between the floorboards of this hallway. STAIRWAY (階段廊下) At the top of the stairs is a room which "never has been opened." If you explore farther, you reach a dark room which gives the strange feeling of the bottom of the sea, with the torn mats waving in the wind like seaweed. GREAT HALL (大広間) Although all the sliding doors are opened in the Great Hall and you can see straight down to the end, you can't see if anything's lurking to the sides behind the doors...there are faded bloodstains at the base of the Shinto altar at the end. Rumor has it that this is where the master of the Himuro Mansion took his own life after killing every member of his household. MASK ROOM / BLINDING ROOM (面の部屋 / 目隠しの間) There are masks on every wall of the Mask Room, and on the central pillar are hung the Masks of the Four Emotions - Joy, Sorrow, Happiness, and Anger. (There's a japanese word - 'kidoairaku' (Joy, Anger, Sorrow, Hapiness) that means 'human emotions.') Through the masks on the wall, you can see into a beautiful lacquered room where the blinding ceremony took place. This room can only be reached through a complex set of secret passages, which are haunted by a wandering ghost searching for something... BUDDHA ROOM (仏間) This room has huge Buddha statues that have somehow had their hands or feet destroyed. This room must have been part of the mysterious rituals. The ceiling is high, with thick roofbeams. Rumor has it that there is a secret door to "the room that has never been opened" somewhere among the beams... WALKWAY (回廊) A strange ghost wanders this dark hallway that encloses the storeroom. There is a narrow passage that a child might be able to fit into, and if you look down it, something seems to move in the darkness beyond your reach. The storeroom itself is dusty and abandoned, filled with armor and chests that have obviously not been touched in years. The books about the Himuro family's history are supposedly stored here. RUBBLE ROOM AND CORRIDOR The Rubble Room is the result of a former owner's attempt to remodel the mansion. However, due to the constant supernatural phenomena, the construction was abandoned. The rubble room leads to a long vermillion corridor which must have been used for the Rope Miko ritual. However, the gate at the end of the corridor has remained firmly shut for years. TATAMI ROOM / ANTEROOM / STUDY The folklorist and his family used these rooms. The observatory deck can be reached from here, and if you look back through the windows while standing on the deck, you can see shadows of people moving inside. The Anteroom appears to have once been a girl's room, judging from the furniture and decoration. Near the two dolls on the dresser the sound of a woman crying can be heard. KOTO ROOM This room belonged to the Himuro Master's daughter, and music can still be heard near the aging koto on the floor. There is a broken gramophone on the low table, and photographs are scattered everywhere. Outside the koto room, in the second-floor hallway, a strange scratching noise can be heard from the ceiling. It seems to go from the roof of the koto room and back and forth down the ceiling of the hallway. Who is it? DEMON'S MOUTH (鬼の口) A vast room has been dug out of the stone underneath the mansion. It's called the demon's mouth because it literally resembles one, with its darkness and the fang-like rocks at the bottom. While some ceremony is performed at the bottom of the pit, do onlookers stand on the balconies above? The huge closed gate behind the altar leads to the Banned Path, which descends into darkness. It is very windy, as if something large is breathing at the end, and the very end of the path has collapsed due to an earthquake or another calamity. TSUKUYOMI SHRINE / MOON WELL (月読堂) The shrine inside this building is said to deify the girl who became the first Rope Miko, but there is nothing inside the altar. A mirror hung above the shrine reflects the moonlight into the building. According to old texts, when the seals of the Himuro Master and the four priests are placed on the shrine, a pathway to the Moon Well is opened, where the Rope Miko alone descends and purifies her body in the moonlight reflected from above. * back*