On a damp afternoon in early July, almost two dozen people sat in silence in a dark room on the sixth floor of a building located right next to Sensoji Temple in Tokyo's Asakusa district. The audience has come to Amuse Museum to hear two presenters — storyteller Chinatsu Ushidaki, who performs under her stage name, "Senka Ushidaki," and rakugo comic storyteller Sanyutei Kakitsu — deliver their personal adaptations of a folk ghost story titled "Bancho Sarayashiki" ("The Story of Okiku").
The story has several versions, but it's usually told like this:
A young girl named Okiku worked as a maidservant in the house of Shogun Aoyama Harima in the mid-17th century. The Aoyama clan possessed 10 precious plates as an heirloom and the maidservant was instructed to ensure these remained scratch-free. On Jan. 2, 1653, Okiku accidentally broke one of the plates. Furious, Aoyama ordered his guards to cut off the middle finger of her right hand and confined Okiku to her room until the punishment could be carried out. The maidservant managed to escape, however, fleeing the house before throwing herself into a disused well. The next night (and every night thereafter), a woman's voice could be heard counting the plates from the bottom of the well ...