Who knocks at the door at night?

On Mount Kōya, in the place where the towering sugi trees on the vast plateau seem to reach the realm of the gods, there emerged a peculiar figure of old Japan — the Kōya Hijiri. They were not ordinary monks. They were pilgrims, beggars, preachers, and at times swindlers; saints and sinners within the same body. They descended from the monastery of Kongōbu-ji to wander the roads of the country, to preach the teachings of Buddha, to collect alms, to chant prayers, and to carry the ashes of the dead. They were the lifeblood of the Kōya mountain temple complex — bringing the teachings down to the people below, and bringing offerings back up to the monks above. And yet, as the centuries passed, what was once a mission began to stir unease — for in the shadow of holiness, something inexplicable always lurks. Thus was born the legend of Yadōkai — “he who asks for lodging,” and, in time, a spiritual wanderer, a nocturnal visitor, a roving yōkai. “Host, when a homeless monk from Mount Kōya knocks at your door — guard your daughter!” they would say. And since they said so — there must have been something to it…

The story of the Kōya Hijiri, however, is not merely a tale of folklore and phantasm. In medieval Japan, the Kōya Hijiri were living threads connecting the mountain monasteries with the villages below, where the common folk knew of Buddhism only through their words. But when the ages of mistrust and chaos came — the Sengoku wars, famine, bands of vagabonds — these once-revered missionaries grew suspect. Over time, the boundary blurred: a saint who knocked at one’s door by night might just as well have been a swindler, or even… a Yadōkai, the spiritual echo of a fallen faith, a malevolent yōkai lurking for that which the householder held most dear.

And yet the Kōya Hijiri did not vanish entirely. Their echo survived in literature and poetry, until in the Meiji era Izumi Kyōka created a masterpiece of horror and psychological metamorphosis — “Kōya Hijiri” (1900) — in which a wandering monk confronts the impure forces of nature, his own body, and the world of “blood and mud.” It is no longer a parable of holiness, but of humanity — of how thin the line is between spirituality and madness. In this tale, Japan, torn between old Edo and modern Meiji, gazes into a mirror: at the mountain roads where saints and demons shared the same face, and where the prayer “Namu Amida Butsu” could bring either salvation or delirium. Let us now look more closely at the story of these wandering monks from Mount Kōya.

Descending from the Mountain

The mist hung low, coiling around the sugi trees that grew densely along the paths of Kōyasan. The stone steps leading from Kongōbu-ji were damp with the night’s dew; the moss between the slabs gave way softly under the straw waraji sandals. The monk, known as Shinku, pulled his conical sugegasa hat lower over his forehead to hide his face — not out of pride, but out of humility. On the road, a face was unnecessary. So was a name. Only the words he carried mattered.

At the temple, he had left behind all that a man might ordinarily desire: a roof over his head, a bowl of mugi (barley) at regular hours, the certainty of morning routine. Now he descended a path that vanished among the moss-covered stone stupas of the Oku-no-in cemetery, where the name of Kōbō-Daishi was whispered as though he were still alive — as though he still sat in eternal meditation within the darkness of the deepest hall of the mausoleum. Shinku stopped for a moment and bowed toward the shadowed complex. He did not pray for protection — he prayed that he would not forget his purpose, and that he might forget who he was.

On his back he carried an oi (笈) — a small wooden pilgrim’s chest, carefully wrapped in furoshiki. Inside were amulets bearing the image of Fudō Myōō, a few scrolls of nenbutsu, and two strings of juzu beads made of black persimmon wood — cheap, but blessed (specifically, they had been granted kaji - 加持 - protective power). These were not goods in the sense a merchant would understand; they were bridges between this world and the next. Yet people often failed to make the distinction. Sometimes they saw in a wandering hijiri a holy man; at other times, a peddler — or even someone unsettling — a stranger from the forest who knew the paths of spirits and diseases. A madman, a deviant, a thief. People spoke in many ways.

