The Forgotten Shrine Under Shinjuku

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 is what happened to a foreign man who had just begun living in Japan,
when he tried to film a simple video of the underground mall beneath Shinjuku Station.

Shinjuku Station is a labyrinth—
even Japanese people get lost in it.
Dozens of train lines intersect there,
and exits seem to multiply endlessly.
No matter how long you look at a map,
up and down begin to feel reversed,
and the boundary between ground and underground disappears.

He hadn’t opened his video channel yet,
but he wanted to make something lighthearted:
a short travel clip to introduce Tokyo’s biggest station.
“Tokyo stations are like underground cities,” he thought.
Just a bit of practice—nothing serious.

He passed through the ticket gate,
turned on his camera,
and began walking down the crowded corridor.
The flow of people,
the flashing signs,
the constant announcements and footsteps—
everything mixed together into that low, echoing hum unique to underground spaces.

“So many exits!”
He laughed, using his own voice as narration.
He turned a corner and continued deeper.

But as he filmed,
he began to notice something strange.
There were fewer and fewer people around.
The crowds that had filled the corridor minutes earlier had thinned until only his own footsteps echoed behind him.

The air changed.
The flow of cold air from the vents stopped.
Silence began to settle,
and a faint smell drifted past—
something like burnt wood… yet oddly sweet.
It wasn’t food, it wasn’t perfume—
just an unfamiliar scent he couldn’t place.
He wrinkled his nose and kept walking.

Then, on the right-hand wall,
he noticed a small recess framed in old, darkened wood.
The lighting there was dimmer than the rest.
Inside, upon a stone pedestal,
stood a tiny shrine.
Dust covered its surface,
and a rusted offering box sat before it.
A single paper streamer—
the kind you see at Shinto shrines—
hung limp and swayed faintly.

“What is this…?”
He lifted his camera and held it still.
The strange scent grew stronger,
and something like thin smoke drifted past the edge of his lens.

On a small wooden plaque,
the writing had long since faded.
At the corner of the pedestal,
a few white grains lay scattered—
rice, perhaps, or sand.
He couldn’t tell.
But somehow,
he could feel that the space existed for something.

He stepped back,
panned his camera around the corridor,
and started walking again.
Only a few meters later,
he emerged into a bright, crowded passageway once more.

It was as if that dim corridor
had been cut out from reality and placed there only for him.
He tilted his head slightly,
then smiled.
“Well, at least I got some interesting footage,” he said,
and climbed the stairs back to the surface.

The next day,
he edited the footage together,
added a simple title,
and uploaded it.

“Tokyo’s Underground Maze – Shinjuku Station Walkthrough.”

It was his very first upload—
more of an experiment than a debut.
A few hours later,
the notification bell chimed.
Several comments appeared in English.

Nice shots!
This station looks like a labyrinth!
All positive, friendly remarks.

Then he noticed a few comments written in Japanese.
He clicked translate.

“Did anyone else hear that voice?”
“It’s saying ‘come closer, come closer.’
That’s what it means in English, right?
Creepy, huh?”

“Voice…?”
He remembered the strange repetition in the footage.
Now that he knew the meaning,
the phrase ‘Come closer, come closer’ felt wrong—
unnaturally persistent.
A chill ran lightly down his back.

More comments began to appear.

“I know Shinjuku pretty well,
but there’s no place like that in the underground mall.”
“Is this fake?
Because if it’s real, that voice isn’t human.
Did you film another world?”

He had been there.
He remembered the air changing,
the faint scent,
the quiet.
Something about it had felt… off,
even then.
He stared at the screen for a long moment,
wondering what to reply.
In the end,
he decided to say nothing
and simply deleted the video.

A few days later,
he returned to Shinjuku to see for himself.
But no matter how much he walked,
he could not find the corridor again.
Every path was crowded,
every passage bright and ordinary.
Only the endless, noisy maze of Shinjuku Station stretched before him.

Perhaps what he had seen was something ancient—a remnant of what once was.

You see, in Japan,
gods do not live only in the distant heavens.
They dwell in stones by the roadside,
in the shadows between tall buildings,
at street corners,
and even beneath the ground of construction sites.

Whenever people rebuild the land,
they must first apologize to the spirit that resides there.

That is the jichinsai—the ground-purifying ritual.

A priest is called,
offerings of sake, salt, and rice are made,
and the deity of the earth is moved—relocated—to a new resting place.

Yet, once moved,
how many of those gods are remembered afterward?

A shrine forgotten gathers dust,
the offerings stop,
and prayers fall silent.

The Japanese say that not all curses are born of blood or hatred—sometimes, the first curse
is simply to be forgotten.

When filming while traveling,
it’s natural for background sounds to sneak into your footage—
chatter, echoes, bits of conversation.

In a foreign country,
you might not understand what’s being said,
and think nothing of it.

But perhaps…
among those voices,
hidden in the crowd and static,
there might be a voice

that does not belong to the living.

Ah, yes… such dreadful things truly do happen in this world.
And so, until our next tale, we must part ways.
May you remain safe… until then. Heh, heh, heh…