English Version
The strange events I’m about to describe happened roughly 15 years ago, when I, Occult Tomato, was living in a certain area of Tokushima Prefecture on Shikoku. This is a story about what I experienced involving a modern onmyoji—a traditional spiritual practitioner—and the lore of inugami.
Before getting into my own past, there was a recent news story in Tokushima about bones believed to belong to a Japanese wolf being found in a private home. According to a report by the Tokushima Shimbun, the discovery of what appeared to be a Japanese wolf skull in Tokushima City also brought attention to an old local folk belief known as inugami.
Inugami are said to be spirits that possess people and bring illness or misfortune. In parts of Tokushima, wolves were apparently believed to drive such spirits away. Kenmi Shrine in Yamashiro-cho, Miyoshi City, is known as a place where people go for prayers to remove possessing spirits, including inugami. Despite being located deep in the mountains with difficult access, the shrine reportedly receives around 20,000 visitors a year from inside and outside the prefecture, with 70 to 80 percent of them requesting prayers.
When I lived in Tokushima, I had been to Miyoshi City many times. But I honestly had no idea Kenmi Shrine existed, or that so many people visited it every year.
If you are interested, the original news article is worth reading in full. And if you ever visit remote shrines in Japan, please use normal travel caution: check access in advance, respect local rules, and do not enter private property or restricted areas.
Now, back to my own story.
I spent about three years in Tokushima Prefecture starting when I was 16. I lived relatively close to the city, so I did not know about the shrine mentioned above, but after I began working at 17, Miyoshi became a place I passed through many times.
Miyoshi is one of the more rural parts of Tokushima, with a lot of mountains and forest. However, for various reasons, giving the exact location of the events I’m about to describe would be risky. So I’ll only say that it happened in a certain area of Tokushima Prefecture.
How I Met the Onmyoji
I first met the onmyoji when I was around 17 or 18.
At the time, one of my coworkers had a complicated family situation. A close blood relative of his had been missing for 16 years. His family had been scattered after a company connected to them went bankrupt, and until high school he had been passed around between relatives’ homes.
Those relatives looked after him until he finished school, but then he was told something like, “From 18 on, you need to be able to feed yourself.” After that, he was more or less pushed out and spent time moving from one live-in job to another.
He was a little older than I was, but he was a good person. We were close enough that we would ride motorcycles together and go out for yakiniku on payday.
I had started at the company before him, so even though he was older, he was technically my junior at work. The person who introduced him to our company was a man I’ll call Mr. B, someone from the same industry.
Mr. B cared about him and apparently wanted to help him become independent. That was why he introduced him to the company where I worked.
About six months after we started working together, we were out eating when he began telling me about his life.
He said that long ago, a relative had driven a company into bankruptcy, and now he did not even know how to contact a single member of his family.
He also said that if Mr. B had not helped him, he might have had to apply for public assistance.
He told me more, but even though I was still young, I remember thinking how terribly sad it was that an entire family could be scattered so completely that no one knew how to reach anyone else.
So I asked him, “Does our company president know about this? Or Mr. B?”
He just shook his head.
I told him, “You should probably talk to them about it at least once.”
His reaction was uncertain, but in the end, he seemed to make up his mind. Since he had only been with the company for half a year and felt awkward bringing it up to the president, the two of us went to Mr. B’s house and talked it over with him.
After hearing the whole story, Mr. B simply said, “All right. Leave it to me.”
Then we went home.
One week later, a man appeared at our workplace dressed in a white under-robe that made him look a little like a yamabushi, a mountain ascetic.
That man was the onmyoji.
I do not know how Mr. B was connected to him. Mr. B was already over 50 at the time, and I believe he had been born and raised in Tokushima. In any case, one day, out of nowhere, an “onmyoji” appeared in front of us to help find my coworker’s missing relative.
Of course, when I first met him, all I could think was: this seems suspicious.
If someone suddenly shows up and says they’re an onmyoji, I think most people would just stare blankly. All I could manage was something like, “Uh… okay.”
The Onmyoji Found the Missing Relative in One Week
This is a bit of a spoiler, but yes—the modern onmyoji who seemed so suspicious at first located my coworker’s missing relative just one week after meeting him.
I still do not know exactly what he did or how he found the person.