Shinku knew this well. He also knew that if he stopped at the wrong hut, the head of the family would eye him with suspicion, keeping his hand on a hoe as if it were a weapon. And that such a hoe could indeed become one, should Shinku make a wrong move. He knew that mothers would turn their daughters’ faces away, so they would not look too long — for the sight of a Yadōkai, they said, could twist a maiden’s face. He knew that if he began chanting nenbutsu at night, the dogs would bark, as if they sensed ill intent in his prayer. And yet, he walked on.

There was duty in it, but also something gentler — a longing to touch the world that prayed differently than within the temple walls. In Kongōbu-ji, the words of the sutras rose like incense smoke — thick and solemn. In the villages, words of prayer carried the taste of cracked barley in a pot and of sweet dango made from millet. There, the Buddha came in conversation amid hard labor, between the mill and the field. There, no doctrine was explained — people prayed for health, for harvest, for the peaceful dreams of the dead.

The mountain forests thinned; birches and sugi gave way to clearings where the grass was yellowed by the autumn chill. From afar came the faint sound of bells tied to the neck of a passing horse, followed by the smell of burning brushwood — a village must be near. Around the bend, Shinku saw low thatched roofs, and before one of the huts, a woman in a hemp apron bent over a basket of dried beans.

He stopped a few steps away, not too close to frighten her, but not too far to be heard. He bowed his head, and the brim of his ichime-gasa cast a shadow over his face. He said:

— 高野の者でござります。道中につき、一夜の宿をお借りできれば幸いに存じます。

(Kōya no mono de gozarimasu. Dōchū ni tsuki, hitoyo no yado o okari dekireba saiwai ni zonjimasu.)

— “I come from Kōya — only a wanderer. I am on the road; if you would allow me to stay for one night, it would be a great kindness.”

The woman flinched slightly and looked at him intently, as if weighing the words — whether they were pure, or carried danger. Inside, there was movement — a man lifted his head, but did not yet approach. The village knew tales of miracle-working saints, and of those others — the ones they called yadōkai — uninvited guests who took more than they gave.

There was a moment of silence in which the fate of that day hung in balance — whether it would be a night under someone’s roof, by the fire and in conversation, or a night in the forest, with a cold stone for a pillow. The woman bowed her head slightly, cast a short glance toward the house, and the man inside replied with a single, weary sigh that was, nonetheless, an assent.

— “Come in, monk,” she said. “But first, pray for my mother. She passed last spring, and our dreams have been heavy.”

Shinku bowed once more, and in his eyes there was neither triumph nor relief — only the quiet awareness that, step by step, day by day, words carried the flame onward. Wherever people still needed what was unseen.

And that as long as he walked, he was who he was meant to be.

The Wandering Monks

Who, then, was our protagonist? An ascetic? A saint? A leper? A homeless wanderer? Or perhaps someone standing at the boundary between the world of humans and the spiritual realms — a figure easily mistaken for a yōkai if one were to meet him at night on a dusty road leading down from the mountains? The answer — as is so often the case in Japanese history — is more complex.

The Kōya Hijiri (高野聖) were itinerant monks associated with Kōyasan, the vast temple complex founded by Kūkai (Kōbō-Daishi) at the beginning of the ninth century. Although they formally belonged to the Shingon tradition, they were not learned masters of esoteric doctrine, clad in silk robes and performing mandala rituals in the halls of Kongōbu-ji. On the contrary — they were the lowest stratum of the monastic hierarchy. They did not study scholastic treatises, they held no administrative offices, they were not the custodians of temple estates. Their role was to descend from the mountain. And to walk the country on foot.

Their task was called kanjin (勧進) — solicitation, the collection of donations for the rebuilding of temples, bridges, forgotten Buddha statues, for foundations and rituals. They journeyed from village to village, from inns to ferry crossings, preaching simple teachings — not the esoteric doctrine of Shingon, but the nembutsu: the prayer “Namu Amida Butsu,” the promise of salvation in Amida’s Pure Land. In truth, their religiosity was syncretic: Shingon from Kūkai + popular nembutsu + local beliefs. The mountain god, the spirit of a deceased ancestor, the thousand-armed Kannon, and Kōbō-Daishi in eternal meditation at Oku-no-in — all these wove together into a single spiritual landscape.

