"Ghosts, we hope, may be always with us -- that is, never too far out of the reach of fancy." So wrote British novelist Elizabeth Bowen in the preface to her "Second Ghost Book," published in 1952.
When compared to the weird swirl of fantasy -- and fear -- that characterizes most Western attitudes toward ghosts, the way the Japanese regard these denizens of the "other side" can appear downright sober.
The old, animistic Shinto belief-system suggested that there were some eight million spirits floating around and embedded in the very stuff of the archipelago. Buddhism and Taoism added new dimensions to the folklore, and today the elaborate rituals that surround death remain as testimony to the fascination with the spirit world that permeates Japanese society. Although sculptor Kouji Ohno isn't a particularly religious person, he has his own reasons for believing in ghosts -- he sees them regularly.