JINMENSŌ 人面瘡

Pronunciation: JEEN-men-soh

Translation: The Human-Faced “Tumor”

Similar to: Jinmenju (人面樹), Human-Faced Tree; Jinmenken (人面犬), Human-Faced Dog; and Jinmengyo (人面魚) Human-Faced Fish

Overview

The jinmensō is probably one of the most unsettling yōkai you’ll ever meet—or, more precisely, become afflicted with. It isn’t a creepy beastie you can battle or run away from; instead, it is a growth that mysteriously appears on some part of your body and doesn’t go away. What makes it a yōkai is that, somewhere along the line, you’ll notice it has a face and can eat, drink, and even occasionally talk.

The earliest mention of this grotesque malady can be found in ancient Chinese texts. But there are also Japanese medical documents from the 1800s that are queasily specific when talking about this parasitic beast. For example, one medical record dated July 1819 describes a thirty-five-year-old merchant in Sendai who came in to be examined for a suspicious-looking growth on his knee. It had been there since he was fourteen years old. Every year, it had grown in size, but it wasn’t until that day in July that he finally decided to do something about it.

The doctor recorded the affliction in gruesome detail. He wrote that the mysterious bump had swollen parts that looked like a smiling face, with a pale red mouth, two nostrils, and closed eyes. It even had ears. The physician then went on to say that if he touched it, it would bleed, but that the patient experienced no pain. But that’s not all. The little beast also twitched, which made it look like it was breathing. Although, to his credit, he noted this could have been the man’s heartbeat (or pulse) making it look like it was respiring.

The doctor’s diagnosis was that because it looked so much like a human face, it must be an akuryō (悪霊) or onryō (怨霊), the evil spirit of someone (dead or alive) who had so much malice directed toward the victim, it manifested itself in this way.

Background and Popular Stories

It’s important to note a slight mistranslation you’ll often see, that a jinmensō is a “human-faced tumor.” That’s not quite right. The last kanji sō (瘡) is the same character used in the word for smallpox. It means “pustule” or “boil” and refers to any kind of sore that erupts on the skin. So, it’s not exactly a tumor.

Back in the mid-1600s, an author and monk named Asai Ryōi wrote about this phenomenon in his bizarre collection of sixty-five short stories entitled Otogibōko. The stories in this book are mostly adapted from Chinese and Korean texts, with Asai Ryōi altering and embellishing them as he desired. The story about the human-faced pustule appeared in volume 9 and was titled “Jinmensō.”

The story chronicles a farmer, living in what is now the city of Uji in Kyoto, who fell very ill and wasn’t able to recover. Six months after he got sick, he noticed he had an incredibly painful, strange growth on his knee. He examined it closer and was startled to find it had eyes and a mouth and resembled a human face. Was it a jinmensō? He dismissed it as a weird coincidence and went about his usual routine.

However, a little while later, he was at home, drinking to try to numb the pain this peculiar boil caused, when—feeling a little tipsy, no doubt—he poured a bit of sake onto the jinmensō. To his astonishment, the tiny mouth drank it up. Not only that, but after several gulps, the creepy yōkai flushed red as some do when they get drunk. This made the farmer more curious. He pulled off a tiny piece of mochi rice cake from a plate on the table and fed it to his enthusiastic knee cyst. Horrified, the farmer watched as the tiny mouth chewed up and swallowed the sticky treat.

This was the beginning of a change in the farmer and his jinmensō’s relationship. The parasitic yōkai was painful enough as it was, but now, if the poor man didn’t feed it, the ache would quickly become unbearable. So, every day he would have to feed the dreadful beast, and every day it would demand more. It wasn’t long before the farmer was sacrificing his own meals and started wasting away.

He tried to get help. He visited different doctors and healers around town, but no one had a solution to his problem. Mostly they were just grossed out. Meanwhile, the farmer was slowly starving to death.

Then one day when all was at its worst, a wandering ascetic monk (ascetics were monks who deprived themselves of comforts and pleasures) happened to visit the town. He heard about the tormented man’s dilemma and offered his help. He told him to sell all his land for gold, then use that money to buy specific medicines and herbs. What could he do? This was his last hope. The farmer agreed and did as directed.

After he’d acquired the needed treatments, the monk went to the farmer’s house and fed the remedies to the jinmensō one by one, noting the reactions. But there was no effect. It would just gobble them up and cry out for more. This went on for some time, until finally the monk tried to place some powdered baimo(貝母), or snake’s head fritillary (a type of lily) into the creature’s maw. The previously voracious jinmensō suddenly closed its mouth tight and refused to eat.

“Aha!” the monk said, and force-fed the powdered flower to the mouth. Almost immediately, the farmer felt better. After seventeen days, the swelling went down, the mysterious growth disappeared, and the farmer recovered entirely.

In Modern Stories

The jinmensō shows up in the manga The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, written by Eiji Otsuka, with art by Hosui Yamazaki; the manga has an English-language adaption published by Dark Horse Comics. The jinmensō also made somewhat of a TV debut back in March 2022. After my podcast Uncanny Japan did an episode on this repulsive little monster, one month later, Saturday Night Live did a sketch called “Meatballs,” which was about a woman afflicted with several eating, singing, and vomiting round growths all over her body. It could have been a coincidence, but it’s fun to think this gross little yōkai now has an American cousin.