That is why ordinary people could understand them. They did not speak from the pedestal of dogma. They explained faith through images of daily life: “As water flows down from the mountain, so compassion flows from Amida”; “As the shadow of a tree gives relief to the traveler, so the recitation of nembutsu brings peace to the heart.” Their religion lived in their feet, in the road, in conversation on a cottage threshold — not in commentary on sutras.

Within the structure of Kōyasan there existed three main groups:

 - gakuryō (学侶) — learned priests, masters of doctrine and ritual,

 - gyōnin (行人) — practitioners and administrators of monastic life,

 - hijiri (聖) — wanderers, preachers, alms collectors.

There were, at times, tensions between these groups. The gakuryō often looked down on the hijiri — seeing them as uneducated, simple, and perhaps too close to the common folk. The hijiri, in turn, regarded the learned monks as men who knew the sutras but not the lives and sufferings of ordinary people.

And yet it was the hijiri who were the face of Kōyasan. It was they who carried the name of Kōbō-Daishi throughout Japan like an echo, who kept the prayers alive on the lips of commoners, who ensured that the mountain was not merely a retreat for reclusive ascetic theorists.

On their backs they carried the oi (笈) — a small pilgrim’s chest wrapped in furoshiki. Inside it fit everything: a sutra, a bowl, juzu (a Buddhist rosary), a few tools for repairing sandals, a piece of dried millet for winter. They walked lightly but for long stretches — sometimes for months, sometimes for years. They could return to Kōyasan only when their alms-collecting had produced results worthy of presenting to their superiors.

And although they were “holy men,” their holiness was as tough as the soles hardened by years of walking on stone roads. They were ascetics, but they also knew people — their sorrow, loneliness, gratitude, and fear. They represented the monastery, yet were practically homeless themselves.

Were they heroes? At times. Were some of them prone to abusing their position, too impulsive, wild, or indulgent? That too — and from that tendency would later arise their darker aspect: the Yadōkai.

But that comes later. For now, we see a man on the road, bearing the name of Kōyasan and the words of prayer.

The Founder

In the year 弘仁7年 (the seventh year of the Kōnin era, or 816 CE), at a time when the Japanese imperial court was striving to make sense of the teachings that had flowed in from the continent along with the Buddhist sutras, there appeared a figure named Kūkai (774–835), later known as Kōbō-Daishi. He returned from China not only with books and mantras but with something more difficult to explain: the sense that reality possesses layers — visible and hidden, surface and depth, the path and what lies beneath it.

In search of a place that could become a mandala in physical form, Kūkai found it on a plateau concealed within the mountains of Kii: Kōyasan. It was neither a peak nor a valley, but something in between — “a high plain among the mountains,” accessible only through several long and steep passes. In the year 819, he founded Kongōbu-ji there — a temple that was to become the center of Shingon practice, a form of esoteric Buddhism in which ritual, gesture, and mantra formed a single unity.

Kūkai envisioned Kōyasan as a map of the universe: the valley was to be the lotus blossom, the temples its petals, and prayer the path toward enlightenment. But when Kūkai died in 835, the place was still only a sketch. The mountain was wild. The buildings decayed, roads grew over, and the significance of Kōyasan waned amid wars and political change.

It was only several centuries later, during the Kamakura period, that a figure named Jōyo, known as Kishin-shōnin (1120–1203), restored and reorganized monastic life on Kōyasan. He gave the mountain a new direction that would prove decisive: he opened it to the Pure Land (Jōdo) form of prayer and simplified spiritual practice for ordinary people. Not everyone needed to understand the complex mandalas. It was enough to utter the nembutsu:

南無阿弥陀仏

Namu Amida Butsu.

"I entrust myself to Amida Buddha."

It was like a door left ajar — open to all.

To this was added another, deeply Japanese religious idea: mappō — the age of the “Decline of the Buddha’s Law.” It was believed that from the eleventh century onward, humanity had entered an era of spiritual obscurity in which achieving enlightenment through one’s own effort was almost impossible. The only hope lay in the grace of Amida, or in awaiting the coming of Miroku, the future Buddha, who was said to appear precisely on Kōyasan.

