The Guiding Bell of Kyoto

Tonight, once again, I shall tell you a strange tale from Japan.
Relax… but do not turn around too quickly. I am watching just behind you. Heh, heh, heh…

This story is said to have happened to a French traveler visiting Kyoto.

He stayed in a traditional wooden townhouse, renovated into a guesthouse a short walk from Gion. Drawn by its old-world charm, he thought it would be the perfect place to spend the night.

Late at night, he suddenly awoke. From beyond the paper sliding doors came a faint sound: chirin… chirin…

—the delicate ringing of a small bell. At first, he thought it must be a furin, the little wind chimes he had seen earlier that day at a souvenir shop. A furin is usually made of glass or metal, a summer ornament that catches the breeze and brings coolness with its clear sound. In Japan, it is considered a pleasant, soothing charm against the heat. Yet that night there was no wind at all. Still, the sound continued without pause, drawing closer, as if approaching his very room.

The next morning, the traveler, unsettled by the memory, asked the elderly landlady if he might see the wind chime of the inn. She shook her head gently.

“This house has no furin. And you were the only guest last night… so it could not have been from another room.” After a short silence, she added in a hushed voice: “…Perhaps what you heard was an okuribue—a sending bell.”

In Kyoto there is an old place called Rokudō no Tsuji, known as the crossroads between this world and the next. Long ago, it was the site of rituals to send the souls of the dead to the afterlife. Even today, during the summer festival known as Rokudō Mairi, people ring small bells to call back their ancestors’ spirits, and then guide them once more to the other side. Because of this, there is a lingering belief in Kyoto: when one hears the sound of a bell in the night, it may not be the music of a wind chime, but the toll that guides the living toward the realm of the dead.

The traveler knew nothing of this tradition. But ever since that night, even after returning home, he confessed that before falling asleep, he still hears it: chirin… chirin…, faintly echoing in his ears.

Was that bell meant to guide him somewhere? Did he carry back with him the unseen being who rang it? Or is he still being called—across the seas—from faraway Kyoto?