What I remember is that on the first day, and maybe once or twice after that, he held my coworker’s hand, closed his eyes, and spoke words I could not understand.
To be honest, my coworker was half-smiling at first. The onmyoji looked the part, and what he was doing looked exactly like the sort of ritual you would imagine, so my coworker seemed a little put off.
But only a week after their first meeting, the onmyoji sent a message through Mr. B:
He had found the location. My coworker should go there. The person seemed to be in poor health.
My coworker and I were both stunned again.
The next day, Mr. B took him to the place the onmyoji had indicated. And there, sure enough, was the blood relative he had been separated from 16 years earlier.
I still remember how excited both my coworker and I were.
Before leaving, the onmyoji also handed out protective charms to everyone at the workplace. They were shaped like a necklace, or maybe a strap you might attach to a phone—something along those lines.
That charm would later become the cause of even stranger events.
At the time, I had not yet noticed something else.
The onmyoji would speak to other people, but not to me—Occult Tomato.
In fact, he would not even look me in the eye.
I only met him about four times in total, so I did not think too much of it then. But later, that detail would connect to another strange, chilling incident.
The Charm That May Have Prevented a Work Accident
After the onmyoji left, another incident happened.
The company I worked for handled machinery often, so accidents during work were always possible. According to what I heard, the onmyoji told our company president:
A machine-related accident would probably happen soon. He did not know who it would happen to, so the president should give a protective charm to everyone.
About a month after my coworker’s missing relative was found, a loud metallic crash rang out through the workplace.
Because of the kind of work we did, everyone immediately thought, someone definitely messed something up.
We all rushed toward the sound. One coworker had clearly come close to being in an accident, but he had no injuries at all.
He had been cutting steel with an angle grinder fitted with a diamond cutting wheel—a tool that is commonly used, but also very dangerous if something goes wrong.
While he was cutting, the diamond wheel had worn down and broken apart. Fragments were embedded in the floor. At the same time, the shock had knocked the grinder out of his hand, and it had landed nearby, still spinning freely.
Looking at the scene, it was hard to believe he had escaped without a scratch.
Then, when that miraculously unharmed coworker casually stood up, there was a small clink from his pocket.
The broken protective charm the onmyoji had given him fell out.
I know this sounds like I’m writing it as if it were a staged punchline, but this really happened.
After that, everyone immediately started carrying the onmyoji’s charms in their pockets.
But then another incident occurred.
The Coworker Whose Charm Broke Later Lost Two Fingers
Honestly, this was the part of the whole sequence that shocked me the most.
The same coworker whose charm had broken during the angle grinder incident no longer had that charm afterward. Later, while cutting wood with a circular saw, the blade clogged and caused what is often called kickback.
He had been holding the wood down with his non-dominant hand. The accident severed about five centimeters from the tips of his fingers.
He was taken to the hospital immediately. Other coworkers even rushed the severed fingers there in a frozen state, which is frightening in its own way. But despite their efforts, the cut surface was diagonal, and the doctors could not reattach them.
He lost two fingers on his left hand.
On worksites, kickback itself does happen from time to time, but it does not usually result in an accident that serious. In fact, during the roughly three years I worked there, it was the first and last accident of that kind.
The timeline looked like this:
- I met the onmyoji for the first time.
- One week later, he found the missing relative, gave everyone charms, and left.
- About one month later, another coworker nearly had a serious accident while using an angle grinder.
- The charm shattered.
- About a week after the charm broke, that same coworker had a major accident and lost two fingers.
After that, for a while, the whole workplace could talk about nothing but the onmyoji.
But after about a month, everyone went back to work as if nothing had happened.
Everyone except me, Occult Tomato.