Thus Kōyasan came to signify more than a temple. It became a place of “salvation” — and a place of return.

The most sacred point of the mountain is Oku-no-in, where Kōbō-Daishi did not die but — as it is believed — remains in eternal meditation, awaiting the advent of Miroku. This belief had immense practical consequences: people began to desire that their ashes and names be brought there, so they might wait beside Daishi for the new age.

And here began the role of those who were to descend from the mountain.

For the relics, ashes, prayers, and names of the dead to reach Oku-no-in, someone had to carry them. Someone had to cross the same steep slopes, valleys, winds, and landslides that separated the monastery from the rest of Japan. Those people became the Kōya Hijiri. Not learned masters of the sutras. Not guardians of rituals. But barefoot intermediaries between the mountain and the world.

Life of the Monks from Mount Kōya

So then — what did their life look like, not in legend, but on the road, day after day?
The Kōya Hijiri were people of cycle and trail. For them, the year was not divided into four seasons, but into periods of descent and return. In spring, when the mountains thawed and the passes opened after winter drifts, they descended from Kōyasan “to the people.” In autumn, before the first snows, they returned through the same valleys, leading processions of pilgrims and carrying the ashes of the dead destined to be laid at Oku-no-in, in the shadow of the tall sugi trees where Kōbō-Daishi rests.

The routes were not arbitrary. There were established paths used for generations — along the rivers of Kii, through Shima, Yoshino, Kumano (read also about Kumano Kodo: Kumano Kodo: Along the Paths of Emperors, Mystics, and Bands of Rōnin on Japan’s Camino de Santiago), to Nara (about it here: The City of Nara – a Geometrically and Spiritually Designed Metropolis of Ancient Japan Long Before the Samurai), Yamato, and sometimes farther into the interior of Kantō. As a rule, they did not pass through castle towns, where military authorities looked suspiciously upon itinerant preachers. Their world was the foothill villages, river landings, and inns on the passes. There, by the hearths, they spoke of Kōyasan: of the high plain, of the wells whose water has an exceptionally sweet taste, of Kūkai’s eternal meditation.

In the evenings, when they stopped in a cottage or in shukubō (roadside lodgings associated with Kōyasan), they performed nembutsu for the deceased hosts, for the ancestors, for “those whose names did not survive in family memory.” They knew how to chant softly, drawn-out, sometimes to a folk melody. It was said that their prayer was “like the wind among the sugi — sometimes carrying solace, sometimes unease.”

But wandering was not disinterested contemplation. It was work, and hard work at that — at times ambiguous.

The most important task was kanjin — collecting donations “for rebuilding,” “for the renovation of a hall,” “for new statues.” In practice, these funds supported the economy of the entire mountain. Kōyasan, like any sanctuary, needed money: to support the learned monks, to fund ceremonies, to host pilgrims. The hijiri were the inlet veins — without them the mountain would dry up.

Sometimes they also brought holy remnants — ashes from temple braziers, a bit of earth from Oku-no-in — which villagers treated as protection for their homes and fields. These were everyday relics, far removed from gilded monstrances — earth, ash, water, word.

With donations came trade. Not in the mercantile sense, but small peddling — low-value items carried in a box on the back:

 - paper and silk amulets,

 - juzu beads,

 - small images of Kannon, Fudō, or Amida,

 - toothbrushes made from bark,

 - herbal medicines,

 - and sometimes simple needles and thread.

A village without a market or a resident merchant awaited precisely such people. A hijiri would enter, chant nembutsu, speak about Kōya, and then sell what he had. There was nothing shameful in this — a monk was also a human being; he had to eat, he had to sleep — there was not the same pressure as, for example, in medieval Europe for a monk to live only for spiritual matters and forget about his body.

The image of the Kōya Hijiri was immediately recognizable. A long staff (kongo-zue), a broad-brimmed sugi hat, worn waraji sandals. On the back, a sack or a wooden box covered with cloth. Two juzu — one for prayer, the other for talking with people, for words sometimes need a gesture, and a gesture — the rhythm of beads.

