Everyone has heard the rumors that say "a certain university hospital has a part-time job for washing corpses that pays 10,000 yen an hour".
Such stories are often accompanied by a story that goes something like, "Have you heard of this? A friend of a friend had this happen to him..." These stories are told as truth, but no one knows if they are real or not. Even if one tries to find that friend, the story was passed down from many friends to other friends, and one can never reach the person who experienced it. This is called an urban legend.
The term "都市伝説(Toshi Densetsu)" was originally coined as "urban legend" by American researcher Brunvand and his colleagues.
都市の = of the city/urban and 伝説 = legend/folklore, making 都市伝説 a literal translation of the original term.
While ghost stories, which have been passed down from generation to generation, have a clear "when", "where", and "who", the three elements that give credibility to these stories are almost always vague in urban legends.
This is also true that in urban legends, it is not so much the credibility of the legend, but how interesting it is that counts.
Furthermore, as rumors are passed on from person to person, they become more and more twisted, changing their form and spreading.
It is as if the legend itself is alive. Urban legends could be considered living things that are given life by being told.
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