Kowabana Encyclopedia: Guruguru-sama
Found in: Kowabana 131: A Haunting Past
This story is told to us by someone who’s friends with “K.” When he asks K what the scariest thing he has ever experienced is, this is the story K shares. A story about “Guruguru-sama.”
When K was in the fifth grade, he heard a strange urban legend being shared around school. “They say that Guruguru-sama appears on that mountain.” That mountain being Minaminaka, close to the school. It’s your average urban legend with numerous people claiming to have seen Guruguru-sama, and over time, it develops into a “if you see it, you’ll die” type of story.
But what is Guruguru-sama? Well, as the name would suggest, it’s a creature that’s always rotating, be it the eyes, arms, head, legs, whatever. Some body part is always rotating, and it’s apparently black all over as well.
One day, K’s old sister asks him if he wants to check it out after dinner. He doesn’t want to seem chicken in front of her, so he agrees. They set out that night, not telling their parents, and head towards Mount Minaminaka on a single bicycle. K pedalling, of course.
They reach the mountain in 20 minutes, and his sister mentions that their mother had heard the story of Guruguru-sama when she was a child too. Even their grandmother had. The story has been around for a long time, and seems to come and go in terms of popularity.
The siblings climb the stairs near the road and head for the north side, where Guruguru-sama is said to appear. As they chat, K realises his sister seems awfully interested in this urban legend, and she has done quite a bit of prior research.
According to her, the creature is pure black and round with no arms. The black seems to be from burns. It can be found on the north side of the mountain, but her research suggests it doesn’t actually harm people. It just scares them because it looks weird.
They reach the supposed area of Guruguru-sama sightings, but nothing’s there. K spots a small tower that his sister believes is a memorial tower for a grave. Not a grave for a single person, but for all the people who died nearby during the war. “You could say that this entire mountain itself is one big grave,” she says.
As they’re about to leave, no Guruguru-sama in sight, K spots something near the memorial tower. There it is. The creature itself. Its entire body twisted around, almost like a toy with each body part turned in a different direction and then bent in awkward angles like a spiral. Its black skin is torn with bones and flesh poking out. It’s missing an arm, and the other is pressed to the ground for balance. The entire left half of the creature looks like ash, and it only has one eye open too.
Despite his fear, his sister walks right over to it and bends down. She asks him to turn the light off and he waits in the darkness in silence. When she asks him to turn it back on again, Guruguru-sama is gone. Before they leave, his sister says a prayer by the memorial tower.
As they ride home, K asks what she was doing in the dark. “Looking.” There was a V shape on the back of its foot, like the strings of a geta. That, she feels, was evidence of it being burnt. She theorises Guruguru-sama was a child that was hit by a bomb during the war. They hit a wall during the explosion, twisting them, and the explosion caused the burns and ashy look. That sandal string mark on its foot was evidence of that.
Guruguru-sama only appears during the summer months because that’s when the raids happened. The creature isn’t dangerous. It just wants people to remember what happened. And as long as the urban legend continues to spread at school, perhaps they will.
But in the end, it’s not Guruguru-sama that was K’s scariest experience. It was how angry his parents got when he got home and they realised their children had snuck out. Whoops.
In the end, Guruguru-sama turns out not to be a terrifying urban legend that will kill you if you see it, but on the contrary, a rather sad tale. It’s the remains of a child who died during the war, twisted and burnt from the air raids, and it appears not in anger to kill those who see it, but as a reminder of the atrocities of war. Guruguru-sama simply doesn’t want people to forget what happened, and each summer, it appears where the bodies of all those who died are buried so the stories continue to spread and, hopefully, the memories will remain.