And something else — a voice. Even those who did not believe liked to listen. The hijiri told news, gossip, legends. They were carriers of memory, living newspapers, and also reciters of renga (linked verse), which in the Muromachi period was both entertainment and art. In many villages it was they who taught people the rhythm of words, who showed that language can have a taste.

Yet there was tension between them and the village. Some saw them as saints. Others — as paupers who might bring misfortune. A saying circulated:

“Do not give lodging to a Hijiri from Kōya — your daughter may go off with him into the mountains.”

For sometimes she truly did. Sometimes out of love, sometimes out of desperation, sometimes from the need to break free from a fate assigned at birth. And sometimes — from what was simply called urami toward the family — a pain seeking another path (you can read about urami here: Urami: the Silenced Wrong, All-Encompassing Grief, Fury — What Emotions Are Encoded in the Character “怨”).

The Fickle History of Kōyasan

Beginnings

It was the seventh year of the Kōnin era (816) when Kūkai — also known as Kōbō-Daishi — received permission from the imperial court to establish, on a forested plateau in the Kii mountains, a place of practice that would reflect the structure of the universe according to the esoteric Shingon Buddhism. He traveled along mountain ridges until he reached a valley encircled by eight peaks, as if naturally formed in the shape of a lotus — the symbol of purity and awakening. He named this place Kōyasan (高野山) — “Mountain of the High Plain.”

In this temple mandala of the world, the central point was to be Danjō Garan, a spiritual space where the earthly plan would mirror the cosmic order. The heart of the entire complex was the temple Kongōbu-ji (金剛峯寺) — “Temple of the Diamond Peak,” whose name referred to the Vajradhātu Mandala, the diamond realm of unmoving wisdom. Kūkai planned for Shingon monks to practice mikkyō rituals here, recite mantras, and visualize the universe in its pure, indestructible form.

Yet Kōyasan was never merely an isolated mountain. Kūkai believed that true wisdom did not lie in fleeing the world, but in attaining enlightenment while being part of it. Thus the sacred space was also to be a place of encounter — between heaven and earth, spirituality and everyday life, learning and compassion. The mountain was a mandala, but the villages at its foot were its living points. It was from this union that the idea of the later Kōya Hijiri was born: wandering monks who would carry Shingon teaching from the mountains to the people.

After Kūkai’s death in the second year of the Jōwa era (835), his disciples maintained that the master had not died but had sunk into eternal meditation in the place now known as Oku-no-in (奥の院) — the “Inner Sanctuary.” Over time, ashes and remains of the faithful from all over Japan began to be brought there, in the belief that in this way they would draw nearer to the enlightened Kōbō-Daishi and be reborn in the future age of the Buddha Miroku.

In the centuries that followed, Kōyasan experienced both flourishing and decline. After the fires and devastations of the Heian period, in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries, renewal came with the monk Jōyo (Kishin-shōnin, 1120–1203), who initiated the reconstruction of the complex and opened it to Pure Land (Jōdo) practices. He began to proclaim that in times of mappō (末法) — the waning age of the Dharma, when the Buddha’s teaching loses its power and people are no longer able to attain enlightenment through the effort of their own meditation — salvation could be found only through faith and the repetition of Amida’s name (Namu Amida Butsu).

Thus, on the mountain of Shingon, a new, syncretic spirituality blossomed — a fusion of esoteric ritual and nembutsu. Monks from Kōyasan began to descend into the valleys to teach common folk that even in an age of spiritual twilight one could still find a path to the Pure Land. Over time, these excursions transformed into regular missions of itinerant preachers.

Long Duration

For centuries, Kōyasan lived to the rhythm of the country — at times breathing calmly with prayer, at other times choking in the smoke of fires and wars. From late Heian (11th–12th c.) through early Edo (17th c.), the mountain was not only a place of prayer but also an arena of conflicts, politics, and spiritual disputes.

