Hōichi the Earless
A blind musician was summoned each night to play for a mysterious noble court. He didn't know his audience had died eight hundred years before.
What was reported
In a temple at Shimonoseki lived Hōichi, a blind player of the biwa, a lute, famous for singing the Tale of the Heike, about the sea battle of Dan-no-ura in 1185, where the Taira clan was destroyed. One night a samurai led him to a great house to perform for his lords and ladies, who wept as he sang.
The priest of the temple realised he was playing in the graveyard, for the ghosts of the Taira. To hide him, he painted holy sutras all over Hōichi's body, but forgot his ears. When the samurai came and couldn't see him, he took the only part he could find: Hōichi's ears.
Explanations offered
The story is a legend, made famous in English by Lafcadio Hearn's 1904 book Kwaidan. A statue of Hōichi stands at the Akama Shrine, which honours the Taira dead, and the crabs of the strait are said to carry their faces.
- When
- Told for centuries; written down in 1904
- Where
- Akama Shrine, Shimonoseki, Yamaguchi, Japan
- Witnesses
- Japanese legend
- Status
- Legend
Famous cases are real, widely reported events. Each file sets out what witnesses said and the explanations that have been offered, without taking a side.
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