Curse of the Black Kimono

The legend of the Black Silk Kimono

It was many years ago. When Higoshi Chayagai in the east was most popular with dance and song. The noble district bursted with travellers from all parts of the land and see. To see the Geisha of Higashi Chayagai.

In a popular tea house, the world outside it burnt to the ground. The people said the fire burnt so hot that the sky would not dare let water fall because the fire reigned supreme. So that summer there was no rain, the crops suffered, as did it's people. While other districts had suffered with flooding. Many said witches and sha men tried to rebalance the land but to no avail. Every person who came forward had left empty handed of gold and full of shame.None showed their faces again. They simply vanished.

After the fire became weak enough, or had its fill and died, the water did not fall still. But one thing did happen. Again the District of Higashi Chayagai found themselves in need of Geisha and industry workers. As they would again find themselves in less than 20 years.

Every District in Japan was ordered to send 1 girl to Higoshi Chayagai, to help rebuild the economy and bring money back.

That is where the story begins, with a girl, young and beautiful, Geisha. When she had fled from the fires that cursed her district for the second time. Confirming that the land was cursed. This girl was always odd, an outcast, did not like to talk, did not show the talent to become a typical Geisha. Yet, she became the most popular Geisha of all across Japan for the rest of days.

She had no family, and as a baby she was in turn one of the girls given to Higoshi District to a Geisha house. The girls family had been field workers Mother had been told, sent across the water to help build a new land. Upon sailing back her father had fallen overboard in a storm in efforts to keep the ship from capsizing, he could not swim. He drowned. Her mother was a very different story. As she walked through forest she had fallen through a hole in the ground. Missing for 5 days, she sat in the dark, ill from a bite she had gotten from something she could not see and received when she fell. The blood flow never stopped but kept a slow flowing pace for all those days. The workers who had slowly been dying off felt the land cursed. Their screams echoed in the forest and the carcass always replaced back by morning.  

The People said the curse had the power of sleep in order to take those it needed and then to return. Once the child's mother was returned 5 days later, the bodies of the dead burnt, her wounds tended to. The remaining set upon the water again back home. Where there were still many curses. It was on the boat that had made it back. That the crew and passengers were all found dead found dead. Except one tiny baby, born after the mother had died.

She was tiny, premature but strong . Her lungs wailed, but the sound was baritone and soft. The people called her Kotone after the sound of a harp, and dropped off at a house of Geisha where the little Kotone could make a life for herself.

As Kotone grew she was quiet, but when she spoke her voice was soft and whispered. Like her voice carried on the wind and circled encompassing you.Her hair long and black, her skin almost white. Her eyes however glowed so amber they often were considered red like the flame.

The Geisha house Kotone had been given to, was the most popular in the district. When Kotone was at the age she went with the other girls to train in dance and music. Kotone knew no other family but the geisha house. So Kotone wanted to indeed make mother proud, however, though graceful, could not remember the steps to the dances and did not excel in an instrument, as well, fans and the art of using them. She was clumsy in her dances taught, Yet could just dance freely, showing a talent for movement. Mother made her practice everyday until her fingers and toes, arms and legs, could no longer move.

As time went by a team of females came to Higashi District and stayed in a small bedroom off the house. Here the women were seen with beautiful silks of patterns and bright colours. Paints and strings of the same variety littered the floor. Kotone would sit in and watch these women weave and paint on silk and she played an instrument. After practice Kotone would take tiny pieces of silk and gracefully run the piece over her skin. She loved the way the silk made her skin cool like the fire inside her extinguishing. She loved how it felt smooth and loved the smell of the fabric. Even Mother could see the girls' budding love for the Kimono. Mother at her request asked the lead maker to take on Kotone and allow her to train in embroidery and painting. Tho highly irregular of Geisha to not learn dance and song. It was sometimes those who showed aptitude for something unique who became most famous of all Geshias. So Kotone no longer needed to study instruments and dance. Her talent laid in needle, thread and a brush.

