Kohada Koheiji 小幡小平次

Kohada Koheiji (小幡小平次), the “Ghost Actor,” is a unique and unsettling figure—a man who dedicated his life to playing the dead so perfectly that when he was eventually murdered, he didn’t even have to change his costume to become a ghost.

Meaning and Origin

Kohada Koheiji was a historical figure—a third-rate actor in Edo during the early 18th century.

His origin is a case of Life Imitating Art. Because Koheiji was naturally thin, pale, and had a naturally eerie expression, he was never cast as a hero. Instead, he specialized in playing Yūrei (ghosts) in theater productions. He took his craft so seriously that he would visit morgues and battlefields to study the look of real corpses. This dedication made his stage appearances legendary, but it also made him a social outcast. His story was later fictionalized in the 1803 novel Fukushū kidan Asaka no numa and became a mainstay of Kabuki.

Characteristics

As a ghost, Koheiji looks exactly as he did on stage: a skeletal man with wild, thin hair, sunken eyes, and a tattered white burial shroud. He is often seen peeking over the top of a mosquito net (kaya), a classic image captured in a famous woodblock print by Hokusai.

His most disturbing characteristic is his Self-Awareness. Unlike other ghosts who seem trapped in a loop of sorrow, Koheiji seems to find a dark professional pride in his haunting. He doesn’t just scare people; he “performs” for them, choosing the most dramatic moments to appear and ensuring that his “audience” (his victims) is appropriately terrified before he strikes.

Legends

The legend of Koheiji’s death is a story of Betrayal. His wife, Otowa, grew tired of his macabre obsessions and began an affair with another actor, Adachi Sakurō. Together, they plotted to kill Koheiji. During a trip to a remote swamp in Asaka, the lover pushed Koheiji into the deep, stagnant water and held him down until he drowned.

That night, as the murderous couple lay in bed together, a dripping, pale hand reached through their mosquito net. It was Koheiji, looking exactly like his famous ghost-role, only now his skin was truly blue and his eyes were truly dead. He began to peek over the net every single night, never speaking, just staring with a theatrical intensity. The haunting was so effective that the couple eventually went insane. Koheiji proved that while he was a “third-rate” actor in life, he was a master of his craft in the afterlife.