Episode 117: Bones

This is the story of the one.

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It's amazing what we can discover if we just dig a little bit.

That was the feeling conservationists had in 1998 when they began restoration work on a house in London that had been built in the 1730s.

It had originally been built as a lodging house, but had fallen into disrepair during the late 20th century and it needed work.

In the basement of the house, they opened a hidden room and discovered something horrific beneath the ancient dirt floor.

Human remains.

In fact, there were over 1,200 bones, belonging to 15 individual bodies, some of whom were children.

But that's not the most shocking part of this discovery.

Tests on the bones dated them to the 1760s, which is a very specific window of time.

And because of that, we know who rented the house during that time period.

It's a name all of us will recognize, too.

Benjamin Franklin.

In fact, this house on Craven Street in London is the only remaining home of his that we can still explore, and he lived there for nearly two decades.

But don't start plotting your historical thriller about a young Ben Franklin who moonlights as a serial killer.

Experts are pretty sure they know why the bones are there.

It turns out that Franklin had a friend who was a physician, as well as being the son of the landlady who owned the house.

And they think the bones are evidence of his anatomy lessons in a time when human dissection was frowned upon.

It's a logical explanation to a bizarre discovery, no doubt about it.

But it's also the sort of story that plants a seed in our minds.

If a house once lived in by an American legend like Benjamin Franklin can still be sitting sitting on top of a horde of human remains, the places around us might have similar tales to tell.

And whether those stories are reminders of unfortunate accidents or clues to something darker, they all hide an unsettling truth.

The places we live are often built on the bones of tragedy.

I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is lore.

Home is where the heart is, or at least where you keep your books and clothes.

Human settlements date back thousands of years and they take on all sorts of shapes and sizes.

But at the end of the day, they all have something in common.

They were built on a foundation to serve a purpose.

And few homes throughout history have had such a unique purpose and building style as castles.

The oldest ones in the world date back centuries and popular culture has had a love affair with them for nearly as long.

They are structures of power and strength and they remind us of a very different time.

When you mention castles, most people conjure up images of European towers and English fortresses.

But in doing so, we we skip over one of the most beautiful and haunting collections of castles in the world, structures that are located thousands of miles from the green hills of the United Kingdom.

Japan

The era in which castles evolved in Japan had a lot of similarities to European culture, at least from a 30,000-foot view.

It was a feudal society with all the same components as England, but with different names and small nuanced variation.

And I think it would be helpful to cover those differences before we explore specific locations.

First, we have to remember the sort of purpose these buildings served.

Between the 12th and 19th centuries, Japan was a collection of states that were run by powerful warlords known as shogun.

They rarely got along, and there was often a war going on between some of them, as you might expect, so castles provided a place to defend themselves.

But they couldn't manage their massive kingdoms all on their own.

So their states were broken broken into smaller territories, ruled over by the great lords, the daimyo, and directly beneath the daimyo were the elite warriors who served the lord and his family through battle and defense, the samurai.

And that was the social structure of feudal Japan.

The peasants worked the fields, paid the taxes, and served in the army of the lords, and those lords in turn served the shogun who ruled their state.

Like I said, it should sound very familiar to anyone who understands European feudal life, just with different names for the key players.

But when it came to the castles they built, the Japanese of centuries ago added their own personality and differences into their design.

In England, a ruler might have built their castle on a rocky cliff because that made it more difficult to attack.

The natural environment was harnessed to enhance its defenses.

The Japanese castles took a different approach.

They built theirs primarily on level ground, and so they had to make up for the lack of tall cliffs with man-made protections.

Moats were common, and some even had large mazes constructed in an effort to slow and confuse attacking enemies.

And the builders had a lot more flexibility than their European counterparts, because rather than exclusively using stone, Japanese castles incorporated an enormous amount of wood, which gives them their own unique beauty.

Honestly, do an internet search sometime for famous Japanese castles and just sit back and enjoy the view.

These structures are stunning, with sweeping curves and layered towers.

You can tell they were viewed as much more than just a fortress.

To the rulers who lived inside them, they were also a home.

And yes, European rulers also lived in their castles, but the Japanese took a much more luxurious path.

Golden roof tiles, exotic animals, and beautiful sculptures made many of these castles look more like museums than fortresses.

One location in particular, Fushimi Castle, is even famous for having an elaborate tea room inside,

which might sound like a waste of resources to build a military fortress and then fill it with gold and silk and intimate ceremonial spaces.

