The Funayurei: Sea Ghosts, the Bottomless Ladle and the Heike

The night is foggy and the water is flat. A voice comes from just beyond the bow, asking to borrow a ladle. A sailor in the old stories faces a small choice with a large cost. If he hands over a sound ladle, the voice will use it to fill his boat with sea. If he hands over one with the bottom knocked out, the borrower can do nothing with it.

This is the custom at the center of the funayurei, the restless dead of the sea in Japanese coastal tradition. It lives in sailors' advice, in a few Edo-period books, and on the stage. Those three are different kinds of evidence, and this page keeps them apart.

What sailors were told to do

Reference summaries of folklore records describe the funayurei as the spirits of people who died at sea. They are said to come on stormy, rainy or foggy nights, and around the Bon season they are said to try to sink ships. They show up in many forms: a figure above the water, a phantom ship, a presence among the crew, a giant that rises like a sea monk, a light on the waves, or the illusion of a cliff.

The usual defenses, as recorded in different places:

• Give the spirit a ladle or bailer with its bottom removed, never a whole one.
• Throw rice balls, ashes or other offerings into the sea.
• Make noise or stir the water with a pole.
• Stare the apparition down, or steer straight through a false cliff or ship instead of swerving, since swerving sends the boat onto a real reef.
• In Kochi, call out that you are a drowned man yourself.

Notice what these have in common. Most are small tricks, offerings or acts of nerve, not combat.

One coast, many names

Local names and details vary a great deal. The table lists some of those recorded on the Japanese and English Wikipedia pages, which in turn cite twentieth-century folklore sources.

Where the written record starts

The sources do not name one first text. Toriyama Sekien drew a funayurei in Konjaku Gazu Zoku Hyakki, a book the National Diet Library dates to 1777. That is the earliest firm date we could attach to the figure. The English Wikipedia article also lists the Keirin Manroku, dated to about 1800, which notes Chinese parallels. An Edo scholar, Yamaoka Genrin, wrote about sea lights and ghosts too, but the page gives no date for him, so we cannot place him.

The most useful picture book is Ehon Hyaku Monogatari by Takehara Shunsen, a late Edo collection of yokai and ghost tales. The Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art dates its copy to spring 1841.

The coastal customs come from a different layer. The two Wikipedia articles cite folklore surveys and regional histories from the twentieth century, including a 1932 article in the journal Tabi to Densetsu. We have not read those works. They record what people said and did. The books record what writers made of it.

The Heike at Dan-no-ura

There is one strand that ties the ladle to a famous battle. In Ehon Hyaku Monogatari, according to both Wikipedia editions, the funayurei of the western seas are the ghosts of the Taira, or Heike, clan, who were destroyed at Dan-no-ura in 1185. Armored spirits off the Kanmon Straits ask boats for a ladle. The haunting is said to have ended only after a monk held a memorial rite.

Literature around that battle is large and separate. Lafcadio Hearn opened a story in Kwaidan (1904) with the thought that the straits were haunted:

And that sea and shore have been haunted for seven hundred years... Lafcadio Hearn, Kwaidan (1904), "The Story of Mimi-Nashi-Hoichi," opening paragraph; Project Gutenberg eBook 1210.

Hearn describes ghostly fires and a sound like a battle cry. He does not mention a ladle. Likewise the Noh play Funa Benkei, credited to Kanze Kojiro Nobumitsu, shows the ghost of Taira no Tomomori attacking a ship at Daimotsu Bay until Benkei's prayers drive the spirits off. A woodblock print by Utagawa Kuniyoshi from the years 1839 to 1841, now at the Krannert Art Museum, shows the Heike ghosts at that bay. These are stage and print traditions about vengeful spirits. They are not records of the ladle custom.

How to check a funayurei claim

1. Ask which layer it belongs to: a sailors' custom, an Edo picture book, a Noh play, or a modern retelling.
2. Find the date and kind of the earliest source. The oldest explicitly dated one in the summaries we read is Sekien's picture book of 1777.
3. Check whether the ladle appears. If it does not, the tale is probably about the Heike in general.
4. Ask whether the account names a place and a remedy. Customs tend to have both.

Common mistakes and mix-ups

• "They are all Heike ghosts." The Taira link is one regional strand. The general description is of people who died at sea.
• "Funa Benkei shows funayurei." The play's spirits are vengeful Taira dead, and the ladle does not appear in the reference summary we read.
• "Science explains it." Wikipedia attributes to the folklore scholar Hanabe Hideo the view that the stories grew from real accidents and illusions in bad weather. That is one scholar's reading, not a settled finding.
• "A sea monk is the same thing." English Wikipedia says the sea monk (umibozu) is sometimes classed as a type of funayurei. The label is not fixed, so check what a given source means.
• "It is a god." No source we read describes worship. For the wider idea of the vengeful dead, see Onryo, and for ghosts in general, Yurei.

What is believed now

As religion, nothing: the sources describe no shrine or rite for the funayurei itself. As folklore, it is a recorded custom of seafarers. Whether any boat crews still keep the ladle custom today, the sources we read do not say.