The Priest Who Ate the Dead

The villagers were leaving the corpse alone for the night.

Musō Kokushi had reached their mountain hamlet only a few hours earlier after losing his way in Mino. Before that, he had stopped at a small hermitage on a hill.

An old priest lived there.

The priest refused him shelter and sent him down to the village.

The villagers welcomed Musō, gave him food and found him a place to sleep.

Before midnight, a young man woke him.

His father had died that day.

Now the family was leaving.

So was everyone else.

Their custom was to abandon the corpse until morning because remaining in the village after a death was believed to bring danger.

Musō was a priest.

He said he would stay and perform the funeral service.

Soon the houses were empty.

Musō sat alone with the corpse and the offerings.

Deep in the night, something entered the room.

He could see it.

He could not move.

He could not speak.

The shape went to the corpse.

It ate the body.

Then it ate the offerings.

By sunrise, it was gone.

When the villagers returned, Musō told them what had happened. Then he asked why the old priest on the hill had not come down to perform the rites himself.

“What priest?”

Musō explained about the hermitage.

The villagers looked at one another.

“There is no priest and there is no anjitsu on the hill.”

Musō went back.

The hermitage was there.

So was the old man.

This time he invited Musō inside.

The priest apologised.

He was not apologising for refusing shelter.

He said the thing Musō had watched eating the corpse was him.

When he was alive, he explained, families had carried their dead from long distances so he could perform funeral rites. He had done the work for the food, clothing and payment it brought him.

After his own death, he had become a jikininki.

Now he was condemned to eat the bodies of people who died nearby.

He asked Musō to perform a service that might release him.

Then the old priest disappeared.

The hermitage disappeared with him.

Musō was left kneeling in long grass beside an old tomb.