Japanese Language
これから語る奇妙な出来事は約15年ほど前にオカルトマトが四国地方、徳島県のとある地域に住んでいた頃に 実際に体験した現代の陰陽師と犬神 についてのお話です。その前に。ごく最近、徳島県の民家からニホンオオカミの物だとされる骨が発見されたというニュースがありましたので、以下で一部引用します。ニホンオオカミとみられる動物の頭骨が徳島市内の民家から見つかったニュースは、県内で古くから「犬神」と呼ばれる民間信仰にスポットが当たる機会となった。犬神は人に取りつき、病気や災いをもたらす霊という。
それをオオカミが追い払うと信じられたようだ。三好市山城町の賢見神社は、犬神などのつき物落としに霊験あらたかな場所として知られる。交通の不便な山中にあるにもかかわらず、県内外から年間2万人程度が訪れ、その7～8割が祈祷を申し出るという。文章引用元： 徳島新聞 。ちなみに徳島県に住んでいた頃の私は、引用元の記事で登場する三好市にも何度も行っていました。しかし、賢見神社の存在や年間に県内外から2万人もの人が来ているという事実は全く知らなかったので正直驚いてます。
興味の湧いた方はぜひ全文をご覧下さい。さて、今一度自身の過去についてですが、私は16歳の頃から約3年ほどの間を徳島県で過ごしました。住んでいた場所は市内にほど近い所だったので、記事に出てきた神社の存在は知りませんでしたが、17歳から仕事を始めたので何度も通ったことのある街です。ちなみに、三好市は徳島県の中でもかなり田舎の方でいわゆる山林の多い地域です。ただし、ここから紹介する体験談において具体的な場所を書いてしまうのは色々と危険ですので、徳島県のとある地域ということだけお伝えしておきます。
陰陽師と出会った経緯。まずは陰陽師と出会った経緯から話していきたいと思います。当時17歳～18歳の頃でしたが、同僚の1人に16年間の間行方不明の肉親がいるという複雑な家庭環境の方がいました。この同僚はいわゆる会社の倒産によって一家離散状態になり高校生までは親戚の家を転々として高校生までは面倒を見てくれたものの、「18歳からは1人で食べれるようになれ」と言われて、なかば追い出し状態のまま住み込みの仕事などを転々としていた人でした。当時の私より少し年齢は上でしたが人柄もよく、バイクに乗って一緒にツーリングをしたり給料日には焼き肉を一緒に食べに行ったりするくらいの仲でした。
私の方が会社では先に働いてたので、途中から入社してきた歳上の後輩です。その会社に紹介をしてきた方が同じ業界のBさんという方だったのですね。Bさんも同僚を大事にしていて「なんとかして自立させてあげたい」ということで私が所属していた会社に同業者として紹介してきました。一緒に働きはじめて半年が経った頃、一緒に外食をしている時にいわゆる身の上話を聞きました。「昔、肉親が会社を倒産させて、今では家族の誰1人連絡先すらも分からない」 。「Bさんにお世話になってなかったら生活保護を申請していたかもしれない」 。
他にも色々と話をしたのですが、家族が離散して誰1人連絡先も分からないというのは、あまりにも悲しいことだな、とまだ若いながらに私自身も思いました。そこで「うちの社長かBさんはそのこと知ってるの？」と聞くと、首を横に振るだけだったので「それは1回話しておく方が良いよ」と言うと微妙な反応でしたが、なんとか話す決心がついたようでした。流石に入社から半年しか経っていなかったため、社長には言いづらいということでBさんのお宅へ2人で行って色々とお話をしたのを覚えています。
一通り話終わったあとにBさんが「分かった。僕に任せてくれれば良いよ」とだけ言ってその日はお暇しました。そして1週間後、職場に山伏のような白い襦袢を来て現れたのが陰陽師でした。Bさんと陰陽師の繋がりは分かりませんが、当時のBさんは既に50歳を超えており、生まれも育ちもおそらく徳島県だったと思います。兎にも角にも、同僚の居場所の分からない肉親を探すために、ある日突然「陰陽師」が目の前に現れたんです。当たり前ですけど、出会った当時の私は「うさんくさい…」としか思っていませんでした笑。
いきなり現れて「陰陽師です」とか言われたら多分ほとんどの人がポカンとすると思います。私も「はあ…」としか言いようが有りませんでしたから。行方不明の肉親を僅か1週間で見つけた陰陽師。ある意味ネタバレになっちゃってますね。そう。この最初に会った時には「うさんくさいなぁ～」としか思えなかった現代の「陰陽師」さん。なんと、同僚と会ってから わずか1週間後に目的の行方不明になっていた肉親の場所を特定 したんです。何をどうやって具体的に見つけたのかまでは私も知りません。