But they were able to do all of this because of a respect that most rulers had for their enemies' castles.

When an army came to attack another lord, either the defenders would exit the castle to engage them outside the structure, or they would lock the doors and refuse to fight.

In the latter case, the attackers would lay siege to the castle, but don't picture catapults throwing flaming stones at the walls.

No, most sieges in Japanese history were a lot less dramatic.

Rather than destroy a beautiful structure that could one day belong to them, enemy rulers would simply choke off the supply chain that fed the castle's inhabitants.

Those inside would either die or surrender.

and the castle would pass unscathed into the new owner's hands.

But of course, that didn't mean bad things never happened.

In fact, aside from the battles that waged on outside their walls, the castles of Japan played host to their own fair share of moments filled with tragedy and pain and death.

And many have left echoes that can still be felt today.

They call it the Crow Castle, not because there is an abundance of the actual birds nearby, but because of its appearance.

Above its stone foundation, the wooden structure of Matsumoto Castle is a towering fortress of black wood and roof tiles, accented with pale curves and decoration.

It's a beautiful structure that dates back to the 1590s, but that long history comes with its own fair share of tragic tales, and one of them is from 1686, when the castle was ruled over by the Mizuno family, and it's a tale that will feel all too familiar, no matter where you come from.

According to the history of the castle, the Mizuno lords of that time were known to be unfair rulers.

In the mid-1680s, they announced a new tax increase that was seen by all of the peasants in the domain as unjust and harsh, and so those peasants rose up in revolt against their rulers.

Sadly though, that rebellion was a failure.

In response, the rulers gathered up 28 leaders and supporters of the rebellion and had all of them sentenced to death.

One of the people they arrested, a man named Yana Kasuki, apparently placed a curse on the castle just before his execution took place.

While his exact words are lost to time, it's said that his curse was powerful enough to drive the Mizuno family out of the castle within 40 years.

Oh, and there was one other side effect from the curse.

The castle began to lean.

You won't see it today thanks to a series of renovations that repaired the castle in the middle of the 20th century, but for at least two centuries, the main tower of the castle developed a very pronounced lean.

Whether it was a result of a flaw in the foundation, or a physical reminder of the power of one man's curse, I'll let you decide for yourself.

Roughly 100 miles to the west, near the city of Sakai, is another ancient castle with its own bloody history.

Maruoka Castle was first built about a decade before Matsumoto, but it had a rocky start, to say the least.

According to the legend, as the walls were slowly built that would hold up the castle, they would fall over and force the laborers to start again.

After a few frustrating attempts, someone decided that the gods must be angry with them, and they came up with a plan to placate them and secure the castle's foundation.

Their idea was a tradition known as Hitubashira, a human pillar.

Essentially, a willing volunteer would allow themselves to be walled up inside the foundation of the castle, thereby securing it against the gods.

After a call went out for someone willing to make that sacrifice, a poor half-blind peasant woman named Oshizu came forward and offered herself.

She had one condition though.

The lord of the castle would allow one of her sons to become a samurai that would serve him at the castle.

Grateful for her sacrifice, the lord agreed and the new construction began.

Sadly, just a few years after the castle was complete, the lord was moved by his shogun to a different castle, sort of like a retail chain transferring a store manager to a different location, I suppose.

But the unfortunate side effect was that Oshizu's son never became a samurai as planned, and some think that broken promise resulted in a curse.

Every spring after that, the moat around the castle was said to flood, and the locals blamed Oshizu's curse for it.

They even began to refer to it as Oshizu's tears, as if her grief over the broken promise had caused her to weep until the waters rose.

After a few years of flooding, the rulers of the castle decided that something had to be done.

Except it wasn't the gods that needed appeased this time, but the spirit of the old blind woman.

So a shrine was built in her honor where locals and visitors could come and pray in hopes that her anger might be calmed and the annual spring flooding might also be brought to an end.

Today, the castle stands near a grove of cherry blossoms that date back at least four centuries.

But if you visit, don't assume it's the same main tower.

An earthquake in 1948 brought it down and the current one was rebuilt using as much of the original materials as possible.

Without the human pillar, of course.

One last story.

This one comes from the eastern side of Japan, about 25 miles west of Tokyo.

But if you pay the location a visit, you won't find much.

That's because Hakiyoji Castle met an unfortunate fate roughly three and a half centuries ago.

