The words sacrifice and Japan tend to conjure images of honourable samurai sitting on their knees ready to disembowel themselves in exchange for keeping their honour, or to secure the lives of one or many. The earliest records of human sacrifice, however, date back some six hundred years before the samurai existed and are more akin to throwing virgins into volcanoes.
These initial instances can be found in the Nihon Shoki, or Chronicles of Japan, which was published in 720 CE. It recounts the overflowing of the Kita and Mamuta rivers some four hundred years prior in 323 CE. Such was the supposed rage of the water deities that the workers who were building embankments along these rivers could not complete their task.
The solution came in the form of a curiously specific revelation that Emperor Nintoku received during a dream. The revelation told of two men, Kowakubi of Musashi province, and Koromono-ko of Kawachi province. It stated that sacrificing these two men to the rivers would subside the rage and allow the embankments to be completed.
And so, he made the order, and the two unfortunate souls found themselves, presumably, wondering what the hell they did to annoy the emperor. Kowakubi was the first on the proverbial chopping block, being thrown into the torrent of the Kita River before prayers were made to the deity. Soon after, the waters calmed, and the embankment could be finished.
The second, Koromono-ko, decided he’d rather not succumb to the same fate. He arrived at the Mamuta River, bringing with him two gourds, declaring that if they sank, he would accept that the deity required a sacrifice. But if they floated, he would take it as a sign that it was not a true deity, and thus sacrificing his life would be of little use. His cunning plan worked. The empty gourds floated down the river, because of course they did, and the river then calmed after a time, because of course it did, allowing the work to continue, and Koromono-ko carry on with his life.
A similar story comes from Oita prefecture, where in order to stop the flood of the Yamakuni river each year, a council of seven commissioners prayed for a week at a shrine in the hope of receiving a revelation from the gods. Unfortunately, that revelation was human sacrifice. They failed to find anyone willing to give up their lives, so the seven agreed to each throw their trousers into the river, and the owner of the pair that sank first would become the sacrifice. It was Yuya-danjo who’s trousers sank, and I imagine he was kicking himself for not hiding an empty gourd inside right before being tossed in the river.
It seems that people made a lot of sacrifices to water gods in many of these tales, and while the stories above don’t sound too farfetched, other cases firmly belong to the realm of fairy tale. Let’s talk monkeys. The Konjaku Monogatari is a collection of over a thousand stories from Japan, China, and India, and was written during the late Heian period (794-1185). It includes the tale of monkey god Chusan, who enjoyed eating a fattened up sacrificial virgin every year.
But this fateful year, a hunter from the east of the country arrived with his monkey-killing dogs. He spoke to the parents of the chosen maiden, who were deeply saddened by their daughter’s fate, and then devised a plan to save her. On the day of the sacrifice, Shinto priests arrived to put the maiden into a large chest, but it was the hunter and two of his dogs that got inside.
When the procession finished and the chest was placed down, the hunter waited patiently before peeking out to see an eight-foot monkey nearby. Chuson, accompanied by hundreds of smaller monkeys, opened the chest, only to be assailed by the armed hunter and his dogs. After some threats and declarations of the end of the monkey god’s reign of terror (and a lot of dead monkeys), Chuson declared he no longer needed a human sacrifice. The priests implored the hunter to let the god go, and so he did, watching him run off into the mountains. The hunter ended up marrying the maiden. Sounds like it could be a Disney film.
Now these cases don’t sound too egregious as far as ancient sacrifice goes, but next we’ll take a look at the grim practice known as hitobashira (人柱), which translates to “human pillar.”
According to the various legends surrounding this practice, most human pillars were girls and young women, buried alive under structures such as castles to ensure the foundations would stand strong. Whether those chosen were willing or not varies from story to story. One tale, for example, speaks of a fisherman’s daughter named Okiku, who volunteered to be sacrificed in place of her blind, younger sister.
These kinds of stories exist all across the country, and a shared characteristic among them is that the victims belonged to local Bon Odori groups, traditional dancers who performed during the Obon festival. One such legend is that of the “Maiden of Matsue.”
In 1607, Daimyo Horio Yoshiharu began constructing Matsue Castle in Shimane prefecture. A snippet of information here comes from Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, written by Lafcadio Hearn in the late 1800s. He states, “A maiden of Matsue was interred alive under the walls of the castle, as a sacrifice to some forgotten gods.” It’s said that she was the best and most beautiful dancer in the town and after her sacrifice, certain areas of Matsue forbade the Bon Odori, for when the dance was performed, the maiden’s cries could be heard from the castle tower and the ground rumbled.
Staying in Shimane prefecture, another story tells of a girl in a kimono with the crest of the moon who was taken from her Bon Odori group and used as the human pillar of Gassan Toda Castle. During the ceremony, drums were played, and they say that these drums can still be heard every year from Mt. Gossan.
Not all human pillars were beautiful young women, though. Maruoka Castle in Fukui prefecture has its own legend of a one-eyed peasant woman named O-Shizu. With two hungry mouths to feed, she volunteered to be sacrificed when the castle’s troubled construction demanded it. Her one condition was that the lord of the castle, Shibata Katsutoyo, made her son a samurai. He agreed, and O-Shizu was buried alive within the foundations.
The story takes an unfortunate turn, however, as Katsutoyo was called away on business, and the woman’s son never became a samurai. Each year thereafter, the castle’s moat would overflow in spring. People called it “The tears of 0-Shizu”, and her spirit wouldn’t be soothed until a small tomb was built in her honour.
There’s only one actual case where evidence of a human pillar exists outside of myth. Hiji Castle in Oita began construction during the Sengoku period in 1601, with its new lord, Nobutoshi Kinoshita, settling the land overlooking Beppu Bay. While repairs of the castle took place in the 1960s, a wooden coffin was discovered containing the remains of what is believed to have been a samurai.
The tragedy of this is that the remains were disposed of and no official record was made. More recently, however, local museum director, Dr Hirai Yoshito, discovered the work of a high school history club who documented their own findings from the time, which have led to Dr Yoshito to surmise that the remains were likely to be a human pillar.
Brown, Delmer M. and Ishida, Ichirō (translators). The Nihon Shoki: Chronicles of Japan from the Earliest Times to A.D. 697. University of Tokyo Press, 1978.
Minakata, Kumagusu (translator). Konjaku Monogatari: Tales of Times Now Past. Japan Society of London, 1919.
Tsuda, Noritake "Human Sacrifices in Japan.," The Open Court: Vol. 1918: Iss. 12, Article 6.
https://mainichi.jp/graphs/20231003/mpj/00m/040/129000f/20231003k0000m040316000p
https://samuraihistoryculture.substack.com/p/news-hiji-castles-samurai-sacrifice