In the Heian era, the popularity of the mountain and its monasteries grew. The aristocracy of Kyoto — ministers, scholars of the Fujiwara clan — began to treat pilgrimage to Kōyasan as an act of piety, but also of prestige. In the shade of the sugi trees appeared not only monks but also poets, hermits, and courtiers seeking spiritual respite. It was in this world that Saigyō Hōshi (1118–1190) emerged — a monk and poet who abandoned courtly life to dwell in a mountain hermitage, writing of snow, cherry blossoms, and the longing for silence. Though he was not a Kōya Hijiri in the literal sense, he embodied their spirit of wandering and the desire to step beyond the boundaries of the human world.

Meanwhile, tensions were ripening within Kōyasan itself.

In the 12th century, Kakuban (1095–1143) — known as Kōgyō Daishi — sought to renew Shingon teachings by creating a synthesis of Dainichi Nyorai (the Great Sun) with the cult of Amida, symbolizing compassion and salvation. It was a bold attempt to unite esoteric enlightenment with the universal salvation of the Pure Land. Yet Kakuban’s reforms aroused opposition among conservative monks. Those who practiced the simple nembutsu among the people — like the Kōya Hijiri — were accused of “distorting” doctrine and oversimplifying mikkyō teachings. The conflicts led to a schism: Kakuban and his followers moved to the temple Negoro-ji, creating an independent center that would, in time, become a powerful rival to Kōyasan.

During the Kamakura period (1185–1333), Japan’s spirituality underwent further transformation. New sects arose — Jōdo, Zen, Nichiren — each bearing its own interpretation of faith in the era of mappō, the decline of the Buddha’s Law. Kōyasan did not remain outside this current. The wealth of the temples grew, and with it influence and estates. It was then that the hijiri, once poor wanderers, sometimes came to act as intermediaries between the mountain and the court and warrior clans. When the warrior Kumagai Naozane, after killing the young Atsumori, sought forgiveness, it was Kōyasan that became the place of his penance — a symbol that the Shingon mountain was not only a sanctuary of ritual, but also a space for spiritual reconciliation between samurai and monks.

The Muromachi era (1336–1573) brought renewal of teachings and further conflicts. Learned monks such as Yūkai and Chōkaku strove to restore the purity of Shingon doctrine, especially in the face of the popular and flamboyant practices of the “dancing nembutsu” (odori-nembutsu) spread by the itinerant Ji-shū. Too joyful and too folk-like, it seemed unworthy of the dignity of mikkyō. In Ōei 20 (1413), the authorities of Kōyasan decided to remove the hijiri from the mountain once and for all, deeming their activities too unruly. Paradoxically, however, when fires and unrest struck the temples, it was these very hijiri — with their contacts, collections, and network of shelters — who most effectively rebuilt Kōyasan, gathering donations across the country.

In the turbulent Sengoku and Azuchi–Momoyama periods (15th–16th c.), the mountain was no longer merely a spiritual center — it also became a fortress. Over the years, the monasteries girded themselves with walls, defended estates and bridges, and formed private armies (read more about militant Buddhism here: The Monk with the Naginata: The Martial Face of Buddhism in Kamakura Japan). Some sections of Kōyasan maintained close relations with powerful daimyō such as the Mōri or Kii Tokugawa, but others — like Oda Nobunaga — perceived the mountain as a threat. After the siege of Negoro-ji in 1585, and later in 1578, Nobunaga ordered the capture and execution of more than one thousand three hundred Kōya Hijiri — suspected of supporting forces hostile to him and of sheltering rebels. It was one of the bloodiest blows in the history of Kōyasan. Only after Nobunaga’s death in the Honnō-ji incident did a reprieve come, yet religious freedom never returned to its former state.

In the Edo period (1603–1868), the new Tokugawa order regulated religious life. The danka system imposed on every family the obligation to belong to a single temple, which effectively curtailed religious vagrancy and independent forms of preaching. The Kōya Hijiri, once the mountain’s wandering messengers, became relics of the past — some remained in monasteries as keepers of shukubō, others slipped to the margins, forming itinerant fraternities of increasingly ambiguous reputation. Thus something entirely new was born — Yadōkai…

Yadōkai

In time, even holiness can undergo metamorphosis. About the former Kōya Hijiri — pilgrims with “rosary” and staff who carried prayer from the mountains to the villages — people began to whisper differently: Yadōkai (宿借・夜道怪・宿乞). The word has many writings and shades of meaning, as if it could not decide whether it refers to a human being or already to a spirit. For yes — in the fertile imagination of Edo’s residents, the former monks of Kōya evolved into… yōkai!