In June of 1590, the lord of the castle was called away to help defend another castle nearby.

Before leaving, he put roughly 1300 soldiers in charge of Hakiyoji, which sounds like a good number of defenders, I know, but they had no idea what was about to visit them.

On June 23rd, an enemy warlord named Toyotomi Hideoshi arrived with an army of more than 50,000 men.

The conflict was barely enough to be considered a battle, and Hideyoshi's forces quickly took control of the castle.

And then they did something that rarely happened in medieval Japan.

They destroyed it.

All of the walls of Hakiyoji Castle were torn to the ground, and the defenses were destroyed.

Every person in or around the castle, whether they were soldiers or families seeking refuge, were gathered up and executed, although the legends say that some chose to end their own lives by leaping from the crumbling walls.

Later, visitors to the ruins would claim that they could still hear the sounds of battle and the screams of victims, as if the event were still echoing across the years.

Even today, the site of the castle is thought to be haunted, and locals remembered the tragedy by cooking a meal known as Azuki Meshi, a blood-red dish of beans and rice.

It seems that no matter where these castles were built, they brought some form of darkness with them.

Maybe that's because life was more harsh in the 16th century, or that superstition led the people there to do unthinkable things.

Or perhaps it's just a product of century after century of storytelling.

But there's one castle that has been whispered about more than any other in Japan.

Like most, it has humble beginnings, but the legacy that it's left behind is more than significant.

It's chilling.

If Matsumoto Castle is the crow castle because of its black exterior, then the White Heron lives up to its name as well.

It is high and lofty and washed in white paint from the top of its stone foundation to its highest peaks.

But the White Heron is known by another name, Himeji Castle.

It was first built in the early 1300s as a small fort atop a tall hill.

But over the following two centuries, the structure would be handed from one warlord to another.

It wasn't until the late 1500s when our favorite conquering general, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, took possession of it and began to expand the fortress to suit his own needs.

A little more than a decade later, Toyotomi was gone and a new family began to rule over the territory from the castle.

But they wanted a fresh start, so they tore the entire structure down and built a brand new castle, wrapping up construction around 1609.

And if you visit the castle today, that's the version you'll see, all white and majestic and beautiful.

There's a legend about the construction of that version of the castle that is worth repeating.

It's said that the moment the main tower was complete, the master carpenter responsible for it took his wife to the top to show her all that he had accomplished.

But after admiring his craftsmanship and the majesty of the tower, she noticed something.

The tower, it seems, had a bit of a lean to it.

In fact, it was pronounced enough that she could tell just by glancing at it, the tower leaned to the southeast.

But mentioning this to her husband had a powerful effect on him.

Distraught and horrified at his own mistake, the carpenter placed a chisel in his mouth and then threw himself off the tower.

Today, we know the tower leans because of the cliff it was built upon, but that shouldn't take away from the beauty of the place.

Everywhere you look, Himeji Castle is filled with little architectural details, and some of them are filled with deeper meaning.

For example, there are a number of statues on the roof of a creature known as the Shachihoko, which are said to guard the castle against fire.

There's even a maze built into the woods around the castle, meant to help protect it from invaders.

And inside, in the hallway leading to the chamber that would have been used by the lord of the castle centuries ago, the floor has been fitted with what they call singing floorboards.

These are boards that were designed to squeak loudly whenever someone walked on them, a protective measure meant to prevent attacks from within.

But of all the tales that Himeji Castle is known for, one stands head and shoulders above the rest.

The legend has a variety of origins and retellings, but the most common version places the events during the reign of Lord Norimoto.

During his time there, he was assisted by a servant named Aoyama, who cared for the lord in all things.

But Aoyama wasn't as supportive as he appeared.

Secretly, he was plotting the downfall of Lord Norimoto.

We don't know if he was doing so on the orders of a rival lord or if this was part of a larger plan to put himself in charge of the castle.

Either way, Aoyama was obsessed with his plans and talked about them incessantly, often enough, it seems, for others around him to take notice.

One of those who heard of the plot was another of the lord's servants, but he didn't feel safe spying on the treacherous man because he was a known supporter of Lord Norimoto.

Instead, he asked his lover, a young woman named Okiku, to watch over Aoyama and listen for his plans.

And then, of course, she was supposed to report back.

It was only a matter of time before Okiku obtained proof of the plot against the castle's lord, and she took it straight to him.