10 Years pass.

Kotone had grown and found solace and love for the thread and was in and out of the silks into beautiful picturesque paintings. Across the yard of colourful fabrics. Her kimono had become a sensation throughout the district and mother had sold them to bring honour to the house of Geisha. By 15 Kotone was known over half of Japan for her patterns of snakes and flowers, water and fish. Eventually Kotone was of age and ready to become an apprentice Geisha. Her 15 birthday was to be her debut. Mother had taught Kotone to be a great Geisha and must become one of a kind.

So Kotone in the dark of night spun her own Kimono . The days were even longer, prep and tradition must be completed. Blessing and ceremonies, hair transformations into the traditional peach with red ribbon that told everyone she was now an apprentice.

May 10th Kotone woke up, her birthday the first day of her life. She sipped her green tea and set to finishing her Kimono. Now days were her own and nights she went out to entertain and mingle in hopes she get a good price for her virginity and honour her house.

All Kotone heard was the distant sound of a radio and the pull of thread on silk. Until the obi man came to call.

The man stopped in the room when he saw the kimono. There in the candle light was a pure black kimono. So delicate in the silk you could see in black paint and thread the web that spanned the silk and on the right side climbing up the leg was a giant black widow with a small red patch on the back. It was a sight to behold. The piece to be worn almost should have been taken away and put on display.

“My, I have to say that I have worked with you kimono before and I would be lying if I said I was excited to see what you would wear tonight, but this is a piece of art! Most beautiful”

Kotone nodded as mother stared awestruck. Powdered red lips and perfume applied. The man put on the robe and the sash and obi. The obi was black, as well had had delicate woven features along the edges.

“Thank you” she said in a whisper. She was taken to the tea ceremony where mother and her new big sister, an vetted Geisha, would be band together and given a new name to signify her new life. “Ayano” is your new name, it means colourful woven silk for your love and work on kimonos. “Ayano bowed low and as she left a spark was lit at her back for good luck and ate an apple slice for prosperity. They headed for the tea house where other apprentices, Geishas, buzzed and stood shocked at the new geisha apprentice who did not have to serve tea and dance to show their talents to the men in the room. Did not play instruments or make jokes and witty talk. Instead in walked Ayano, a stunning, pale, soft spoken girl who seemed to glide like a whisper in the wind. Almost as if she walked on water, but eyes that burned of fire.

The great never seen all black kimono had stopped all talk and everyone silently and simply looked at her.

No one had ever seen a geisha in all black but here was a girl elegant and moved in movements like a flame, licking the air. The tea house was quiet but sold out of seats and people had stood at the walls to watch the girl who sang breathlessly to no one but to the silk in her hands sewing and painting tenderly. She was said she only loved and would only ever love the art of kimono. That Ayano made love to the silk with thread and ink. Her song was her movements and how delicately she held her tools to see the picture being made from hand, had people in trance.

Hours, people watched Ayano. Drinking tea and sake, no one making a sound but the song of the thread puncturing and penetrating the kimono, the thread dully pulled. Hearing the silk breathe was romantic. What the people in the tea house did not know was that Ayano was not singing any songs. That she was instead web spinning a web and spinning them as they caught on it.

Her song, a spell of sleep, evidently in time laying the people down to rest. Her eyes red, fire inside burning, the skin black. She was the black widow on her kimono. After the spell was complete Ayono had sung the song of fire and the silk fabric turned black with death. She got up and walked on fire allowing the house to catch on fire. The fire that would spread over a district, a city, and homes. She would set off across the sea to where her parents lived and where she was created. Not by humans, but by the creature who invenomated her Mother when she had fallen down that spider’s lair when she had been pregnant with Ayano.  The magical venom seeping in her veins in the womb, giving birth to a creature that could spin her own silk and weave her own designs and capture you with her spell.  In the room Ayano slept, where no one ever went being in the attic of the house where she disrupted no one.  Hung so many webs that it made the room dark when the remaining people went to investigate Ayano.  The house was burnt and the stairs hard to get up, but the webs stood strong and had not burnt. 

 When people retell the story she is not known as Ayano or Kontone, she is Burakku Shi, the Black Widow woman who became, now just a story that people tell their kids or a movie.

Higashi became cursed land. It stayed charred and black. It is said that the Burakku Shi spread her spider kimono over the land and blanketed it in evil. No one can live there, there is no song, no dance, no light, just a story of a spider.