Japanese Urban Legends

Bakekujira

Bakekujira are animated whale skeletons which sail near the surface of the sea, rising as they did in life when they would have to breathe. They are followed by a host of eerie birds and strange fish. They appear on rainy nights near coastal whaling villages.

In the old days when whales were still plentiful in the Sea of Japan, a whale sighting was a blessing for a residents of a poor fishing village. A village could reap huge amount of wealth from the meat and oil of a single whale. Such a bounty did not come without a price,however, and many fishermen claim that the soul of these wails live on as bakekujira, seeking revenge against the humans who took their life. Those who witness a bakekujira are infected with its horrible curse, which they bring back to their villages when they return home. The whale's curse brings famine,plague, fire and other kind of disasters to the villages it hits.

Legend:One rainy night long ago, some fishers living on the Shimane peninsula witnessed an enormous white shale off the coast in the Sea of Japan. Squinting their eyes, it appeared to them to be a shake swimming offshore. Excited for the catch  they rallied the townspeople, who grabbed their spears and harpoons and took to their boats to hunt down and catch their quarry.

They soon reached the whale, but no matter how many times they hurled their weapons, not one of them struck true. When they looked closer, through the dark, rain spattered water surface, they realized why:what they thought was a white whale was actually a humungous skeleton swimming in the sea, not a single bit of flesh on it's entire body.

At that very moment, the sea became alive with a host strange fish that nobody had ever seen before, and the sky swarmed full of eerie birds which nobody could recognize and the likes of which had never seen before. The ghost whale then turned sharply out towards the sea, and swiftly vanished into the current, taking all the strange fish and birds with it, never to be seen again.

The terrified villagers returned home, realizing the skeletal whale must have been a bakekujira the ghost of whale turned into a vengeful ghost. While the ghost whale was never seen again, other villages in Shimane felt the whale's curse, being consumed by conflagrations and plagued by infectious diseases following whale beaches.