As a result, Aoyama was brought in to be questioned.

Were these stories true?

Was he in fact plotting to overthrow the lord?

Aoyama denied it and attacked Okiku's honor and trustworthiness, hoping to save himself.

And then he made a bigger claim.

The deceitful servant told his lord that Okiku had recently broken one of Lord Norimoto's 10 priceless dishes.

Instantly, the lord forgot about the plot against his life and furiously ordered the arrest and punishment of the young woman.

She was not only taken into custody, but soon after, she was tortured for her actions.

And then, After she was executed, her body was thrown into the well in the courtyard.

Over the centuries, the story of the woman in the well has become so popular and significant within the culture of Japan that the story isn't just told inside the walls of the castle.

In fact, it is still inspiring people over five centuries later.

It was the premise for a popular novel in the 1990s and a film adaptation a few years later.

But that unique mixture of a murdered girl, a body in the well, and the haunting that keeps the tale alive finally made its way to America a short while later, where it became a smash hit film.

And its name?

Gore Verbinski's 2002 horror classic,

The Ring.

There are bones everywhere you look.

Some of them might be of the more obvious variety, like the ones uncovered in Benjamin Franklin's London basement.

But most of the time, the bones are more metaphorical.

They are the little hints of pain and tragedy that seem to poke through the soil of history.

They're waiting for us, just beneath the surface, if we know where to look for them.

And that's the darker side of history that we rarely hear about in school.

Sure, all these dates and names and events are incredibly important, but they are oftentimes nothing more than topsoil, a layer of smooth, flawless decoration that hides a more brutal reality.

Because history is never simple, rarely painless, and always dark.

You just need to know where to look.

I'm not suggesting that your own basement is home to a pit full of long-forgotten skeletons, but I am convinced that there will always be more to discover.

From the desert dig sites in Egypt to the New England graves of tuberculosis victims, much of what we know about our past comes from digging up the bones it has left behind.

I think it goes without saying that Himeji Castle may be one of the most striking examples of the ancient Japanese fortress, with its white walls and elegant curved roofline.

But it's also a wonderful analogy for much of human history.

It is full of truth and superstition, victory and tragedy, and it's survived relatively untouched for hundreds of years, perhaps thanks in part to those protective statues.

You see, Himeji Castle has never burned to the ground.

Sure, two separate bombs fell on the fortress during World War II, but only one caused minor damage while the other simply failed to detonate at all.

An earthquake in 1995 managed to crack some of the plaster and rattle a few roof tiles off, but you'd expect nothing less from a structure structure built four centuries ago.

But that's not the only thing that has survived.

After undergoing some restoration work in the 1950s and obtaining designation as a national treasure, the castle has turned into a major tourist attraction.

Since then, over 40 million visitors have walked through its halls and looked up at those white towers, and some of them have noticed things.

Specifically, they've noticed things around the old well in the courtyard.

Most claim to have felt uneasy in that area, sort of unsettled and anxious, but some have reported more.

Movement near the opening of the well, shadows that seem to shift in the corner of their eyes.

And then, of course, there are the sounds.

It's the sound of a woman crying, they say.

She's weeping, and as she does, her voice grows progressively louder and louder.

and it always seems to be originating from the well itself.

Those who have heard her and listened carefully enough to hear what she is saying have claimed that it is always the same words, over and over again.

She's counting her master's plates, they say,

from one

to nine.

Himeji Castle has a history that runs so much deeper than one might expect.

From the supernatural symbolism of the decorative elements to the tale of Okiku's murder, there's so much more to explore.

But there are a few more things I want to tell you about this historic castle, and one last tale of tragedy and loss.

Stick around after this short sponsor break to hear all about it.

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Darkness and light.

Any ancient castle is going to have a fair share share of both of those things, and Himeji Castle is no exception.

Take the story of the Widow's Stone, for example.

Legend says that in the reign of Toyotomi Hideoshi in the late 1570s, the builders encountered a problem with one of the walls of the fortress.

They were running out of stones to use, and so they put out a request to the villagers around them.

If anyone had a stone they wanted to donate, they should bring it to them.

At first, no one stepped forward.

The lord of the castle took enough from them as it was, so I can imagine they were a bit reluctant to hand one more thing over to him.

But eventually, an older woman volunteered.

She was a widow who earned a meager living by selling rice cakes, which she made at home all by herself.

