Now it is long ago. In the province of Mimasaka there were gods called Nakayama and Koya. The true form of the god of Nakayama was a monkey, and that of Koya a snake. Every year at the festival, the people of the land had to offer one unmarried girl as a sacrifice.
One year, the only daughter of a family of standing, a very beautiful girl of sixteen or seventeen, was named as the sacrifice. Her parents grieved, and as the festival day approached they did nothing but weep.
Just then there was a man who had come from the eastern provinces. He was a hunter who used dogs to hunt boar and deer, a fierce man who knew no fear. Hearing what had happened, he visited the girl's parents and said, "Give your daughter to me. I'll take her place." The parents, thinking that the girl was to die anyway, secretly took him as their son-in-law.
From the dogs he kept, the man picked out two especially strong ones, took them into the mountains, and trained them again and again to bite live monkeys to death, until they would leap on any monkey they saw and kill it. He sharpened his sword well and waited for the festival.
On the day, the man hid in a long chest with the two dogs and had it carried before the god in place of the girl. When the priests had read their prayers and left, from the depths of the shrine appeared a great monkey seven or eight feet tall. About a hundred monkeys lined up on either side, red of face and rump. Before the great monkey were a chopping board and a knife, and the moment it opened the lid of the chest, the man cried, "Go on, eat him!" and loosed the dogs. The dogs leapt on the great monkey, and the man too sprang out, pinned it down and put his sword to its throat.
"Are you the god who has eaten people's children all these years? I'll cut off your head now; if you're a god, save yourself." The great monkey bared its teeth, rubbed its hands together and wept, begging for its life. The other monkeys fled up the trees, shrieking. Then the god possessed one of the priests and said, "From now on I will never ask for a sacrifice. Forgive me." The man made it swear "never to harm people again" and let the great monkey go. The monkeys fled deep into the mountains.
The man married the girl and they lived long together, and it is said that from then on the custom of human sacrifice ended in that province.
Nakayama Shrine in Tsuyama, Okayama, is the first shrine of Mimasaka. Deep in its grounds is the Saru Shrine, dedicated to monkeys, which carries this tale to the present. It is the source of the folktale "Defeating the Monkey God."