Funayūrei (船幽霊)

Funayūrei (船幽霊, ふなゆうれい) are maritime ghosts rather than one fixed body type. Some appear as drowned sailors in white funerary robes, some as whole ghost ships drifting through fog, and others as eerie lights on the water that gradually take human form. In certain traditions they rise as enormous sea phantoms that resemble umibōzu, blurring the line between ghost and monster.

Their visual identity is bound to weather and distance. They belong to storm nights, moonless or full-moon seas, thick fog, and the disorienting glow of water at night, where shapes arrive before they can be named.

Funayūrei attack boats by confusion, panic, and flooding. The most famous pattern begins with a plea for a ladle, bucket, or bailer. If the crew hands over an ordinary one, the ghost uses it to pour seawater into the vessel until it sinks. Sailors answer by carrying a hishaku with its bottom knocked out, rendering the spirit's demand useless.

Other legends describe ghost crews drawing alongside the living, phantom ships that lure sailors into turning onto rocks, and wandering lights that mislead boats in darkness. Offerings of rice, food, incense, ashes, or prayers may placate them in some districts, but in many tales the only real safety lies in quick thinking and knowledge of local custom.

Funayūrei belong to a wide body of belief about those who die violently at sea and fail to receive peace. Edo ghost literature gave the figure memorable printed form, but the stories remain deeply regional, shaped by local fishing practice, dangerous currents, Bon observances, and the taboo status of the drowned dead.

Some traditions explicitly connect them to the defeated Taira at Dan-no-ura, whose armored dead continue to haunt the western sea. Folklorists also note how these legends gather around the real dangers of fog, storms, current changes, and maritime accident, translating navigational fear into ghostly encounter.

One of the best-known stories places funayūrei in the Kanmon Straits, where the dead of the Taira demand a ladle from passing boats. Sailors prepare a bottomless bailer in advance, knowing that a normal one would let the ghosts flood the deck. Elsewhere, regional variants in Kōchi, Miyagi, Nagasaki, Chiba, and the Oki Islands describe ghost hands rising from the sea, luminous phantom boats, or spirit voices calling out over the waves.

The legends also preserve a practical side. People know which nights are dangerous, which offerings to throw overboard, and what words to say when the dead approach. In this sense the funayūrei is both a ghost story and a working body of seafaring knowledge about how to survive the terror of open water.

Funayūrei.

§Appearance

§Interactions

Rokurokubi

Ningyo

Ohaguro-bettari

§Origin

§Legends

References

Primary Sources