I think we can say at this point that if anybody ever had valid reason to come back as a vengeful spirit, it’s Dara-san. Man, her sister was a real ^&$%#*. Not to mention the townsfolk, so easily pulled along in her wake to commit acts of cruelty. We still don’t know what happened to Tsubaki but whatever it was, it was better than she deserved. We now know that the curse initially afflicts the victims’ arms and legs, and why. It was interesting that Tsubaki interfered before the village men had a chance to violate her sister (after chopping off her arms and legs, mind you). Perhaps it was to do with her plans to use her as a familiar, or she simply couldn’t accept the idea of men wanting to do that to someone she considered so repugnant.
The essence of this story is really Chiyo and then her two kids seeing through the scary stories (and reality) of the mountain and grasping the truth about Dara-san. It must run in the family. Chiyo obviously has compassion going for her, though this fetish she has for cross-dressing her son is odd to say the least. Of the children’s father I don’t think there’s been any mention apart from the fact that he’s Australian (as if that were somehow explicative, ROFL).
For Hinata and Kaoru Dara is basically an eccentric auntie who’s fun to hang with. Hinata’s birthday – 14 I assume – arrives, so Kaoru-kun stops by to invite Dara-san over. He has no conception of why this is complicated, but it is – Dara-san gives a detailed explanation of how that works for supernatural beings (very little of which he understands). There’s also the fact – and this is rather interesting – that even if invited in order to enter a home she must, in effect, turn it into a sort of interstitial space between the human and spirit worlds. That means she can’t hide her true form there, but Kaoru assures her it’s no problem as the adults won’t be back before 6:00 PM.
That sounds great on paper, but with Miwa-san spying on things (which is profoundly disturbing, even if that gets swamped by all the even weirder stuff going on) she gets jealous and comes over. Hinata rather thoughtlessly invites her in, forcing Kaoru and Dara-san to engage in some last-ditch costumery. And lying of course – they introduce her as “Yamada-san” and she says she met the kids in an online game (which would also make all this wrong, but never mind). They ask her birthday, and given that people in her time didn’t celebrate them and she can’t even remember her human name she has no idea. So she says the day she met the siblings, which is actually rather sweet.
As for her birthday present, Hinata gets a piece of Dara’s tongue, which she can activate with blood or saliva to summon her (I’m with Hinata, that’s pretty intense). Dara later tells the kids she’s put too much of a burden on them – offerings ain’t free – and offers them some netsuke she’s made (or collected?) to sell. Hinata declares that Dara should do it herself, at a stall at the temple flea market. So she gives Dara yet another makeover, and she makes quite an impression among the yokels. Dara-san also meets Chiyo here, who seems to recognize her but – understandably – can’t quite make the connection.
Included in that makeover was a haircut, and Kaoru pointedly snags some of it for himself. Dara says she’s fine with it but anything he makes will lose spiritual power and disappear after seven days unless he names it. Kaoru then takes his share of the profits and pays Fudegi-sensei to make him a Dara-san daimakura, a development about which I will choose to draw innocent conclusions.
