Kyoto's legendary underworld well is receiving a rare public viewing. On September 4, Rokudo Chinno-ji begins a three-day special opening tied to the launch of Capcom's Onimusha: Way of the Sword, whose director says the real Kyoto temple is central to the game's world. But the place did not need a video game to become one of Japan's eeriest crossroads.

At Rokudo Chinno-ji, visitors pull a rope through a small opening to ring a bell hidden behind a wall. Temple tradition says the Mukaegane, or welcoming bell, can be heard in the realm of the dead. Behind the main hall waits an even stranger object: a well said to have carried the ninth-century courtier Ono no Takamura to his second job in the underworld.

Takamura was a real scholar, poet, and imperial official whose refusal to join a diplomatic mission led to exile and an unlikely return to power. Medieval legends made that résumé considerably stranger. By day, he served Kyoto's court. By night, the stories say, he worked beside Enma as an official among the judges of the dead - and used the temple well as his commute.

Henrique follows the old road toward the Toribeno funerary grounds, through the Crossroads of the Six Realms, and down into the legend of Takamura's entrance and return wells. Along the way, an impatient decision costs Kyoto a self-ringing supernatural bell, a dead official recognizes a colleague already working below, and a frightening doorway becomes a loving road home during Rokudo-mairi ancestor-remembrance rites.

This atmospheric Thursday Thrills separates documented history from medieval tale and living Buddhist tradition without draining the fun from the mystery. It is a spooky-season trip for listeners who love Japanese folklore, eerie travel stories, haunted places, underworld legends, Halloween podcasts, and the unsettling discovery that even the afterlife may have office hours.

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