Okiku the possessed doll

Okiku the doll is displayed in a temple in Japan and is thought to be the vessel for the spirit of a little girl.

The present

The story goes that in 1918 a 17-year-old boy named Eikichi Suzuki bought a gift for his little sister Kikuko, aged two or three, in a shop on Tanukikōji, Sapporo’s shopping street. Okiku was in fact the pet name her family used for her.

He saw a doll in a shop window and thought it was the perfect gift, so he bought it. The doll was about 40 cm tall, with black bob-cut hair, two black beads for eyes and a traditional kimono. Kikuko was delighted with the doll and never parted from it: she played with it every day and slept with it every night.

Unfortunately, the girl died suddenly the following year, of an illness that had seemed like a simple cold, and her loved ones grieved deeply. In the sorrow of those days the family forgot to place the doll in the coffin.

In Japan it is common to have a Buddhist altar for the dead at home, the butsudan, where their ashes, photos and incense are kept, and the parents decided to place the doll there too, next to their daughter’s urn. But soon they began to notice that the doll’s hair was growing. It did not simply lengthen while keeping a clean cut at the tips, but grew unevenly, just like a person’s. The family began to believe that their daughter’s spirit had taken refuge in the doll.

Okiku, the possessed doll

In 1938 the Suzuki family moved to Karafuto, the southern part of Sakhalin island then under Japan, but they did not take the doll with them, thinking that if they took it away from their child’s grave, the spirit would no longer have a place to stay.

So they entrusted it to Mannenji temple, in the Kurisawa district of Iwamizawa. They told the monk Okiku’s story and how her hair grew, and over time he too saw that the doll’s hair kept getting longer. After the war Eikichi asked the temple to keep the doll forever and to hold perpetual memorial rites for her, as is done for the dead.

According to the temple, the hair that was short at first grew to about 25 centimeters, down to the doll’s knees. It is said that the monk started trimming it after dreaming of the girl asking him to, and haircuts have since become a temple habit. Today several photos of the doll with different haircuts can be seen next to her, on the altar dedicated both to little Kikuko and to the doll Okiku.

Spirit or rational explanation?

People think the phenomenon is due to the girl’s spirit and that it is not evil, unlike the case of Peggy the doll. It is also said that a hair sample was analyzed and matched a child’s hair, but this was never confirmed by any published study.

The most common skeptical explanation concerns how these dolls were made: the strands were longer than needed and fastened inside the head with threads or glue. Over the years these fastenings deteriorate and the hair slips out, seeming longer. Believers reply that this would not explain such continuous and abundant growth.

Over time, as often happens, the legend has grown: some say the doll giggles, cries or moves by itself, things the family never reported, and some swear that looking into her half-open mouth you can see tiny teeth growing. Today you can still see Okiku, displayed in a wooden case at Mannenji temple in Iwamizawa, Hokkaido.

Sources

• お菊人形 – Wikipedia (Japanese)
• The Ghost in My Machine, The Haunted Okiku Doll of Mannenji Temple
• Pink Tentacle, Okiku doll