More than seven hundred years ago, at Dan-no-ura in the Straits of Shimonoseki, the last battle of the long struggle between the Heike, the Taira, and the Genji, the Minamoto, was fought. The Heike perished in the sea, women and children and the child emperor Antoku among them. Ever since, the ghosts of the Heike have haunted that sea: at night will-o'-the-wisps drift over the waves, and on the shore live the Heike crabs, with markings on their backs like human faces. To comfort the ghosts, the temple of Amidaji was built at Akamagaseki.
At that temple lived a blind biwa player named Hoichi. No one could match him at chanting the tale of the Heike to the biwa, and it was said that when he sang of the battle of Dan-no-ura, even demons could not hold back their tears.
One summer night, when the priest was away, Hoichi was playing alone on the veranda when footsteps came through the back gate and a samurai, his armor clanking, called, "Hoichi!" "My lord is a person of very high rank. He has come to see the place of the battle of Dan-no-ura and wishes to hear you chant." Led by the hand, Hoichi passed through a great gate and was brought into a hall where many people sat. When he began the battle of Dan-no-ura, the room fell silent, and soon sobbing rose on every side. An old woman told him, "For six more nights, you must come and chant each night. You must tell no one of this."
The priest grew suspicious that Hoichi went out secretly every night and had the temple servants follow him. On a rainy night, they found Hoichi alone before the tomb of Emperor Antoku, surrounded by countless ghost fires, strumming his biwa and chanting at the top of his voice.
The priest realized that Hoichi was in the power of the dead and would be torn to pieces if this went on. So he stripped Hoichi and wrote the Heart Sutra over his entire body, from head to the soles of his feet, and told him, "Tonight, whatever happens, do not answer. Sit perfectly still."
That night the samurai came and called, "Hoichi!" Hoichi held his breath and did not answer. "Here is the biwa, but I see no player. All I see is two ears. Since there is no mouth to answer, I will take these ears back to my lord as proof." Fingers like iron gripped both of Hoichi's ears and tore them off. In his haste, the priest had forgotten to write the sutra on his ears.
Hoichi's wounds soon healed, the strange story spread far and wide, and he quickly became a celebrated biwa player. People began to call him "Mimi-nashi Hoichi," Hoichi the Earless.
In the separation of Shinto and Buddhism in the Meiji era, Amidaji became Akama Shrine. Its grounds hold the tomb of Emperor Antoku, the graves of the Heike clan (the Nanamori-zuka), and the Hoichi Hall with a statue of Hoichi.