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Updated: May 24, 2025
Nor did Buddhism deny the existence of goblins and evil gods: these were identified with the Pretas and the Merakayikas; and the Japanese popular term for goblin, Ma, to-day reminds us of this identification. As for wicked ghosts, they were to be thought of as Pretas only, Gaki, self-doomed by the errors of former lives to the Circle of Perpetual Hunger.
Ghosts unloved might not become "evil gods" in the Shinto meaning of the term; but the malevolent Gaki was even more to be dreaded than the malevolent Kami, for Buddhism defined in appalling ways the nature of the Gaki's power to harm.
Strictly speaking, the Gaki-botoke are the Pretas of Indian Buddhism, spirits condemned to sojourn in the Gakido, the sphere of the penance of perpetual hunger and thirst. But in Japanese Buddhism, the name Gaki is given also to those souls who have none among the living to remember them, and to prepare for them the customary offerings of food and tea.
He tried oftentimes without avail to drive him away; then he strove to deceive him by proclaiming aloud to all the people that he was going to Kyoto. But instead of going to Kyoto he went to Tsuruga, in the province of Echizen; and when he reached the inn at Tsuruga there came forth to meet him a boy lean and wan like a gaki.
"Then, heartless woman, at the end of the month you would have been without a master; for surely my sufferings would, in a month, have shrunk me to an insect gaki chirping from a tree." "It is to me a matter of honorable amazement that in one week you are not already a gaki, with your incessant complaints," retorted the old dame, still unrelenting.
And the Teacher made answer: 'On the fifteenth day of the seventh month, feed the ghosts of the great priests of all countries. And Mokenren, having done so, saw that his mother was freed from the state of gaki, and that she was dancing for joy. This is the origin also of the dances called Bono-dori, which are danced on the third night of the Festival of the Dead throughout Japan.
In various Buddhist funeral-rites, the dead are actually addressed as Gaki, beings to be pitied but also to be feared, much needing human sympathy and succour, but able to recompense the food-giver by ghostly help. One particular attraction of Buddhist teaching was its simple and ingenious interpretation of nature.
Having warmed itself and absorbed some nourishment at the expense of its unwilling host, the gaki goes away, and the fever ceases for a time. But at exactly the same hour upon another day the gaki will return, and the victim must shiver and burn until the haunter has become warm and has satisfied its hunger. Some gaki visit their patients every day; others every alternate day, or even less often.
In brief: the paroxysms of any form of intermittent fever are explained by the presence of the gaki, and the intervals between the paroxysms by its absence. Hotoke signifies a Buddha. Hotoke signifies also the Souls of the Dead since faith holds that these, after worthy life, either enter upon the way to Buddhahood, or become Buddhas.
'You will have to ask others more learned than I. But there are gods with whom it is not desirable to become acquainted. Such are the God of Poverty, and the God of Hunger, and the God of Penuriousness, and the God of Hindrances and Obstacles. These are of dark colour, like the clouds of gloomy days, and their faces are like the faces of gaki.
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