Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo in Sumida

The game opens here. Office worker Shogo Okoshi and his friend Yoko Fukunaga are in Kinshibori Park at midnight, looking into the Seven Mysteries of Honjo, when strange things begin to happen. The park is tied to the best-known legend, Okiteke-bori: anglers at a moat hear a voice telling them to leave their catch behind. Records place that moat in several spots, the Kinshibori stretch among them. Today a kappa statue stands in the park, a nod to one explanation for the voice.

Visitor guidance: A city park in Kotobashi; the kappa statue is the thing to find.

In the game, a police inspector working a case in this garden is possessed by the curse bead of Ochiba-naki shii, the tree that sheds no leaves. The legend itself is told of a great shii tree beside the Matsura clan mansion in Yokoami 1-chome, whose leaves never fell even in strong wind. The garden, a tidal-pond stroll garden and the Edo-period lower residence of the Honjo-Matsudaira clan, opened to the public in July 1927 and lies in the same neighbourhood.

Visitor guidance: A ward-run garden in Yokoami; walk its pond path where the game places its scene.

Kataba no ashi is the darkest of the nine legends in the game. A man named Tomezo, spurned by a girl called Okoma, kills her beside a bridge, and the reeds around the moat afterwards grow leaves on one side only. The story is set at Kataba-bori and Komatome Bridge, around Ryogoku 1-chome, and the bridge is said to have stood near today's Ryogoku Bridge. The moat is long gone; the pin marks the bridge.

Location precision: The old moat and Komatome Bridge are gone and the sources give only the area; the pin marks Ryogoku Bridge.

Two more legends belong to the old drainage channel Minami-Warisui, today's Hokusai-dori. In Okuri-hyoshigi, a night watchman hears wooden clappers answering his own with nobody there; in the game a housewife carries that curse bead. Ashiarai-yashiki, the mansion where a giant foot comes through the ceiling, is set in Mikasa-cho, now Kamezawa 4-chome, and a student holds its bead. The street is ordinary; the stories are the local colour.

Location precision: The legends name the channel and old districts, not an exact spot; the pin marks Hokusai-dori in Kamezawa.

Visitor guidance: Walk Hokusai-dori through Kamezawa; nothing marks the legends.

Here the legends are carved into the wall. The concrete wall around this long, narrow park, about 1800 metres in all, carries reliefs of the Honjo Seven Mysteries. In the game, characters get their power from curse beads tied to those same legends. Nearby, in Taihei 1-chome, the lantern legend Okuri-chochin is told, set in Honji-demura by the Oyokogawa.

Visitor guidance: An open park along the old canal; look for the reliefs on the retaining walls.

The game left a trail you can follow. On 9 March 2023 the Sumida Tourism Association began handing out a Honjo Seven Mysteries exploration map, supervised by the editors of the occult magazine Mu. The Ryogoku Tourist Information Center at Yokoami 1-30-20 was one of the places that gave it out, a natural place to start or end the walk.

Visitor guidance: Ask whether a Seven Mysteries map is still available; stock and hours change.