Yurei (horror) prints

Bancho Sarayashiki (The Mansion of Dishes at Bancho) or Sarayashiki (Manor of the Dishes)

Bancho Sarayaski is an old and very famous Japanese ghost story and appears in many ukiyo-e prints by many different artists. The story is about Okiku, a servant girl who is very beautiful and who is pursued by the samurai that she works for. She rebuffs his advances time and time again so he tricks her into believing that she lost one of the manor’s rare and expensive plates. She franticly counts the plates and can’t understand what happened to the missing plate. She goes to the samurai and tells him that she lost one of the plates. He tells her that if she sleeps with him, he’ll forget about it but she refuses. The samurai gets angry and throws her down a well where later servants would report hearing a woman counting to nine and then screaming. This is my version of a print originally made by Hokusai.