[JapanUrbanLegend] a fake train

 

One of the urban legends widely spread in early modern Japan is related to trains. After the Meiji Restoration, Japan invited British engineers to begin railway construction, during which stories emerged about trains suddenly appearing in places where there shouldn't be any.

In some tales, a steam locomotive is seen running on the tracks at night, only to be met by an unidentified train coming from the opposite direction that suddenly disappears. In another instance, an unknown train appeared out of nowhere and collided with another train, but the train on the other side was nowhere to be seen, while the one here remained intact. The next day, only the corpse of a raccoon that had been hit by a train was found at the collision site, leading to stories that the raccoon transformed into a train before being struck.

These stories are thought to arise from the wonder and fear of the newly introduced trains, combined with traditional tales of shape-shifting raccoons and foxes. In one Tokyo temple, there is a legend about a raccoon that transformed into a train to deceive people, only to be hit by a real train, which was then buried.

In Korea, there was also some resentment towards early trains, as railroads often required the filling of farmland or, in worst cases, crossing ancestral burial sites. It's likely that similar feelings existed in traditional agrarian society in Japan.

JR Tokai holds an annual event every April in areas where reports of ghost trains were common, honoring the raccoon as a deity.