And amazingly, she offered to donate her only millstone to the construction of the castle wall.

Legend says that her sacrifice was so inspiring that others from the village came forward with their own offerings.

Pieces of stone lanterns, headstones, stones pulled directly from the walls of their own homes.

Today, the widow's millstone is still visible, and there's a wire cage on top of it, protecting it from visitors who love to touch it.

But for every light-hearted tale from within the walls of Himeji Castle, there are countless other stories with much more darkness inside them.

And one of those is the location known as Suicide Bailey.

Now, traditionally, a bailey is the outer wall of a castle, but over time it's also come to refer to the courtyard formed inside the wall, and this particular bailey is filled with shadows.

There's a wooden platform inside Suicide Bailey and a throne-like seat.

Legend says that this is where individuals would come to commit ritual suicide while the lord of the castle sat and watched.

The most common reason would be the transition from the ownership of the castle between two lords.

Oftentimes, the defeated lord and his family would choose suicide over disgrace, and that sacrifice was was said to take place here.

The truth is much less poetic from what I can gather.

Yes, rulers of the castle did take their own lives from time to time, as did many of their fellow defenders, but those deaths most likely occurred inside the main tower rather than out in the open.

Still, stories are what people cling to, and they paint a castle in a darkness that has become part of the structure itself.

There's one last story I want to share with you though, and it's almost as core to Himeji Castle as Okiku's well.

This one, though, isn't about a maidservant, it's about a princess, and it starts in an entirely different castle.

Senhime was born in 1597, the daughter of the shogun who ruled over all Japan at the time.

Just as we've seen in European royal families, alliances were often formed through marriage, and Senhimi would be treated no differently.

By the age of six, she had been married off to Toyotomi Hideyori, and the couple, if you can call them that, because come on, she was only six, right?

The couple moved to the castle in Osaka.

For as normal as a childhood marriage can be, the next 12 years were apparently uneventful, at least politically.

But in 1615, when Senhimi was roughly 18 years old, her husband was defeated in battle and he was forced by his enemy to commit suicide.

But there was another problem in front of her.

The part of the castle she was in had caught fire and she was trapped.

The attacking warlord put out a call for a warrior brave enough to enter the burning castle and rescue Senhimi, or Princess Sen as she was called.

Whoever did so, he offered, would receive her hand in marriage, because after being married off at the age of six, what she really needed was another forced marriage, right?

Someone did step forward and come to her rescue, but while he was successful in saving the princess, he is said to have been badly burned in the process, and when the dust finally settled from the attack, that rescuer received a second painful blow.

Princess Sen had already fallen in love with another man, and she refused to marry her rescuer, despite the warlord's promise.

Thankfully, Princess Sen charted her own course from that moment forward.

Yes, her angry rescuer tried to kidnap her and claim what he believed to be his rightful reward, but his plot was discovered before it could even take place.

And after her wedding, Princess Sen and her new husband moved to Himeji Castle.

They had two children, enjoyed life, and she made the most of her second chance.

But no castle has strong enough walls to keep the darkness out entirely.

The first blow came in 1621 when her three-year-old son suddenly passed away.

Five years later, her husband succumbed to the effects of tuberculosis.

Oddly, the story doesn't tell us what happened to her last remaining child, but by 1626, Princess Sen's world had fallen to pieces.

It's said that grief washed over her like a tidal wave.

She cut her hair short and then left Himeji Castle forever.

The last we ever heard from her, she changed her name and entered a Buddhist convent, where she lived out the rest of her life before passing away in 1666.

A peaceful end to a tumultuous life, for sure.

One that portrayed strength and power on the outside, but held darkness deep beneath the surface.

Just like the castles she lived in.

This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with research help by Marcette Crockett and music by Chad Lawson.

Lore is much more than just a podcast.

There's a book series available in bookstores and online, and two seasons of the television show on Amazon Prime Video.

Check them both out if you want more lore in your life.

I also make two other podcasts, Aaron Mankey's Cabinet of Curiosities and Unobscured, and I think you'd enjoy both of them.

Each one explores the other areas of our dark history, ranging from bite-sized episodes to season-long dives into a single topic.

You can learn more about both of those shows and everything else going on over in one central place: theworldoflore.com/slash now.

And you can also follow the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Just search for lore podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button.

And when you do, say hi.

I like it when people say hi.

And as always,

thanks for listening.

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