Jikininki 「食人鬼」 are malevolent spirits in Japanese Buddhism known as "human-eating ghosts."According to legend, they are the souls of greedy, selfish, or impious individuals cursed after death to seek out and devour human corpses to relieve their eternal hunger. Similar to gaki, or hungry ghosts, jikininki are constantly starving but can only find temporary relief by consuming the flesh and bones of the recently deceased.
Jikininki are often found near human settlements, mainly in abandoned temples or old ruins, as humans are their primary source of food. However, they avoid excessive contact with the living and do not enjoy their gruesome existence; eating the dead only briefly alleviates some of their unbearable hunger and suffering.
According to legend, while travelling through the mountains, the monk Mus Soseki came across a jikininki. Lost and exhausted, he came upon a dilapidated hermitage where an elderly monk provided directions to a nearby village. There, the village chief's son invited Soseki to stay the night and recite funerary prayers over his father's corpse. During the ritual, Soseki sensed a presence and found himself frozen in place. A "dark, hazy shape" crept in and devoured the chief's remains before disappearing silently.
Jikininki are closely related to gaki, or hungry ghosts, in Buddhistic belief. They are born when an individual's evil deeds in life corrupt their soul. Some were priests unable to pass on after death, while others developed a taste for human flesh in life and fully transformed into monsters. As they continue to feed on the dead, jikininki become increasingly monstrous in form and spirit.
Despite their terrifying nature, jikininki represent a fascinating aspect of Japanese folklore that continues to captivate imaginations. They have appeared in Lafcadio Hearn's Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things (1904) and serve as a sobering reminder of the karmic consequences of immoral actions as well as the importance of living a virtuous life.