An unusual outbreak has struck Japan in the wake of the 2011 tsunami that killed nearly 20,000 people—of ghosts, possessions, and exorcisms. Reverend Kaneda, the top priest at a Zen temple, says he personally exorcised several people who had been invaded by the spirits of tsunami victims, writes Richard Lloyd Parry in the London Review of Books. Believe the stories or don't, they can be moving and scary:
According to Parry, Japan's unspoken religion, the cult of ancestors, may be behind all this. Many Japanese keep memorial tablets for dead ancestors—the ihai—and consider them alive in some way. Knowing this, a book publisher who doesn't believe in the supernatural held readings of ghost stories at community centers, where locals could tell their own tales as a form of therapy. "We provide an alternative for helping people through the power of literature," he said. Click for Parry's full article. Or read about a Japanese widower who is searching the sea floor for his wife who was killed in the tsunami, at the BBC.
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