Condemned

cherry blossoms, and Mount Fuji. It's a very distinctive nation that has stayed that way in part due to a roughly two hundred year isolationist period which kept outsiders outside and the Japanese in. Nowadays, that isolationist streak is long past, and Japan is a commercial powerhouse for their massive corporations that exports all kinds of goods all over the world. Look around you right now and you'll probably see an electronic device, car, camera, or other piece of machinery manufactured

in Japan. But any nation is an amalgamation of its past and its present, and the intersection of Japan's history and the modern world can be very curious. Such is the case at Okunaking Cemetery on Mont Koya in southern central Japan. Mount Koya is a temple settlement said to have been founded in eight nineteen by Kobodashi, an ancient

Buddhist monk. Some refer to him as the Eastern Leonardo da Vinci due to his many contributions across a variety of disciplines, including calligraphy, poetry, and philosophy, and he is also the founder of Japanese Esoteric Buddhism, which is a Buddhist sect wherein the monks orally pass on instruction through the generations using a variety of nature based wisdom. They compare a clouded mind to the different phases of the moon, for example. Many Buddhists there are also vegetarians and do

not believe in the taking of life. Kobodashi was so renowned that when he passed away, he was sealed in a tomb instead of cremated. This was so that he could continue to meditate on what is best for humanity. The monks on Mount Koya still bring him two meals each day. They believe his tomb isn't a tomb at all, but a meditation chamber. As the centuries passed, the temple settlement experienced many ups and downs, especially in the isolationist

period that I mentioned earlier. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, showguns, who were threatened by the popularity of Buddhism, occasionally attacked the place or put several restrictions on the temple. Even so, they respected and even feared the legend of Kobo Dashi, so much so that in sixteen forty three, Tokugawa ie Mitsu, the third Tokugawa Shogun, had a shrine built on Mount

Koya to honor his father and grandfather. If this place was holy, he said, he wanted their spirits to have a home there, and surprisingly, that very ancient attitude has persisted to this day with curious results. If ancient Japan was all about the loyalty and honor of samurai clans, modern Japan is all about the loyalty and honor of corporations, and some of those corporations revere Kobodashi and Mount Koya

just as much as their ancestors did. Okanoyan Cemetery has thousands of graves, many belonging to that samurai era that I just mentioned, but they are now joined by graves belonging to modern corporations. Including Panasonic Cannon and shin Maiwa an aircraft company. The graves are dedicated to their deceased employees and feature unusual markers. You see. While most gravestones at Okanoyan are in the shape of a pagoda, the

more recent corporate ones can take any form. Shin Maiwa has a large stone rocket ship as part of its grave site. But the most unique memorial in the cemetery probably belongs to the japan Pest Control Association. In nineteen six eight, they erected a memorial on Mount Koya to the thousands of termites they've killed as part of their work. Remember I told you that the Buddhists are vegetarian and don't believe in the taking of life, and that makes

being a Buddhist exterminator very difficult. With this memorial, the Japanese Pest Control Association expressed regret that their existence was incompatible with the existence of termites. It's a humorous coda to a long history, but it also shows how much the modern world is still very much informed by the past. Mount Koya has existed for over a thousand years, but humans have only changed so much. They may have traded in their swords for smartphones, but they still feel sadness, guilt,

and a desire to honor the dead. So the next time you swat a bug in your house, the least you can do is light a candle for the life you just took. Or if that sounds silly, you can just wait for Kobo Dashi to finally wake up and lead us all into enlightenment. Eleanor Bull had not paid any mind to the four gentlemen staying in her house. Tenants came and went freely, and as long as they paid for their food and lodging, they got no trouble from her. All day long, the three men had drank,

eaten and spoken among themselves. Ingram, Nicholas, Roberts, and kitt were their names, but there were men like them at every tavern across London. However, on May thirtieth of fifteen ninety three, Eleanor Bull's place at Deptford bore witness to one of the era's most infamous tavern brawls. These four men, having just had a meal, retired to a private room. Not long after, raised voices came from within. Then whatever argument the men were having became aggressive, commotion followed shouts,

chairs overturned, and violent exclamations. When the dust settled, one of the four men lay dead upon the floor, a dagger through his head. It was the one that the others had referred to as Kit. He was twenty nine years old. According to his companions. They had argued over the bill. Kit, who was hot headed by nature and possibly drunk, had grabbed the dagger from Ingram's belt and attacked him. Although Kit had managed to stab Ingram twice in the head, the wounds were shallow and Ingram was

able to fight back and gain the upper hand. An investigation began almost immediately because Kit wasn't a nobody. He was Christopher Marlowe, a talented poet and author of seven plays. These included Edward the Second, The Massacre at Paris, and Doctor Faustus, all of which would remain popular long after his death. William Shakespeare would include references to Marlowe in his own work, a sign of respect from one legendary playwright to another. The man who killed marlow Ingram Freser,

was pardoned on June first. The other two men spoke up for him, all agreeing that Marlowe had been the aggressor and that the killing was self defense. But ever since that day, rumors have persisted that this was more than just an argument gone wrong, because Kit Marlowe was an enigmatic man whose life seemed full of danger and mystery. He'd long been a lifelong rebel, someone who got into

fights regularly and defied authority. As a matter of course, writings by others from the time condemned him for being an atheist, a dangerous allegation at the time. Throughout Marlow's short life, he was arrested multiple times for charges that included counterfeiting money and heresy, but surprisingly none of these arrests ever stuck and honestly seemed as if someone was in a high position of authority wanting to protect him, and this would be more or less confirmed by historians

centuries after his death. You see, while he'd been writing his first plays as a student, Marlowe had communicated regularly with Queen Elizabeth's Privy Council, seemingly as a spy or counterspy for the British government. A letter from the Council to his university referred to him as employed on matters touching the benefit of his country. It's an intriguing idea, and helped out by the fact that the men who witnessed Marlow's death were not random people. Ingram Freiser, Nicholas Scares,

and Robert Polly all had suspicious reputations. Nicholas and Ingram were both conmen, and Robert Polly had been imprisoned in the Tower of London five years earlier for his role in the Babbington Plot, a failed plan to assassinate Elizabeth and replace her with her cousin Mary, Queen of Scott's. Now to be fair men of ill repute were not strangers in Marlow's life. However, their political affiliations and criminal

histories cast doubt on their testimony against him. We may never know why these gentlemen were all in the same tavern on May thirtieth, if it was an arranged murder. Scholars have proposed a number of theories, with suspects including Sir Walter Riley, various powerful critics of Marlowe's plays, or even Queen Elizabeth herself. Had Marlow outlived his usefulness, had he seduced the wrong man and provoked a deadly response, had anti Christian themes in his work put a target

on his back? Or are we all just jumping at shadows? After all, when you have to invent a motive for a theory to work, you're writing fiction rather than searching for the truth. One thing we know for sure, though, this famous poet died as he lived, providing drama, entertainment, and intrigue to us all living a life as adventurous as any character in a play. To quote his doctor Faustus,

he that loves pleasure must for pleasure fall. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can learn all about it over at the Worldoflore

dot com. And until next time, stay curious.