Hoichi the Earless: The Musician Who Played for the Dead

A blind musician is summoned in the dark by a samurai he cannot see, and led to a great house where hundreds of people weep as he plays. He is asked to come back for seven nights, and to tell no one. He was never in a great house. He was sitting in a graveyard, playing to the dead of a clan destroyed seven centuries before — and they had taken a liking to him. To hide him, a priest wrote the Heart Sutra across every inch of his body. Every inch except his ears. This story is not from the chronicles, and it did not come from the villages. It came from a book: a collection of strange tales printed in Japan in 1782. English readers got it in 1904, from Lafcadio Hearn. But the battle behind the haunting was real — Dannoura, 1185, where the Heike clan was destroyed with its child emperor. I'm a Japanese storyteller. I go back to the Japanese sources and bring their words into English — including the parts most retellings leave out. The temple in this story is still there. It is not a temple any more: the Meiji government pulled Buddhism and Shinto apart, and a shrine took its place. The graves of the Heike are still in the grounds. So is a hall, built in 1957, for a musician who lives only in the story — with a wooden statue of him inside, holding his biwa. Every July they hold a service for him. This is Episode 10, and the first ghost story on this channel. CHAPTERS 0:00 The strait 0:40 What this story assumes you know 1:51 Where this story comes from 2:58 The temple built for the dead 4:28 A voice in the garden 6:45 Found in the graveyard 8:40 The one place they forgot 11:19 What this story left in Japan today SOURCES Gayu Kidan (1782), "The biwa piece that made the ghosts weep" Lafcadio Hearn, Kwaidan (1904), "The Story of Mimi-nashi-Hoichi" The battle of Dannoura (1185) is recorded in the Azuma Kagami Akama Jingu, Shimonoseki — the former Amidaji, where the Heike graves and Hoichi's hall stand