One day he goes fishing to seek solace, only to reel in the door with the corpses of Oiwa and Kohei attached. Terrified, he escapes to a mountain cottage, where he is continually tormented by frightening images, such as that of Oiwa's face emerging from a lantern that swings over his head. Finally Iyemon is put out of his misery when Oiwa's brother arrives at the cottage to take vengeance for his sister's death. To be without legs is to be devoid of this proper standard. Ghosts are likely to come at night, not only because they relish the dark, but because people sleep lying down, their feet on the same level as their heads.
Ghosts are apt to invert.
This would all seem quite far off to contemporary Japanese. They may know the stories, but they surely don't believe in them. Such myths tend to run deep. A deluxe edition appeared a couple of years ago, just in time for a long and abnormally torrid summer. Tim Screech is a professor of Japanese art history at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.