Utou (Murrelet) : PhotoStory

A traveling monk receives a jacket sleeve from an old man in Tateyama (present-day Toyama Prefecture).

The old man is the ghost of a hunter from Soto-no-hama in Mutsu Province (present-day Aomori Prefecture) who wishes the monk to say condolences for his soul. The sleeve will prove who he is.

When the monk arrives at the house of the hunter, he gives the sleeve to the wife and children. It is an exact fit for the hunter’s jacket.

The monk starts the memorial ceremony and the dark form of the ghost appears.

I cannot hold our children and am sinking in sorrow. This is my punishment for catching birds who were parents and their chicks.

Without thinking, I made my living as a hunter, doing nothing but killing wild creatures.

In this way, I chased the birds and beat them.

Now, in Hell, I am stained by a rain of blood.

Utou, transformed into monstrous birds, tear at my body. In the raging inferno, the smoke chokes me and I cannot cry out.

I cannot stand up to flee. Is it because of the birds with fallen feathers that I killed?

Again, I am relentlessly driven down by the hawks that the utou have become. Wild dogs hunt me too and there is no place of escape.