The simplest writing — 宿乞 (yadōkai) — means literally “one who asks for lodging.” Another variant, 夜道怪, can be read as “a nighttime wayfarer” or “an apparition on the road after dark.” In the first, a human plea still resounds; in the second — already the echo of something supernatural. And indeed: between these meanings the entire legend is born.

When the ideal of the hijiri weakened and the mountain closed itself within walls, many of those wandering monks began to live on the margins. Instead of preaching nembutsu, they sought alms, shelter, and at times even “opportunities” for enrichment. In the poor villages of Kii and Yamato, their appearance after dusk increasingly stirred not reverent respect, but unease. In folk songs repeated in taverns and by the fire, a warning refrain appeared:

「高野聖に宿貸すな 娘とられて恥かくな」

“Do not give lodging to the holy man from Kōya — for you will lose your daughter and be engulfed by shame.”

This echo was not pure fantasy. The wandering hijiri, carrying on their backs a box of amulets, were often young, strong, and alone. Their status as monks no longer necessarily meant celibacy, and contact with women from impoverished villages was common — and not always innocent. There were also frauds — false monks posing as Kōya Hijiri to extort alms or rob households.

Thus ambivalence was born: they were at once ascetics and vagabonds, saints and nuisances. In their figures mingled the scent of incense and the smoke of the campfire, the rhythm of prayer and the whisper of ill repute. And from this mixture of faith and fear, so typical of Japanese folk imagination, a yōkai emerged — a spirit that is not a pure demon, but the shadow of a human who has come to stand between the natural and the supernatural worlds.

In folk tales, Yadōkai took various forms. Sometimes he was a nocturnal guest who knocked on a cottage door asking for shelter — and when refused, vanished, leaving behind only the imprint of a hand on the doorframe or a strange footprint in the mud. At other times he appeared at village crossroads in the guise of a monk with a veiled face, chanting nembutsu in a voice so deep that the blood of passersby froze in their veins. It also happened that an illusion followed his chant — the light of a small lamp in the distance, leading a traveler to a precipice. At times, too, it was believed that they could, through illusion, bewitch young women — the farmers’ daughters — and persuade them to leave the village with them, for purposes known only to themselves and unquestionably nefarious.

In some accounts, Yadōkai is the spirit of former hijiri who perished in the mountains with no place to return to — the ghosts of unburied preachers, still seeking a place to spend the night. In other versions, he was a man of flesh and blood who wandered for so many years that the boundary between the living and the dead ceased to be clear to him. In his eyes, it was said, the ancient sugi of Kōyasan were reflected — but already decayed and hollow within.

Over time, the word “Kōya Hijiri” began to function in poetry as a summer seasonal motif (kigo). In haiku and tanka it appeared not as a figure of flesh and blood, but as an image of solitude, heat, and slow wandering. Sometimes a poet compared him to a turtle — a creature that carries its home on its back and moves unhurriedly, as if in meditation. This symbolic transformation shows how Japan could turn even fear into poetry, and a fallen holy man into a sign of transience, compassion, and the uncanny.

Yadōkai was therefore not a monster in the Western sense. He was a reminder of the fragility of the human path: that any faith can, over time, stray into darkness, and that any light — if it lacks vigilance — can be blinded by its own radiance.

The Holy Bonze from Mount Kōya

In the shadow of Kōyasan’s sugi trees, between sanctity and mud, one of Japan’s bitter metaphors was born — the Kōya Hijiri, the wandering monk who carried the mountain’s light into the world until he himself became a shadow. This figure — torn between prayer and fear, between contemplation and hunger — found its immortal reflection in literature at the dawn of modernity, in Izumi Kyōka’s 1900 short story “Kōya Hijiri,” which I warmly recommend to interested readers.