ただ、覚えているのは会った最初の日と、それから1日か2日くらいの間に同僚の手を握って目を瞑り、聞き取れないような言葉を話していたことだけ。ちなみに、手を握られていた同僚はぶっちゃけ最初は半笑いでした。いかにもな格好で来ていかにもな感じの行為におそらくちょっと引き気味だった様子でした。それが最初に出会ってからたったの1週間後に 「居場所は分かったから行っておいで。ちょっと身体を壊してるようだけど」 とだけBさんを通して同僚に伝えました。同僚も私もまたもや口ポカンです。
しかし翌日Bさんに連れられて同僚が指定された場所に行くと、確かに16年前に生き別れた肉親が居たんです。。同僚も僕も興奮していたことを今でも忘れていません。さらに陰陽師さんはお守りとしてネックレス？首飾り？それとも携帯のストラップ？というような形の物を職場の全員に渡して帰って行きました。この「お守り」がさらにこの後、奇妙な出来事を引き起こすことになります。そしてこの時に私はまだ気付いていませんでした。陰陽師さんは他の人とは話すのに私、つまりオカルトマトには話しかけないんです。
むしろ目も合わせようとしない。。会ったのが合計4回くらいでしたから、そこまで気にしていなかったんですが、これも後々 ゾゾッとする奇妙な出来事 に繋がります。陰陽師さんのお守りが作業事故を防いだ。。※画像はイメージで実物はもっと簡素な物でした※ 。さて、一旦陰陽師さんが居なくなってからのお話を先にしたいと思います。私のいた会社では機械を扱うことが多かったので作業中に事故が起こる可能性も充分にあるような職場でした。陰陽師さんは社長に。「おそらく近い内に機械で事故が起きる。
誰に起きるかはわからないからお守りを全員に渡しておいて下さい」 。と言っていたそうです。同僚の肉親発見から1ヶ月くらい経ったある日、職場の中で「ガシャーン！！」という金属音が鳴りました。職業柄、「これは確実に何かやらかしたな」と全員で音の鳴ったところに行くと、同じく職場の1人が事故になりかけた様子はあったものの、怪我などは一切ありませんでした。鉄を切る作業をしていた時だったので、扱っていたのはサンダーというダイヤモンドカッターを付けたかなり危ない機械です（もちろん普通に使われていますが）。
鉄を切る最中にダイヤモンドカッター部分が摩耗で折れてしまい、破片が床に刺さっていました。また、衝撃と同時にサンダーは手元から離れて落ちた先で空回りしている状態です。状況だけを見ると、無傷なのは信じられないほどだったのですが、 奇跡的に無傷だった職場の人 が何気なく立った瞬間、ポケットから「カチャン」という小さな音と一緒に 陰陽師さんから貰った壊れたお守り が出てきたんです。なんか…作為的にオチみたいに書いてますけど、 これ、マジで起こった話ですからね笑 。
全員すぐに陰陽師さんから貰ったお守りをポケットに入れ始めたんですから。ですが、、、、。その後もう1つ事件が発生します。お守りが壊れた同僚が指を切断する事故。これが正直一連の流れでは一番ビックリしました。陰陽師さんから貰ったお守りをサンダー使用中の事故後に持っていなかった同僚が、後日今度は「丸のこ」と呼ばれる電動回転ノコギリで木材を切っていた時に、刃が目詰まりを起こしていわゆる「バックラッシュ」状態になり、利き手の逆で木を抑えていた同僚の指先を5センチほど切断する大事故になりました。
すぐに救急搬送されて指を冷凍状態で届けた（これもこれで怖い）他の同僚の努力も虚しく、切断した断面が斜めになっていたため縫合が出来ず、同僚は左手の指を2本失いました。作業現場ではバックラッシュ自体はたまに起こるのですが、事故になることはそこまで多くありません。というか私がいた間では3年間ほどいた間で最初で最後の事故でした。時系列で言うと、今回の流れは以下のような感じです。私が陰陽師さんと初めて出会う 1週間後に行方不明の同僚の肉親を発見し、お守りを渡されて陰陽師さんは帰る 約1ヶ月後、別の同僚が作業中に事故を起こしかける。
お守り粉砕。お守りが壊れて1週間後くらいに同じ人が指2本を切断する大事故を起こす もう、これ以降はしばらく陰陽師さんの話で職場はもちきりでした。しかし、1ヶ月もすると全員何事も無かったように仕事にしてました。唯一、私オカルトマト以外は…
