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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Kwaidan by Lafcadio Hearn: jikininki, [1] -- an eater of human flesh. Have pity upon me, and suffer me
to confess the secret fault by which I became reduced to this condition.
"A long, long time ago, I was a priest in this desolate region. There was
no other priest for many leagues around. So, in that time, the bodies of
the mountain-folk who died used to be brought here,-- sometimes from great
distances,-- in order that I might repeat over them the holy service. But I
repeated the service and performed the rites only as a matter of business;
-- I thought only of the food and the clothes that my sacred profession
enabled me to gain. And because of this selfish impiety I was reborn,
immediately after my death, into the state of a jikininki. Since then I
have been obliged to feed upon the corpses of the people who die in this
Kwaidan |
