Some five hundred years ago there was a samurai named Isogai Heidazaemon Taketsura in the service of the Kikuchi lords of Kyushu. He was a skilled and fearless warrior, but after his lord's house fell, he renounced the world, became a priest, took the name Kwairyo and wandered the provinces.
While traveling through the mountains of Kai, Kwairyo was overtaken by night and decided to sleep out on a mountain road far from any village. Then a woodcutter carrying an axe came by and said, "This place is haunted by goblins. Come and stay at my house," and led him to a lone house deep in the mountains. The family there treated Kwairyo kindly. The master told him that he had once been a samurai of rank, but had ruined his house through his own dissipation, and now lived hidden in the mountains to atone for it.
Late at night, when Kwairyo had finished his sutras and left his room to drink some water, he saw the five members of the family lying in the lamplight. But none of the bodies had a head. Kwairyo knew then that this was a house of rokuro-kubi. The books say that if you move the body away while the head is gone, the head can never rejoin it, and will strike the ground three times and die. Kwairyo threw the master's body out the door.
Going round to the back, he found five heads flying about in the grove, catching and eating insects and talking. The master's head said, "That priest tonight is nice and fat. If we eat him, our bellies will be full. But while he's reading sutras we can't touch him. Go and see what he's doing." The head of a woman went to look and cried out, "The priest is gone! And so is the master's body!" The master's head flew into a rage and hurled itself at Kwairyo.
Kwairyo pulled up a young tree and beat the heads off. Four of them fled, but the master's head, no matter how often it was struck, clung to the sleeve of Kwairyo's robe with its teeth. When dawn came, the heads could not return to their bodies, and the master's head died still biting the sleeve.
Kwairyo traveled on with the head hanging from his sleeve and was arrested by officials at Suwa in Shinano. But at the hearing he showed that the back of the head's neck bore marks like red characters, it was recognized as a rokuro-kubi, and he was released. Later a robber who tried to steal Kwairyo's robe bought it, head and all, but before long, it is said, the man went to the mountains of Kai to return the head and built a mound to give it proper rites.
The original is said to be a tale in the Edo-period collection Kaibutsu Yoron. The story is set in the mountains of what is now Yamanashi Prefecture.