Kyōka — a writer whom Tanizaki called “purely Japanese” and Mishima described as “a peony blooming in the desert of modernity” — created a work in which the sacred and the profane, spirituality and sensuality, faith and fear intertwine into a landscape of almost Gothic atmosphere. The wandering monk of his story is no longer the ascetic of Kōyasan legends but a man of flesh and blood: weary, fearful, torn between duty and doubt.

The journey through the mountains of Hida and Shinshū becomes here a metaphor of passage — across the limits of human endurance, into the depths of nature and into the depths of one’s own being. Kyōka’s forest leeches, slick and insatiable, are not mere elements of horror; they symbolize the “world of blood and mud” (chi to doro no sekai), in which a man — even a saint — must acknowledge that his body, desires, and fears are not separate from the earth he walks upon.

In this way, Kyōka reveals the late consciousness of the hijiri — no longer a pure messenger of Kōbō-Daishi, but a human being who can no longer discern the boundary between divinity and frailty. It is literature of a threshold moment: the Meiji era, when Japan was losing faith in a simple hierarchy of spirituality and religion was giving way to introspection. In this world, old archetypes — the monk, the pilgrim, the ascetic — become symbols of human uncertainty, not of the ability to attain enlightenment, but of the ability to ask questions.

Thus, “Kōya Hijiri” is not a story about miracles, but about the ceaseless effort to preserve light amid darkness — about a man who carries within himself both temple and mud. Reading Kyōka today, one feels that his characters are closer to us than ever: pilgrims of the twenty-first century, lost between technology and the longing for transcendence.

I believe it is worth turning to this story — not as an old Japanese tale of the uncanny, but as something far more. A story about that old, true Japan. About Meiji — as a brutal dismantling of Edo’s identity. But also as something profoundly universal, capable of touching a human being living on the other side of the globe two centuries later. It is worth it, especially since — which is, unfortunately, quite rare — this story is available this year in Polish translation.
It is “Świątobliwy bonza z góry Kōya (Kōya hijiri)”, translated by Blanka Kurata, included in the anthology “Opowieści niesamowite z języka japońskiego” (PIW 2025), which also features works by Tanizaki and Akutagawa — and is available as an ebook.

>> SEE ALSO SIMILAR ARTICLES:

Komusō – the Monk of Emptiness. The Destruction of the “Self” in Old Japan

Goze: Blind Female Artists of Feudal Japan – Dignity in a Journey through Snow and Rejection

Lonely Wanderer, Madman, Genius – Who Was Soga Shōhaku?

Ikkyū Sōjun: The Zen Master Who Found Enlightenment in Pleasure Houses with a Bottle of Sake in Hand

Ikkō-ikki: Buddhist Monks Build Fortresses and Lead Peasants to War Against the Warlords of Sengoku Japan

"Strong Japanese Women"

see book by the author

of the page

    未開    ソビエライ

 An enthusiast of Asian culture with a deep appreciation for the diverse philosophies of the world. By education, a psychologist and philologist specializing in Korean studies. At heart, a programmer (primarily for Android) and a passionate technology enthusiast, as well as a practitioner of Zen and mono no aware. In moments of tranquility, adheres to a disciplined lifestyle, firmly believing that perseverance, continuous personal growth, and dedication to one's passions are the wisest paths in life. Author of the book "Strong Women of Japan" (>>see more)

Personal motto:

"The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest." - Albert Einstein (probably)

  Mike Soray

   (aka Michał Sobieraj)

未開    ソビエライ

 An enthusiast of Asian culture with a deep appreciation for the diverse philosophies of the world. By education, a psychologist and philologist specializing in Korean studies. At heart, a programmer (primarily for Android) and a passionate technology enthusiast, as well as a practitioner of Zen and mono no aware. In moments of tranquility, adheres to a disciplined lifestyle, firmly believing that perseverance, continuous personal growth, and dedication to one's passions are the wisest paths in life. Author of the book "Strong Women of Japan" (>>see more)

Personal motto:

"The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest." - Albert Einstein (probably)

Mike Soray

(aka Michał Sobieraj)

Write us...

Ciechanów, Polska

dr.imyon@gmail.com

___________________

inari.smart

Would you like to share your thoughts or feedback about our website or app? Leave us a message, and we’ll get back to you quickly. We value your perspective!